Reading List
These are the non-fiction books that have shaped my perspective on the world, all scoring very highly on the controversial ‘page-corner-folding’ rating scale.
Stand and Deliver
Stringent policies and procedures frustrate your colleagues and customers alike. Often the best customer experiences come when employees feel they can stand in front of the rules.
Pole-Axed: Why bad customer experience is expensive to provide
You know what it’s like. One moment, you’re on a Teams call, chatting away like normal. The next, the pole which connects your broadband has been ripped out of the…
The unremarkable secret of a human customer experience
The thing about doing what I do is that you spend a lot of time seeing – and being told about – the worst in Customer Experience. It’s an affliction,…
Guest Post: Keir Starmer, HMRC, and a lesson in Failure Demand
A couple of years ago, the Financial Times reported that Taxpayers (i.e. people) had spent a combined total of 800 years on hold trying to get through to HMRC. 800…
Case Study: AirBnBust: What happens when certainty gets replaced by confusion
Around 2008, in the shadow of the financial crisis and the glow of this new device called an iPhone, a host of companies launched that redefined their sectors. Uber for…
Tied Up Too Tight: A human culture creates a human experience
An unexpected lesson about the importance of building a human culture inside an organisation.
Mountain Rescue: How Good People Compensate for Bad Systems
‘Hi, on Saturday we fly home, but want to climb a mountain in the morning. Would we be able to have a late checkout, so we can have showers when…
Pizza Express: meaningfully distinct, or distinctly average?
A few years ago, in the heyday of their 2-for-1 voucher offer, Jamie Douglass sent me the most brilliant story about Pizza Express: ‘I just went to the local pizza…
The Fabric of Customer Loyalty (or how to earn, not buy, customer decisions)
My Dad used to collect old newspapers. Well, I guess to him they were just newspapers. But now they’re pretty old. As much as I enjoyed seeing how the stories…
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