All Features
Mike Figliuolo
Leadership is perilous territory. People’s lives are at stake (sometimes literally). Although avoiding the following seven deadly sins won’t guarantee you’ll be a great leader, succumbing to them will guarantee you’ll have a significant learning moment. (Translation: You’ll fail miserably, but…
John Tschohl
Speed is one of the most strategic elements a company can use to attract and retain customers and drive its revenues.
What do I mean when I talk about speed? In this context, speed means dramatically reducing the amount of time needed to complete a task by altering factors such as empowerment,…
Adam Zewe
Despite their impressive capabilities, large language models (LLMs) are far from perfect. These artificial intelligence models sometimes “hallucinate” by generating incorrect or unsupported information in response to a query.
Due to this hallucination problem, an LLM’s responses are often verified…
Quality Digest
(CIMdata: Ann Arbor, MI) -- CIMdata, a global PLM strategic management consulting and research firm, announces the release of a new white paper, “SSI Shipbuilding PLM: PLM Tailored to Unlock Shipbuilding Transformation.” The paper describes the evolving capabilities of SSI’s Shipbuilding PLM as…
Joshua Zable
Everyone has their own favorite graph type or visual tool. I’m not ready to declare this my favorite yet, but this oldie but goodie has got to get more time and attention. That’s right: I’m talking about control charts with stages, also sometimes called before/after control charts.
If you’re not…
Mike Figliuolo
We’ve already talked about what a strategic plan is (and isn’t) in our discussion: “Strategic Planning Isn’t ‘Budget +10%.’” Hopefully, you’ve now got a direction mapped out and a list of initiatives to pursue, and you’re ready for a little tactical strategic advice. (Yes, that phrase is supposed…
Mei Lee Ngan
I once transformed my face to look like Ron Swanson—for science.
I never thought disguising myself with wigs and makeup would be part of my job, but as a NIST facial recognition researcher I sometimes do just that. To make myself look like the gruff character from the show Parks and Recreation, I…
Zach Winn
Most doctors go into medicine because they want to help patients. But today’s healthcare system requires that they spend hours each day on other work—searching through electronic health records (EHRs), documenting, coding and billing, gaining prior authorization, and evaluating services—that often…
Mark Hembree
If you’re reading this, you probably read a lot. You’ve made your way through all our industry news, keeping tabs on trends in our feature stories and gleaning a greater understanding of your own business—at least we hope so.
And if you read this much, it may be that you do a fair amount of…
Harry Hertz
How do you treat signs when you’re driving your car? Are you a strict rule follower? Does a stop sign cause you to come to a full stop, or a rolling stop, or no stop at all if you see no traffic? What about that intersection you go through every day, where you never see a car approaching from any…
ISO
Modern-day security breaches, such as the SolarWinds or T-Mobile attacks, aren’t one-off events; they are prime examples of how someone can steal your organization’s credentials and use them to gain illegitimate privileged access to sensitive assets. Data breaches happen daily, and in too many…
Roman Davydov
More and more companies in the manufacturing industry admit that providing great customer experience is vital to their business success. 41% of respondents to the “2024 State of Manufacturing Report” by Fictiv consider enhancing customer experience (CX) one of their top three priorities for this…
Sachin Waiker
‘Clinician burnout is a critical issue to understand and address,” says Mohsen Bayati, a professor of operations, information, and technology at Stanford Graduate School of Business. The condition is thought to affect nearly half of all U.S. doctors, at a cost of about $4.6 billion annually due to…
ISO
Cybersecurity has become increasingly critical in the digital age as organizations across all sectors face growing threats from cybercriminals.
Imagine that hackers breached a small healthcare practice through “phishing”—sending a scam email and gaining access to sensitive patient data, including…
John Tschohl
I’ve been speaking and writing about customer service since January 1980, and there is only a handful of companies that have been relentless and kept their focus on incredible customer service. The pandemic gave most firms an excuse to say, “To hell with the customer.”
Costco is one of the few…
Chip Bell
The Madison, a historic hotel overlooking the Mississippi River in Memphis, Tennessee, was rebranded into a modern hotel. It was, in some ways, a sad event. Memphis is the birthplace of the blues, and the Madison was my introduction to the powerful music of helping customers co-create their own…
Creaform
Reaume Bros. Racing is an American professional stock-car racing team that competes full time in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series. Owned by Josh Reaume, the team fields the No. 22 Ford F-150 full time for multiple drivers, the No. 27 part time for Keith McGee, and the No. 33 full time for Lawless…
Laura Velásquez Herrera
With its roots in compassion and humanity, the healthcare sector might seem an unlikely place for artificial intelligence (AI) to play a big role. Yet as we look deeper into the complex processes that build our medical systems, we uncover a multitude of ways that AI could revolutionize patient care…
Bruce Hamilton
I once attended a presentation that Eli Goldratt gave for the Society of Manufacturing Engineers. We were seated in an auditorium, listening as Goldratt paced back and forth on the stage, puffing on his cigar, gesturing for effect, and occasionally cursing for emphasis. The author of The Goal (…
Chip Bell
The diner scene from the 1970 movie Five Easy Pieces appeared in many customer service training classes. Do you recall Bobby Dupea (played by Jack Nicholson) trying to order a plain omelet with a side order of wheat toast? He ran straight into: “No side orders, only what’s on the menu,” “No…
John Tschohl
I find that most CEOs and top management believe their organization delivers awesome customer service. But if you asked all 330 million people in the U.S. to identify five customer service leaders, most would not be able to come up with them.
I started developing Feelings, the world’s first…
Megan Wallin-Kerth
When you think of good customer service—particularly the barriers to it—two factors generally come to mind: timing and wording. Imagine walking into a store that sells soap and bodywash products and immediately being bombarded with, “May I help you?” “Looking for anything today?” or the dreaded, “…
Mike Figliuolo
I hate the use of the word just in front of anyone’s title, as in, “He’s just an analyst,” or, “She’s just a cafeteria worker,” or, “I’m just an administrative assistant.”
No one is just anything. The word is demeaning and pejorative. We’re all people—we happen to have different responsibilities.…
John Tschohl
Are your employees empowered to make decisions on the spot in favor of the customer? Your single goal should be to have overly happy customers. Too many things go wrong each day. You want your employees to understand they are in customer service, and their No. 1 responsibility is to take care of…
Mike Figliuolo
Reading the news (or even your email) can be distressing to the point of despondency. It can also be fun. It’s especially fun when people say or write silly stuff, and the reporter or editor has to write [sic] after a misspelling or a stupid comment in the original transcript. Sic, usually placed…
