Customer Experience Blog

Expert insights on customer experience, employee engagement, and service leadership. Stay ahead with Brad Cleveland’s blog—featuring CX trends, actionable strategies, and real-world solutions to help you improve customer satisfaction, streamline operations, and drive business success.

Developing Your Service Strategy

Developing Your Service Strategy

Whether you're a one person design company, a 50 person software startup or a global airline with thousands of employees, you need a strategy for serving your customers. Strategy is the bridge between your organization's vision and mission and the specific...

Do your goals and metrics foster employee engagement?

Do your goals and metrics foster employee engagement?

This has been a brutal few years for many contact centers. Supply chain problems and the Great Resignation have caused challenges on every aspect of customer care. The work we’re handling has surged and become more complex, while the employees we need to handle it...

Quality standards that align with customer experience

Quality standards that align with customer experience

Dee Hock, founder and former CEO of the credit card system that became VISA International, once said, “Simple, clear purpose and principles give rise to complex and intelligent behavior. Complex rules and regulations give rise to simple and stupid behavior.” You’ll...

Justifying Your Customer Service Budget

There are several important aspects of how to justify your customer service budget. You’ll want to use analysis you’ve done on the cost of poor service and the value of good service. It’s a bit like planning a trip. You might use a taxi or rideshare service to meet...

Create a Specific, Compelling Vision

Create a Specific, Compelling Vision

A clear vision, well communicated and continually reinforced by you, is essential to engaging your employees, aligning objectives, and driving action. Vision can take many forms, including a vision statement, a mission statement, a set of values, or some overarching...

Build the right skills, knowledge, and leaders

Build the right skills, knowledge, and leaders

When developing an effective customer service strategy, you will need to include how to build the right skills, knowledge, and leaders. I've found in many cases those working on strategy will either under or overestimate the level of effort required by the people...

A Humbling Lesson in Customer Experience

A Humbling Lesson in Customer Experience

One of my first jobs was working for a company that provided business communications systems—telephone and computer systems. My usual task was to run cable. So, I spent a lot of time underneath the floors of corporations and hospitals and other buildings. Much of my...

Gathering Frequent Employee Feedback

Gathering Frequent Employee Feedback

The late Steve Jobs once famously stated, “It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.” No one in your organization understands processes, products and customers more than your employees....

Want to improve customer service? Look at your processes

Want to improve customer service? Look at your processes

Customer service involves many variables. In this video, we're going to look at customer service as a process. We'll see where quality standards fit, and why improving processes is where you'll make substantial progress. Your quality standards set the mark. But it's...