Annette Franz Gleneicki

CX Journey

Seasoned Client Services executive with a track record of success in building and leading global teams of Services professionals and guiding them to sell, design, implement, and operationalize enterprise-wide customer experience solutions that drive business and organizational improvements. Leadership experience over the following Services teams: Account Management, Solutions Implementation, QA, Best Practices, Analytical Consulting, Research Methods, Training, and Customer Support. Passionate about employee and customer engagement (and how they relate).

We Shall Never Deny a Guest...

0 comments 92 reads

Posted on 2012-05-22

There's a lot of talk about going the extra mile to keep customers happy. But is there a point where the extra mile is going too far? Is there ever a point where you should just say "No?"
Lucky for you, I watch, er, I mean, my kids watch SpongeBob, and I can bring his perspective into my blog!

There's an episode of SpongeBob where Mr. Krabs turns the Krusty Krab into a hotel called Krusty Towers, an expensive hotel where the motto is "We will never deny a guest even the most ridiculous request." The motto was borrowed from a hotel he stayed at while on vacation; this is also where he learned that the hotel business is quite the lucrative business. (And if...

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Changing the World, One Thank You at a Time

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Posted on 2012-05-17

With a background in a software industry that tends to focus more heavily on VOC than on VOE, I have been searching lately for tools that help companies make it their mission to focus on the employee first.
Note that this focus on VOC has not necessarily been a reflection of the vendors. I can speak for myself (as head of their Services departments) that my teams and I talked to clients about the importance of listening to employees and focusing on the employee experience; however, I felt like most companies didn't get it. (Many still don't.) The stance was often, "We'll listen to and focus on employees next/later; customers first." Wrong.

If you follow my blog regularly, you've probably noticed that I have written several posts about employee engagement and employee experience lately. I can't convey enough how important those concepts are to the success of your business.

Well, put...

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Breaking Up is Hard to Do

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Posted on 2012-05-15

Did you know... when customers cancel their subscriptions or their memberships, it's not the end of your relationship with them? Clearly, it's not a stage that you ever want to reach in the customer experience lifecycle, but if you do get there, it doesn't have to be over. And more importantly, you don't have to treat the customer like it's over. It's not.
I know. I know. Breaking up is hard to do. But don't treat customers with anger and frustration if they decide to cancel or move on. Don't process their cancellations begrudgingly. As a matter of fact, be gracious, grateful, and make it easy for them to cancel, if they need to.

Why is this important? Two reasons:

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Are Gratuities an Expectation for Service Delivered?

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Posted on 2012-05-08

Last week, Sarah Simon tweeted the story shown in the image to the left. The story is about a waitress who received both a two-cent tip and, literally, someone's "two cents worth" about the service delivered by her. In the closing paragraph of the article, the author asks: "Is the note a teaching moment, or its author just a jerk?"
You know me by now... this got me thinkin'...

Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but I honestly thought/think that a tip is a reflection of the...

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Employee Engagement is Not a Mandate

9 comments 728 reads

Posted on 2012-05-03

I read an article last week about forcing the issue of employee engagement, as if someone could force that upon an employee. I'm not even going to link to the article, as I wouldn't share such misinformation. But I am going to blog about it for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is to remind everyone that you have to be careful about what you read on the Internet and that you can't believe everything you read.
Seriously, I had to reread the post a few times to be sure the author was serious. Based on his response to comments (with similar disbelief to mine), I assure you, he was. OK, sure, organizations can strive for 100% employee engagement, but it is virtually impossible. I don't even know if Zappos has 100% employee engagement. Recent research shows that the percentage of employees, in general, who are engaged is far south of that: Only 10% of employees are...

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Design the Experience from the Customer Viewpoint

6 comments 1,212 reads

Posted on 2012-05-01

I'm going to ask you a really tough question about customer experience design. It's a challenging one, and some of you might get it wrong, so give it some thought and let me know what your answer would be. Here goes.
If I asked you to design a zoo for me, would you design it from the animal perspective or from the human perspective? OK, wait, that is a tough question. Let me rephrase it. If I asked you to build me a zoo - and after you made sure the animals were happy in their pens and enclosures - would you design your customer experience from (a) the animal point of view or (b) the human point of view?

How many of you would raise your hand for "(b) human?" Great! How many of you would raise your hand for "(a) animal?" O, you, over there in the corner. Yes, you, Los Angeles Zoo. Put your hand down.

Let me...

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Employee Passion Drives Results

0 comments 789 reads

Posted on 2012-04-26

I've been recording episodes of Undercover Boss, and over the weekend I was able to catch up on a few of them. I won't summarize the episodes like I did in a previous post, but I will touch on a common theme that seemed to thread throughout the episodes I watched: employee passion. Except for a single employee highlighted in one of episodes, all of them had a real sense of pride, a sense of ownership in the business. I was truly impressed. The staff that the CEOs trained under weren't in high-...

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It's Time to Focus on Employee Experience

0 comments 442 reads

Posted on 2012-04-24

If we're going to make a dent in this thing called "customer experience," we really need to start with, and focus on, the employees and their experiences.
You know the saying, "People buy from people." It's not just a cliche; it's true. Ginger Conlin with @1to1media spelled out that notion very succinctly in the compelling blog she wrote yesterday called, "Are Your Employees Your Biggest Fans?"

We say that "companies" need to do this or "companies" need to do that...

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Proactive vs. No-Active

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Posted on 2012-04-19

A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog asking if proactive service was still a moment of truth. Today, I'll answer that question with a few prime examples to show that it truly is. Proactive service done right is a delighter. It is an opportunity to build a stronger relationship, to show your commitment to your customers - similar to the commitment that you want them to show to you. That two way street, that commitment to each other... that's called a relationship.

OK, off that soapbox and on to the proactive, er, no-active, service examples. I have three examples that show how proactive service could have really been something special, could have solidified the relationship. I'm not saying that I'm leaving these providers - the pain isn't great enough... yet; but I am saying that they have missed some real opportunities to keep my eyes from wandering.

...

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Customer Experience is More Than Just Customer Service

0 comments 978 reads

Posted on 2012-04-17

I was recently engaged in a job search in the VOC and CX space. Among other tools, I used Google Alerts and Simply Hired saved searches (which emailed me new postings every morning) with keywords to target my search results. One of the observations I made throughout this search was the very misleading job titles that are being used to describe certain positions. I saw postings for jobs with titles such as Director of Customer Experience or Vice President of Customer Experience, which to me would have been golden. Except... these titles were being used to describe positions that oversaw customer service or technical support departments. When did "Vice President of Customer Service" go out of style? Because one of my search keywords/phrases was "Customer Experience," I also happened to spot other Customer Experience titles, like Customer Experience Associate. Companies were using that title to refer to their store associates or sales clerks. That's not really appropriate,...

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