Some of my most popular 2016 posts

One of the biggest things I did online in 2016 was create a customer experience podcast. We just hit Episode No. 32 of that show, but there won’t be new episodes until 2017. Instead, here’s what I am going to do. Today I’ll recap 10 popular blog posts from this year — and on Thursday (the 29th), I’ll recap some lessons from my podcasts. That should get us into 2017, hopefully ready to tackle any CX lessons that come down the pike. So here we go with popular blog posts from this year.

CCO survival skill: Creating a unified leadership team

I usually call this “one-company leadership.” It just means … it’s hard to get anything done if you don’t have buy-in from executive colleagues, or if they see you as a person who owns a silo that doesn’t produce for the bottom line. Unifying leadership teams has been a theme of my life’s work, and you’ll see it in dozens of podcast quotes I’ll provide Thursday.

The big lessons of my podcast

I did this post after 12 guests. I’ve had 20 more since then, but we’ll discuss that Thursday.

35 data-backed approaches to customer retention

Who doesn’t love data in the modern age, right?

The most important thing to know about customer experience competencies

The competencies are how I shape my work, and work with others. This post goes into the nitty-gritty details of how that happens and what it all means.

Is your annual planning a free-for-all?

It often is, at many companies of all sizes. But there is a way to fix that.

“Kill a stupid rule”

I’ve been telling people this for years. Decades, even. Many organizations love their processes. The process becomes sacrosanct and it cannot be replaced, even if it makes absolutely no sense for how the company does business now. This is bad. Kill stupid rules. This post goes into the how and why of that.

The three quick steps to preventing customer defection

If you combine this post with the 35 data-backed approaches to retention above, you’ll have some nice intel to begin from.

The power of digital storytelling in CX

It’s there. And big time. It comes up in funding contexts and leadership buy-in context. This post is about telling stories and how to do it better (and why you need to).

How to really be a strategic manager in customer experience

Too often these days, “strategy” has become a buzzword — or it gets confused with operational logistics. This post is about how to set, and then guide, a strategy for being a customer-driven growth engine.

The MBA of customer love

A new way to think about business.

There’s 10. Have a great holidays and New Year’s and check back on 12/29 for the podcast lessons!