From the category archives:

customer obsession

Sears Customer Service, Hall of Shame

by Pete Abilla May 28, 2010
This entry is part 5 of 4 in the series sears customer service

My experience with Sears Customer Service and Sears Repair Center can be found here: Sears Customer Service, Part 1 Sears Customer Service, Part 2 Sears Customer Service, Part 3 Today’s post is a compilation of Sears Customer Service stories, to show that my experience is not an isolated one, but just the tip of the [...]

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Sears Service Customer Experience, Part 3

by Pete Abilla May 27, 2010
This entry is part 4 of 4 in the series sears customer service

In Part 1 of my experience buying a Kenmore Dishwasher from Sears, I shared the detailed steps of what happened, what did happen but should have happened, and quantitative details such as how many phone calls I made, how many call transfers occurred, how long I was on the phone with Sears Customer Service, etc. [...]

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Sears Service Customer Experience, Part 2

by Pete Abilla May 25, 2010
This entry is part 3 of 4 in the series sears customer service

In Part 1 of my recent experience with Sears, I shared what I experienced in the process of buying a Kenmore Dishwasher from Sears.  I share my experience in a timeline and the pain I experienced going through Sears Customer Service 1. In Part 2, I’ll share what I believe the flow of information looks [...]

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Customer Experience, Kano, Basics, and Shiny Objects

by Pete Abilla May 19, 2010
This entry is part 17 of 28 in the series Lean and Six Sigma

Shiny objects, Brilliant Basics – is it an either/or?  From a feature, product, or service perspective, is it as dichotomous as doing the basics perfectly or providing something absolutely stunning and enjoyable and new? The Kano Model shows us, in an easy way, the relationship of features to customer delight – and it’s not an [...]

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A Delightful and Fun Supply Chain?

by Pete Abilla May 5, 2010

Is it possible? Most logistics and supply chain professionals are primarily concerned with time, efficiency, and in reducing defects.  This makes sense.  After all, the end-customer wants their product or service quickly and with the highest quality possible. But, what if a dimension of delight and fun could be had in a supply chain?  What [...]

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Just Dial “0″ (“Zero”)

by Pete Abilla February 3, 2010

On the way to work this morning, a commercial on National Public Radio (NPR) caught my attention.  It was a commercial for Ally Bank and one phrase piqued my interest (I’m paraphrasing): To open an account, call xxx-xxx-xxxx and to talk to a real person, push “0″ anytime. In the radio commercial, they emphasized “real [...]

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Staring at Acoustic Ceiling Tiles

by Pete Abilla January 25, 2010
This entry is part 5 of 28 in the series queueing theory

There is a Design Thinking opportunity to Emergency Room care.  In my previous post, I discussed the time involved in waiting to receive care -queueing properties of ER care.  What I didn’t discuss is the feeling and experience of the patient during care.  That’s the topic for this post today. We know that ER Wait [...]

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Homogeneous Innovation

by Pete Abilla November 17, 2009

Things are all too familiar. That’s good and bad. It’s good if the service or product meets my basic needs and is memory-neutral: that is, the interaction results in neither good memory or bad memory.  It just is and I don’t care. It’s not good if I come away from the experience thinking “I could [...]

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Respect for People, Underutilized People, and Waste

by Pete Abilla September 24, 2009

The two pillars in Lean Thinking are Continuous Improvement and Respect for People.  What is not well understood is that most of what we know as The Toyota Production System comes from these two pillars.  The Lean sub-culture tends to over-emphasize the “tools” of Kaizen, but miss the point altogether, since the tools stem or [...]

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