Sourced from Forbes

In recent years, podcasts have exploded in popularity to become an enticing platform for comedians, historians and even royalty to speak on different topics to engaged listeners. For entrepreneurs in particular, podcasts offer the opportunity to market their business while also establishing a direct connection to their target audience.

With so many people hopping on the podcast bandwagon, any business looking to start one has to carefully consider how they can stand out from the crowded market and what value they can offer listeners. To help, 20 Forbes Business Council members each share essential tips that will ensure entrepreneurs get started on the right foot.

1. Determine Your Target Audience

Identify your target demographic and meticulously discern their preferences, both in content and presentation. Harness the potential of guest engagement, maintain a steady cadence of content publication and relentlessly promote your podcast. Consider what sets your podcast apart. Then craft a distinctive tone while avoiding contrived efforts, as authenticity remains the favoured attribute among audiences. – Yasmin Walter, KMD Books

2. Focus On What Sets You Apart

If you’re starting a podcast, focus on value. Determine what your business has that sets it apart and is able to offer in terms of solutions. Customize your content to match your audience’s needs. Engagement is a major factor, so respond to the listeners’ questions and comments on social media platforms to create a community. Keep in mind that the key to generating an audience is consistency. – Chris Kille, EO Staff

3. Be Consistent

Consistency is key, so make sure you maintain a regular schedule to keep your audience engaged. Invest in quality production for clear audio and engaging content. Interact with your audience, encourage feedback and don’t be afraid to collaborate with experts to expand your podcast’s reach. – Mark Williams, Brokers International

4. Outline A Content Plan

If a business is going to start a podcast first, leaders need to make sure they keep a constant feed of knowledge pouring into the podcast and preplan what listeners want to engage in. This is vital for a podcast to be successful. – Tammy Sons, Tn Nursery

5. Create A Distribution Plan

Starting a podcast in today’s world where everyone is battling for attention is a daunting task. Before you consider starting a podcast, you have to have a distribution plan. You must have other marketing channels established. Whether it’s email, social media, paid marketing, influencer marketing, content creation or something else, you have to figure out distribution before producing a podcast. – Calvin Krainock, Incline Marketing

6. Provide Practical Solutions

Focus on providing practical solutions for the problems of your customers or listeners. If you not only want to attract but also retain your listeners for the long term, you need to ensure your conversations are applicable to their situations. Start with marketing and suitable personalities when you launch, but focus on your topics being relevant and relatable to drive word-of-mouth and longevity. – Akshay Shetty, Guidewire Software

7. Focus On Relevant Topics

Present topics relevant to your audience. We started a podcast back in January called Bridging the Gap. The purpose is to bridge the gap between individuals and health insurance questions, concerns and the unknown. Inclusion of your audience is also key. When viewers feel they are seen and heard, they tend to tune in more frequently. In addition, do live sessions and invite your customers. – Kimberly Branham-Nelson, Nelson and Associates Insurance

8. Diversify Your Guests

Look for quality diversity. Speak to as many different guests as possible. Finding people who have differing ideas to your own often leads to an interesting conversation that opens eyes to new insights. To avoid homogeneity, create healthy debate and encourage several different perspectives to be heard. – Pearl Lam, Pearl Lam Galleries

9. Consider Your Platform Carefully

Personally, I use Buzzsprout for my podcast. They offer great tools to help businesses syndicate their content, format it and create marketing assets to help promote it. With Zapier, I was able to create an automation that blasts a link and synopsis to my list of 35,000 subscribers every time I publish a new episode. This has dramatically helped me increase engagement on my own podcast. – Joe Trusty, Pool Magazine

10. Craft Outbound Marketing Campaigns

Listening in is the outcome of a disciplined process. Create outbound campaigns via LinkedIn and other social media platforms to engage email clients, prospects and centres of influence. Introduce yourself to media focused on your space and position yourself as a thought leader. Research strategies to launch on podcast platforms like Spotify and iTunes. For the podcast itself, focus on the delivery of value to the listener. – Gregory Roll, Touchpoint Associates

11. Deliver Valuable Content

Focus on delivering valuable content that resonates with your target audience. Identify your niche, understand your audience’s needs, provide consistent value, promote your podcast through various channels, encourage listener engagement and optimize for discovery on different podcast platforms. By following these steps, you can increase your chances of attracting and retaining a loyal listener base. – Asaad Hakeem, SARC MedIQ Inc.

12. Combine Education And Entertainment

Make it educational with a flair for entertainment. The best-performing podcasts educate, not sell. Therefore, create content about your expertise and solve problems for potential customers rather than selling your products or services. – Gaidar Magdanurov, Acronis

13. Find Your Niche

The number one mistake I see with new podcasts is a lack of direction. I started a super niche podcast for an industry we serve and I’ve had no problem getting sponsors and listeners. I recommend finding your niche, determining what people in that niche would want to listen to and drawing up your plan. I also suggest having a plan for each episode but don’t be afraid to go off script. – Ryan Lucia, Such n Such Media

14. Prioritize The Community First

I recommend becoming “news media” for the community. I would focus on those in the community I want to impact before I focus on having big stars on. For example, if I own a dentistry, interviewing the city council may have more of an impact than a high-profile celebrity. Community is not just geographic either. If you are in a niche, focus on the people who are well-known in your niche. – Todd Price, Perimeter Roofing

15. Keep It Conversational

Ensure your podcast is conversational. Consider having two hosts versus just one person because it will make it more dynamic. Identify other thought leaders in your specific niche and invite them to your podcast. It is a great way to build a community of like-minded thinkers and provide a depth of ideas. – Chris Williams, Interaction Associates

16. Make It Easy To Find

Optimize and promote smartly. Make sure your podcast is easy to find. Use SEO-friendly titles and descriptions to improve visibility on podcast platforms and search engines. Share snippets and episodes on social media, tapping into hashtags and communities relevant to your podcast’s theme. Encouraging reviews can also significantly boost your podcast’s discoverability, drawing in a wider audience. – Jo Stephens, Law Firm Sites, Inc.

