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- Employee Experience ·
Five strategies to enhance the employee experience and accelerate organisational success
Just because something is common sense, doesn’t mean its common practice. Five key strategies that can accelerate your employee experience.
- Customer Experience ·
The Invisible Cost of Spam: Eroding Brand Reputation and Customer Experience
Shaun Smith explores how spam undermines customer experience, highlighting its detrimental impact on brand reputation in today’s digital environment. Spam, in its many forms, from unsolicited emails to intrusive ads, not only disrupts the customer’s digital experience but also erodes trust, a fundamental element upon which brand reputation…
- Customer Experience ·
No room at the inn? A festive look at some hotel horrors
Ahead of 'frantic Friday', Louisa Clarke shares her top 5 hotel horrors to avoid this Christmas
- Employee Experience ·
- In the News ·
Caffeine/Savanta 2023 Employee Pride Survey: The Key Findings
Uncover the stark realities of the UK employment landscape in our second annual Employee Pride survey. With only 21% of employees willing to recommend their workplace, a drastic drop from 30% a year ago, it's time to explore the motivations and obstacles shaping the employee experience.
- Employee Experience ·
- Brands ·
- In the News ·
Amazon: Navigating Tricky Waters
Amazon staff have announced strike action over pay next month, hitting Black Friday, one of the busiest shopping days of the year.
- Customer Experience ·
New Energy: The rise of the distinctive customer experience
Customers are expecting more of energy companies today than ever before. What does it take to create the building blocks of a great customer experience?
- Employee Experience ·
Stand out and stand firm: The power of a distinctive employee experience
An employee experience should be built on what matters most to employees, align with the business purpose, and support the delivery of the desired customer experience. But to truly bring it to life, there’s another key ingredient – making it distinct.
- Customer Experience ·
The Magic Ingredient: Harnessing effort to create a Memorable Customer Experience
Shaun Smith looks at how the principle 'Effort Heuristic' can help your customer experience stand out from the crowd.
- Customer Experience ·
The Transformative Impact of AI on Customer Service
With the announcement that BT plans to replace 10,000 jobs with AI, Shaun Smith looks at how brands can embrace AI technology and still enhance their customer service.
- Inspiration ·
10 Lessons Learned the Hard Way
When starting a new business, there's a thin line between success and failure. Erik Bergman gives his 10 mistakes to avoid.
- Brand-led Business Strategy ·
- Brands ·
- In the News ·
The purpose of chocolate: Why laughing at purpose misses the point
The idea that purpose and profit are entirely unrelated is nonsense. Your brand purpose is an articulation of what your brand is here to do.
- Brands ·
Your Twitter is not your Brand
Brand loyalty is real. It always has been and always will be. Every time you receive your monthly social messaging plan from your social media manager, ask yourself if the messages going out will incentivise, maintain or increase brand loyalty.
- Brands ·
- In the News ·
John Lewis: Back to the future?
The retail landscape has changed dramatically, and John Lewis has faced increasing challenges to remain competitive. In our new blog, Shaun Smith outlines his recommendations for the brand.
- Brands ·
The myth: branding is just about the logo and advertising
For the modern brand builder in a multichannel world in which people are craving authentic and engaging experiences and not just entertaining advertising, remembering to build your brand on everything you say and everything you do is vital.
- Customer Experience ·
The secret to ensuring your customer experience strategy becomes a reality
When implementing a CX strategy, it often requires the culture to become customer-centric and able to ‘Stand Firm’ in the face of competing pressures and agendas. Without the full sponsorship of the CEO and the board, this shift in mindset and culture is likely to fail.
- Brands ·
- Customer Experience ·
- Employee Experience ·
The myth: A strong brand can be used to prop up a bad business
Brands are often credited with powers they simply don’t have. Chief among them is the idea that, a strong brand (or strong advertising) could mask the deficiencies of a bad business, acting as a sticking plaster to ‘apply’ and cover up myriad ills.
- Brand-led Business Strategy ·
Fourth year in a row: The UK’s Leading Management Consultants 2023 by the FT
Caffeine has been awarded The UK’s Leading Management Consultants 2023 by the FT for the fourth year in a row.
- Employee Experience ·
Purpose, Pay or Perks? What Matters Most to UK Employees
With hundreds of thousands of workers striking over disputes in pay and conditions across the UK, Caffeine discusses the need for businesses to refocus.
- Brands ·
Good News in Bad Times
Brand Trust: Brands, just like people, get things wrong. Yet mistakes can actually increase brand loyalty if the brand humanizes itself and takes steps to correct them.
- Customer Experience ·
How to beat a bear market? Invest in your customers.
We see many examples of companies panicking and cutting costs haphazardly, so here are our top tips for managing in a recession and emerging even stronger.
- Customer Experience ·
- Brands ·
What’s in a name?
If you want to change your fortunes then you need to change your behaviour, not your brand name. Understand what your customers expect and invest in creating a great customer experience.
