3 ways to surprise and delight your customers

Monday through Friday, my company ShortStack sends out an email to thousands of our subscribers with that day's blog post. On a typical day, we get around 20 bouncebacks from subscribers who have set up autoresponders to notify senders that they're out of the office.

Most of the bouncebacks come from people who are on vacation. But sometimes there are messages like "I'm recovering from surgery" or "I'm on maternity leave" or "I'm at a conference."

We used to ignore these emails, but recently we started responding to some of them. We send along well wishes for the most part, but sometimes we share a link where the recipient can "order" a free company t-shirt.

How would Steve Jobs improve Customer Experience

Steve Jobs was a true customer experience and user experience thought leader, wildly and repeatedly successful at transforming the customer experience for millions of customers worldwide, through Apple’s computers, mobile devices, the experience at the Apple Store, and in many other ways.

And his approach was based on a very simple message that he drilled into his team over and over and over: You've got to start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology--not the other way around.

In other words, the technology sold by Apple, or used by Apple in support of the customer experience, doesn’t have to be invented at Apple. And the technology Apple has lying around at its disposal doesn't have to end up being used.

How to make personal marketing work?

Let’s face it — U.S. marketers spent nearly $60 billion in 2015 on digital ads, but the industry doesn’t do a great job connecting people with products they want. According to Christophe Primault, CEO of GetApp, just 10% of consumers find what they’re looking for when interacting with online content. The key to relevant messaging lies with data, but the challenge is no longer collecting it. Each day, we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data. Today’s challenge is using data to deliver customers more contextual, personalized impressions. Imagine a world where programs execute optimized, data-driven campaigns tailored to each consumer.

Customer Experience is today's business benchmark

Not so long ago, every business assumed that the keys to success were the highest quality product, the best value for the buck, and the best customer service. Now all we hear about is providing the best “customer experience.” Exactly what is that customer experience that every modern marketer is talking about, and how do you measure it

A recent article in the Harvard Business Review “The Truth About Customer Experience” defines it as your customer’s end-to-end journey with you, not just the key touchpoints or critical moments when customers interact with your organization.?