Thanks Aki. I love the analogy you've made of things being in reversed. That's exactly why expectations continue to heighten, and why customer experience continues to grow in importance.

Thanks Ron. I think Mark Hillary's comment at the end of the article about ensuring all staff understand the lifetime value of a customer aligns with the points you've made. To me, all of this is pointing towards the need to better train, empower and incentivise customer-facing staff.

Thanks Jim. An extremely valid point. There are so many transactions where a business's product/ service expertise can be put at risk by customers taking the stance of 'always being right'. I guess that's where a business's authority and trust in the market is tested most rigorously.

Fantastic! I think ideally all teams should have at least one shark whisperer within their group.

Thanks Graham. Wise words as ever! The holacracy experiment was undoubtedly a failed experiment at Zappos and I believe they ditched it not so long after it was implemented. Still, isn't one of Campbell's 12 stages the 'ordeal' phase?!

I don't dispute that there's a tinge of Americanisation in the culture book approach but what I do like about it is that a) it's something that is sculpted by employees and b) it is designed to evolve over time. Sometimes businesses go through culture change exercises, create a bunch of new values and then never revisit and revise them, which means they inevitably become meaningless. I guess this is one approach and trying to avoid that.

Thanks Andrew. Some excellent points raised - specifically on budgets/ allowances being difficult to manage. We've certainly seen examples of customers 'gaming' these offers in recent times - especially via social media.

I agree with your points about rules vs guidelines and many businesses appear to be seeing sense when it comes to giving their staff some flex on their guidelines in order to resolve customer queries. It's a pity that we're still seeing examples (such as the one at the start of this article) of businesses that are leaning the other way, even when the outcome seems obvious to most.

Glad this has sparked a few ideas for you Hans. We'd love to hear how you get on!

*Update on 9th July, from the ICO in relation to the intent to also fine hotel chain Marriott International £99m for 2014 data breach, notified to the ICO last year: https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/news-and-events/news-and-blogs/2019/07/...

Definitely the kind of positive determination that will be required this year Edward! Thanks.

Some great insight Steven. If ever there was any doubt about the impending impact of #3, Shufersal in Israel announced this week that ALL of its grocery stores would be switching to 'seamless' cashierless technology:
http://www.intelligentcio.com/eu/2018/11/26/israeli-supermarket-is-first...