Maz Iqbal

I enjoy reading what Don Peppers and Martha Rogers write.  In fact their point of view spoke to me in such a way that it called me to join up and become a part of  The Peppers & Rogers Group, for a while, back in 2000.  Don and Martha have published a new book Extreme Trust.  In this series of posts on trust I am going to share with you, comment upon and explore topics that are addressed by Don and Martha in their book.

Does trust matter?

Why don’t you take the salesman at his word and buy what he is selling you?  Because you have learnt that what is in the interests of the salesman, to make a sale and take our money, is not necessarily in your interest.  Why don’t you accept the advertising put out by companies?  Because you have learnt that advertising, as a whole, is not truthful – you know that it has been designed carefully, purposefully, to push your...

Listening to the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson I am left with the impression that nothing was more important to Steve Jobs then using technology to produce great products that delivered a great user experience.  Good enough was good enough, even great, for many in the computer industry.  Only insanely great was good enough for Steve Jobs.  Anything less was simply not good enough, it was not ‘art’ and not ‘worthy of artists”; great artists don’t want to put their names on good enough art.

Given that Apple, Amazon, Zappos, USAA, SouthWest Airlines, Zanes Cycles, Richer Sounds, Salesforce.com, O2, American Express.. have shown what can be done by focussing on the customer, why aren’t companies focussing on the Customer Experience?  According to Mindshare the biggest issue with companies and executives is turning VoC into changes in the business such that a powerful impact is made on the Customer Experience.  Why is it an issue? ...

In the previous post I shared the first part of my discussion around VoC with Erich Dietz, VP of Business Solutions at Mindshare Technologies (specialists in customer surveys and enterprise feedback).  The key point of that post was captured in Erich’s words: “No-one is really doing VoC surveys with the customer in mind!”   In this post I wish to share/discuss with you the other big issue that came up in my conversation with Eric.  Before that lets just briefly summarise best practice in soliciting customer feedback.

Lets assume your...

We are trapped in out-of-date limiting unhelpful concepts

In my last post I asserted that dead concepts are limiting how customer service, customer experience, customer-centricity show up.  My point was that what we see, how we see it, what we focus on, what we do and the results that show up cannot be ‘greater than’ the concept we live/act from.  I say that service sucks because our concept of service sucks.  Put differently given the existing concept of service that holds us prisoner it is enviable that service sucks.

In this post I want to put forth into the world radically new conceptualisations of service.  My intention is that...