Last week I had the pleasure of Chairing and speaking at the very first New Zealand Customer Experience Management Conference. This two day event not only attracted representatives from many forward thinking organisations but also an impressive line up of high quality speakers. Delegates not only got to learn what high profile organisations like Air [...]

We are a long way off ready to deliver our Rugby World Cup guests a quality hospitality experience if my recent two night stay at one of Auckland’s Qualmark four star rated hotels the Crowne Plaza is anything to go by. Long waits for room service meals, wrong meals delivered, newspapers being dropped from great [...]

The Minister of Tourism, John Key, has identified it as an area that requires improvement. Minister of Finance, Bill English, at the recent Tourism Summit, identified it as an issue, as did Labour’s Trade & Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Maryan Street at the same summit. Tourism New Zealand’s Chief Executive Kevin Bowler also acknowledges it. The [...]

In a recent Inside Tourism interview, Tourism Minister John Key identified an area where the tourism industry could improve: “Service is one area that TNZ has indicated and I think that makes sense”. Echoing this, Kevin Bowler was quoted in The Press as saying “Tourism operators are leaving money on the table by not offering [...]

In the current business culture customer complaints are a waste of time. Business is not listening despite what they tell you in their marketing. This according to Chris Bell Managing Director of Customer Experiences an organisation that specialises in the development of high quality customer experiences. Bell said he personally has had two recent experiences [...]

Less than 10 percent of New Zealand tourism and hospitality businesses have a clear visitor experience strategy in place. This number decreases dramatically for smaller organisations that make up the majority of businesses in these industries. This is severely impacting the visitor industry to get anywhere near its 2015 goal of delivering a world class [...]

We refer to ourselves as some of the most travelled people in the world. If that is in fact the case why are we struggling to understand the culture and expectations of our key growth markets and as a result delivering a level of visitor experience that doesn’t even meet their expectations, leave alone exceeding [...]

A recent survey in the USA highlighted the fact that most organisations understand the value a customer experience strategy can add to a business. However, only 13 percent knew how to develop such a strategy. For the first time in New Zealand business has available a comprehensive guide to the development of a high quality [...]

A recent international business survey found that only 13 percent of corporate organisations knew how to develop and implement a customer experience strategy within their business. The same survey also found that 83 percent of respondents understood the positive value such a strategy could add to their business. For the first time New Zealand business [...]

It’s been a long time coming but it is here and it will increasingly be the difference between business growth, profitability and continual struggle. In a highly commoditised world with rapidly increasing competition the customer is now in charge and business is being continually judged on the quality of their customer experience. High employee disengagement, [...]