Interviews with CX Experts

Setting the Customer Experience Stage – Interview with Dave Kirsch, CEO of Shipper’s Supply

January 13, 2014/1 Comment/in CX Program Strategy, Interviews with CX Experts, Minneapolis CX /by Jim Tincher

We’re starting off 2014 with the interview series Aiming for the Hearts of their Customers. These interviews showcase the current state and 2014 plans for seven customer experience leaders in Minnesota. You can see all of the interviews here:

Overview

Shipper’s Supply is an 85-year-old distributor of everything a manufacturer needs to create a great impression, from the actual shipping supply to the automation equipment needed to package products.

This is the first in the series Aiming for the Hearts of their Customers. I chose Shipper’s Supply to begin the series because they are in the very beginning of their customer experience journey, and serve as a great case study of this phase. CEO Dave Kirsch shared the history behind their approach and how they are beginning their focus.

Building Customer Intelligence

Aiming for the Hearts of their Customers

January 13, 2014/0 Comments/in CX Program Strategy, Interviews with CX Experts, Minneapolis CX, Voice of the Customer /by Jim Tincher

Welcome to the new year! To kick things off, I have been fortunate to interview a number of Minnesota customer experience leaders on their plans for next year. Seven have agreed to have their interviews published over the next two weeks. The list includes two CEOs, two VPs with responsibilities that include customer experience, and three who are specifically tasked with running customer experience in their companies. The list includes:

Dave Kirsch, CEO, Shipper’s Supply

Mara Bain, Chief Experience Officer, Western National Insurance

Ghita Worcester, Senior VP of Public Affairs and Marketing, UCare

Lisa Hoene, VP of Brand and Marketing Services, Allianz

Robin Schribman, Vice President, Customer Insight and Customer Experience, Thomson Reuters

Ingrid Lindberg, Chief Customer Officer at Prime Therapeutics

Rhoda Olsen, CEO of Great Clips

Look for their interviews over the next two weeks.

Customer Intelligence: Bring Your Customers to Life for Your Employees

October 9, 2013/2 Comments/in CX Program Strategy, Interviews with CX Experts, Voice of the Customer /by Jim Tincher

I once met with a VP of Sales for a Fortune 25 company who argued, “We don’t need to learn about our customers. We just need to execute the plan.” It’s no surprise that, while they were the market leader, they also had the highest percentages of customers who closed accounts each year. As a result the company’s revenues were growing slower than the rest of the market.

It’s easy to get caught up in executing the plan. We’re busy and taking the time to learn about customers cuts into our “productivity.” But if you don’t take that time, how do you know you’re doing the right thing?

A Case Study in Loyalty: The Cabela’s CLUB

March 21, 2013/3 Comments/in CX Program Strategy, Interviews with CX Experts, Voice of the Customer /by Jim Tincher

How do you create a world-class customer loyalty program? Focus less on providing best-in-class benefits and more on creating a great customer experience. That’s the advice of Sean Baker, the incoming CEO of Cabela’s World’s Foremost Bank and leader of the Cabela’s CLUB program.

I interviewed Sean to learn more about Cabela’s CLUB and its critical role in driving their customer experience. The lessons certainly apply to retailers as a class, but also have something to teach anybody wanting to create better relationships with customers.

CLUB Components

First, a quick background on the program. The Cabela’s CLUB is a loyalty program paired with a Visa card. It began as a partnership with a small regional bank as a way to give their best customers free gear, but in 2001 Cabela’s brought the program in-house. They are now one of only two retailers who entirely own their own bank to run their loyalty program (Nordstrom’s is the other). Read more

Dunn Bros Coffee – the Non-Chain Chain

May 10, 2012/2 Comments/in CX Program Strategy, Interviews with CX Experts, Voice of the Customer /by Jim Tincher

“Coffee houses are about neighborhoods,” Dunn Bros Coffee co-CEO Chris Eilers tells me while we drink light roasts and blues music plays overhead.

Dunn Brothers is a popular Midwestern coffee chain with most of its locations in the Twin Cities. The company was started by Ed Dunn and now boasts 83 locations. Whereas Starbucks and Caribou (another Minnesota-grown coffee shop) have primarily corporate-owned locations, Dunn Bros focuses on attracting franchisees, who typically run and work at only one location.

This interview discusses the Dunn Bros Coffee history, how they use their franchisees to develop their unique customer experience, and how the company uses market research and social networking to learn more about their customers. It concludes with an analysis on how they do in creating a customer-inspired experience, as measured through the Heart of the Customer model.

Read the interview in Dunn_Bros-the_Non-Chain_Chain-White_Paper.

Great Clips – Driving Organic Growth through Customer Focus

March 27, 2012/3 Comments/in CX Program Strategy, Interviews with CX Experts /by Jim Tincher

“At every level in the organization, if people don’t understand what’s going on face-to-face with the customer, it doesn’t matter what else you’re doing.”

That’s the advice of Rhoda Olsen, CEO of Great Clips. It’s the same strategy that has driven 30 straight quarters of same-salon revenue growth. But it wasn’t always that way. Back in 2005, “We thought we were a pretty customer-focused organization, as everyone does,” says Olsen. But that year sales and customers dipped for the first time in history. This wake-up call showed Great Clips they needed to better understand the current state of their customer needs.

After conducting significant research, they discovered their brand wasn’t very well-defined and category confusion was significant. Customers had a difficult time distinguishing Great Clips’ value proposition from other salons. Read more the full interview, including an analysis of efforts, in Great Clips – Driving Organic Growth through Customer Focus Interview with CEO Rhoda Olsen.