- Inspiration ·
- Brand-led Business Strategy ·
This Christmas, be a Muppet
It’s perhaps overlooked that Kermit is a businessman – or businessfrog. He leads a team which is as about as diverse as you could imagine. What’s more, he’s constantly fighting crises on every front, to keep the business going. There’s a lot we can learn this Christmas from…
- Brand-led Business Strategy ·
- Customer Experience ·
Brands Behave or Beware
Brands seem to struggle with striking a balance between bad behaviour and virtue-signalling. You don't need to be a saint, just have a moral compass.
- Customer Experience ·
We Need to Talk About the ‘C’ Word
The word ‘customer’ has moved from the fringes of the housing sector to the forefront of its marketing communications.
- Employee Experience ·
- Leadership ·
What Matters Most to UK Employees? Survey Launch
With a ‘war for talent’ in almost every sector in the UK, businesses should be doing everything they can to attract, develop and retain people.
- Customer Experience ·
Getting the measurement right
As customer experience consultants it is great to see leading companies, SMEs and start-ups making CX a non-negotiable foundation of their business operations.
- Leadership ·
- Employee Experience ·
Do you deserve to be followed?
“Why should anyone be led by you?” was the chilling headline of a McKinsey award-winning Harvard Business Review article (subsequently becoming a book) in 2000. Fast forward two decades and perhaps that headline should now be, “Why should anyone keep being led by you?”
- Brands ·
- Customer Experience ·
- Employee Experience ·
Being The Brand
When the strain upon the operations of a company is too much for the system itself, what hope is there for a brand to inspire or maintain customer loyalty? The last line of defence for the brand, when the systems fail, is the relationship between the staff and…
- Employee Experience ·
- Brand-led Business Strategy ·
- Customer Experience ·
Richer Experiences Make Richer Brands
There’s no such thing as the perfect brand. However, our decades working with leading brands to help them with their brand experience, have shown us that there are clear winners across every market and in every sector. These are the brands who stand up, stand out and stand…
- Employee Experience ·
The Employer Brand
Work culture is a vital ingredient to sustaining success, but how does a brand create and then sustain that culture? The answer is through creating an employee experience that mirrors the customer experience. Ronan Dunne, former CEO of O2 and current Strategic Advisor to the Verizon CEO, sums…
- Employee Experience ·
Employee Loyalty = Customer Loyalty
It is a common myth across the business community that brands have a lot to do with what happens on the outside of a business and not very much to do with what goes on inside. This is profoundly wrong. Brands are everything to do with what happens…
- Brand-led Business Strategy ·
Good PR for your HR won’t compensate for a poor Customer Experience
This month, telecoms giant Virgin Media O2, announced that it would offer staff free gender transition therapy in order to provide “support and allyship to people from marginalised communities”. Unfortunately for the customers of Virgin Media O2, the spirit of generosity that the brand shows its staff, does…
- Brand-led Business Strategy ·
Four questions to ask your agency in the pitch
Earlier this month the extraordinary case of a fake marketing agency was the feature of a BBC expose. Mad Bird was created entirely online, the people hired were not salaried, had never worked with each other nor even known the founder. An extreme case of ‘fake it til…
- Brand-led Business Strategy ·
What are the Key Components of a Brand?
This year is the 100th anniversary of the first radio commercial. In the succeeding century, business marketing has evolved to almost unrecognizable levels and brands, in particular, have transformed their role and importance. But though there has been a remarkable transformation in the nature and role of brands,…
- Brand-led Business Strategy ·
- Customer Experience ·
What Matters Most
Our work to help clients to identify and deliver what matters most has led to Caffeine partner Smith+Co being awarded The UK’s Leading Management Consultants 2022 by the FT. This is the 3rd year in a row we have won this award and we are particularly proud of…
- Brand-led Business Strategy ·
The purpose of brands
“Brand purpose truly is a bunch of crap, because it’s disingenuous. You’re saying, ‘My purpose is to make the world a better place’. No, your purpose is to make money". So said YUM! brands CMO Ken Muench who oversees global marketing for KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell…
- Customer Experience ·
- Employee Experience ·
‘There are no customers in the office’ – the benefits of talking to strangers.
Fear of rejection stops us from making the first move. It stops us from speaking to people we don’t know. But think about the first time you met your best friend, your life partner, your long-standing client. All the best relationships start with someone being brave enough to make the…
- Brand-led Business Strategy ·
The time is NOW
Learn how 175 year old law firm William Fry acted like a start up to launch two brand new propositions in ten weeks.
- Brand-led Business Strategy ·
How to act like a start-up and deliver a GREAT! result
Over the past few months, we’ve been working with a group of highly successful entrepreneurs and investors, on the creation of a new channel brand to support the launch of the UK’s most exciting free movie and entertainment network. This work was initiated through a deal the group…
- Brand-led Business Strategy ·
Great brand stories have one purpose
This week The Story Museum opened in Oxford. A wonderful and inventive experience for all ages, it especially focuses on young people, encouraging them to explore the joy of storytelling. Oxford is a city of stories. Many of the world’s most famous and most successful stories started there,…
- Brand-led Business Strategy ·
Abrdn stands out but will it stand up?
