Jay Curry

Testing Moments of Truth at Delta

A potential moment of truth, according to Jan Carlzon, occurs when an employee interacts with a customer.

• If the experience is very positive, it becomes a Magic Moment.
• If the experience is very negative, it becomes a Miserable Moment.
• If the experience is neutral, it becomes a Mwa Moment (in Dutch,--my guest language-- Mwa is the equivalent of ho-hum.)

I had a wonderful opportunity to assess the moments of truth at Delta Airlines during a recent trip from Amsterdam to Bogotá Colombia via San Jose California. Because of a stroke condition, I had asked for wheelchair assistance throughout the journey. What a beautiful moment for patient bonding, I thought. Here is my report.

Amsterdam to Atlanta – Mary (Names of staff fictionalized

I was warmly greeted at the Delta checkin desk and was informed that a wheel chair would arrive in about 45 minutes (just 15 minutes before departure time. Or I...

This is the first in a series of blog postings on the basic concepts of Customer Experience Management.

They can be found in an e-book—The Customer Experience Management Field Manual which you can order—free—by sending an email to:

jay@customerxf.com

Thank you.

The Customer Experience Factory Field Manual:
Part I- Basic Concepts
Part II- Readiness Assessment

By Pieter van Osch and Jay Curry

Interviewed by Marie-Jose Lorty, Director of 3DMarketing.com

Interviewer: Welcome to this field manual about Customer Experience Management (CEM). Part I covers the key concepts of CEM while Part II lets you assess your internal capabilities for implementing these basic concepts.

Are you ready to go? OK, let’s begin with some Basic Concepts.

First, I understand that Customer Experience Management is relevant...

For some time I have been in search of something in Customer Experience Management that would track and trace customer "superenthusiasm".

I was thinking of a kind of satisfaction survey which would capture for instance if a foods shopper would travel 3 miles out of her/his way to patronize store X just because he liked the store: their service was so terrific; the staff was super friendly; and the products priced no higher than in a giga-size supermarket..

At the same time the store owner would be super enthusiastic that the shopper was going 3 miles out of her/his way to ensure that her/his money went to the store deserving it—his!

This happy state of affairs I called "Customership".

Thus "Customership" is a state of happiness caused by doing business with a vendor you really like; coupled with like happiness on the part of the vendor who enjoys the profitable relationship with a customer.

I noodled around with the...

On December 27, 2005 I was a strapping 6’5” CRM Guru with a firm faith and belief in the holy grail of customer profitability. I was just coming off a world tour for Microsoft where I could preach the customer profitability bible to Microsoft Business Partners and prospective users of Microsoft CRM; plus I was wrestling with some knotty problems in the fund raising world where I was working on an interim basis.

But on December 28. 2005 I fond myself a partial cripple in a hospital, the victim of a stroke. My left arm and leg just did not respond to messages from my brain.

But my thinking capacity, speech and reading ability, thank God, were not affected. So I had lots of time to ponder over the Meaning of Life.

I recall vividly one day a few weeks thereafter wheeling along the hospital corridor in my wheelchair when I heard a commotion between a nurse and an older patient. “YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO WALK UNAIDED” shouted the nurse. “COME BACK HERE!”...