This week an eye-catching new brand identity was launched - eye-catching both because it changed the name of an organisation that had existed for over 100 years, and because it happened in the normally conservative sector of investment and insurance. Standard Life Aberdeen became Abrdn.
- Customer Experience ·
- Employee Experience ·
Being human will be at the heart of brand purpose
We are entering a new era, one that will require new approaches to marketing and customer experience, but it will go way beyond that. It will challenge the very way we think about brands and corporations. Covid-19 is a trigger for this change, but the cause is even…
- Brand-led Business Strategy ·
- Employee Experience ·
It pays to be bold – how investing in brand purpose creates rapid returns
We help companies build a brand and customer experience that reflects the scale and ambitions of the business and helps simplify increasing complexity as they grow. These are companies that have a logo and a ‘look’ but require a stronger sense of purpose and consistent set of activities…
- Brand-led Business Strategy ·
“The Biden brand is suited to the moment”: The Power of the Personal Brand
More than any previous political event, the 2020 US Presidential Election was a battle between two brands. Trump and Biden offered very different visions of the future, represented by two distinct personalities making succinct promises. Each mobilised his messages with targeted, relentless and, like them or not, disciplined…
- Brand-led Business Strategy ·
Congratulations to Rita Clifton CBE
We are delighted that Rita Clifton CBE has been appointed the Deputy Chair of John Lewis Partnership. It’s a perfect match. Rita is a great believer in purpose-led, values-driven brands which empower their people to deliver great customer experiences. And John Lewis is one of the great values-driven businesses.…
- Brand-led Business Strategy ·
Depp & Dior: A Savage Arrangement
Last weekend, Caffeine’s Managing Partner Simon Bailey contributed to a Sky News piece on Dior’s decision to continue to employ Johnny Depp as celebrity endorser of its Sauvage fragrance, despite a UK court finding it ‘substantially true’ that he abused his former wife Amber Heard. This story brings…
- Customer Experience ·
Why COVID is not a valid excuse (and other musings from a crazy year) Part Two
In my last blog I reflected on how customer experience has been impacted by the Covid-19 crisis and which brands are succeeding in spite of it. One of the hardest hit sectors in the is the hospitality industry. Smith+Co has worked with a number of leading hotel brands…
- Customer Experience ·
“We’re just about delivering happiness” Tony Hsieh
Tony Hsieh, 46, the former CEO of Zappos, died on Friday from head injuries sustained during a house fire whilst he was visiting friends in Connecticut. He was an inspirational thinker who will be sadly missed. We were privileged to interview Tony in 2010 for our book, ‘Bold-how…
- Customer Experience ·
Why COVID is not a valid excuse (and other musings from a crazy year) Part One
It has been a crazy year. Smith+Co were honoured by being awarded ‘UK’s Leading Management Consultants 2020’ following independent research by Statista. That was a great start! We followed it up by merging with Caffeine, the brand agency led by my co-author, Andy Milligan. Together, we can now…
- Brand-led Business Strategy ·
On Purpose Interactive Assessment Tool
Welcome to the On Purpose Interactive Assessment Tool. You can use this tool to measure how purposeful your business is. It’s also a chance to find out how your brand compares to the brands featured in On Purpose the book.
- Employee Experience ·
The Employee Experience Measurement Survey
The Employee Experience Measurement Survey is a simple, quick tool to help you identify what helps or hinders your organisation in delivering a distinctive customer experience.
- Brand-led Business Strategy ·
This Christmas, be a Muppet
The Muppet Christmas Carol is one of my favourite films. It’s a wonderful, irreverent, but faithful adaptation, in turns funny, moving and uplifting with some great songs along the way. The special guest star (Michael Caine) plays Scrooge and the rest of the roles go to the Muppet…
- Brand-led Business Strategy ·
What’s the purpose of housing?
I recently attended the UK’s biggest conference on housing. Government, local governments, housing associations, developers, construction companies, outsourcing consultancies, mortgagers, homeless charities – they were all there. The Grenfell Tower disaster provided a tragic backdrop to the conference and one which focused everyone’s attention on the state of…
- Brand-led Business Strategy ·
Mankind is our business – a lesson not just for Scrooge but for everyone
“But you were always a good man of business, Jacob” faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself. “Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. “Mankind was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The deals of my trade were but…
- Brand-led Business Strategy ·
If the cap fits – the role of the trusted advisor
We see the year out – and what a year – in a fog of unreason and contrary forces: more rejection this week of the liberal establishment with the defeat by Italian voters of Matteo Renzi’s constitutional referendum whilst the Austrian electorate appoints an independent ex-member of the…
- Brand-led Business Strategy ·
Dinner Party Shame: A story of Brand Pride
This week I’ve been a Dragon. It’s been fun. I’ve been part of a judging panel on a ‘Going Further’ competition where students from the 157 Group of Further Education Colleges pitch to redesign their brand website. It’s been smartly organised by Amy Fowler of the 157 Group…