17. Collaborate With Influential Guests

The main key is collaborating with influential guests who can bring their audience, significantly amplifying your podcast’s reach. It’s often easier to attract successful speakers because they’re also looking for platforms to share their content, making it a mutually beneficial partnership. This partnership can significantly amplify your podcast’s visibility and listener base. – Kolja Brand, Aurum Future

18. Include A Video Component

Do it with video. By livestreaming on YouTube, your podcast is now indexed within the largest search engine in the world. You won’t have to spend a penny or second on post-production, and you can answer questions from your audience on a regular basis. Then use programs like Opus Clip to cut up the podcast into reels for TikTok, YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels. – Shane Murphy, UGC Pro

19. Make Listening A Fun And Worthwhile Experience

Podcasts must be fun and worthwhile to listen to. People who listen to podcasts want to learn with a smile. To ensure listeners tune in, offer valuable content tailored to your audience, maintain a consistent schedule, prioritize audio quality, promote across channels, engage with your audience, collaborate and persistently refine your approach. – Atte Suominen, PADEL1969

20. Make It High Quality

There’s only one way for a podcast to grow an audience and succeed: It has to be good. There are no hacks, shortcuts or tricks. We’ve seen with our podcast that good quality content that engages with a very specific audience and is consistently delivered always wins the day. It takes preparation, patience and persistence. It also takes a commitment to adding value. – Mike Esterday, Integrity Solutions

Feature Image Credit: GETTY

Sourced from Forbes

Forbes Business Council is an invitation-only, fee-based organization for successful entrepreneurs and business leaders.

By Raphael Garcia

The discourse around advertising in games in back. If it is a measure that can help push back against layoffs and studio closures, perhaps it’s time to talk.

The video games industry is in a challenging place. Layoffs continue to threaten nearly every studio and organization. Growth coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic has slowed. Fans push a variety of demands for the games they pay their hard-earned money to play. There are a lot of conflicting foci with the underlying chase of the bottom line always looming. That has led to the conversation about advertising in gaming coming back up, this time with Electronic Arts speaking on the topic during the latest earnings call. It’s a conversation that should get more attention as the hunt for revenue and profits further tightens its grip on the throat of gaming.

EA Chairman & CEO, Andrew Wilson, spoke to the idea of advertisements appearing in upcoming video games.

Feature Image Credit: Christian Petersen/GettyImages

By Raphael Garcia

Sourced from APP TRIGGER

By Richard Draycott,

In the second part of his Politics for Drummies podcast, the chief strategy officer discusses the complexities of British politics and how the ad industry could help revive the category.

Kicking off part two of our Politics for Drummies discussion with Richard Huntington, the chief strategy officer at the ad agency that swept Margaret Thatcher into office 45 years ago, podcast host Alastair Duncan poses the challenging question of which politicians Huntington actually admires.

“Jumping into my head is Shirley Williams,” answers Saatchi & Saatchi’s Huntington, “because of the work that she did around comprehensive education in the 1960s and how close she came to genuinely changing the education system. I’m also currently revisiting Harold Wilson. There’s some slight historical revisionism around Wilson and what he actually achieved. Labour sort of hate him because he wasn’t particularly principled, but look at the dramatic social change that happened in the late 60s and we are still living with that today every day of our lives.”

He goes on: “I am a huge admirer of Keir Starmer for nothing more than the discipline he’s delivering. Divided parties do not win elections and that is what he has fundamentally done in four short years to the point where, you know, it is just chaos over the other side.”

Huntington is an active and vocal advocate of mental health reform in the workplace and talks candidly about how he deals with his own mental health and how he is enabling people within his organization to face mental health challenges together with no shame.

“If you start talking about your poor mental health, you’re really just saying to your employer and your clients, ‘I can’t do it…’ But if somebody who is middle-aged, white, male, heterosexual and with a relatively good career can’t say something about this, then how the fuck is anybody else going to volunteer that information?

“What happened as a result of my saying something about my mental health was that people began getting in contact with me and, privately and personally, we realized it was a serious problem. So many people are just papering over the cracks the entire time to hold it together.”

Compassion, politics and advertising seldom go hand in hand, but Huntington believes we can only become better at what we do if advertising cultures change.

“We’re such a competitive business and, in advertising, everything’s either brilliant or shit – ‘They’re a brilliant agency, they’re a shit agency.’ We haven’t traditionally been particularly kind. Whether we can be kinder and whether we can build kinder cultures is the thing that I just don’t get about our business. It isn’t hard to be hard on the work and easy on the people. But the number of agencies and agency leaders that genuinely do that and don’t accidentally boil over into the other is not, in my experience, universal.”

• Listen to more Politics for Drummies.

Feature Image Credit: Saatchi & Saatchi strategy leader Richard Huntington

By Richard Draycott,

Sourced from The Drum

By Jodi Daniels

When you think of your favourite cookie, you might picture a recipe that you’ve had since childhood. It’s tasty, nostalgic and part of its charm is that it hasn’t changed in 20+ years.

But while an unchanging tradition is ideal for your beloved baked goods, it’s a recipe for trouble when it comes to website cookies.

Website cookies aren’t stagnant things that you can set and forget. With changing regulations, consumer sentiment and technological advancements, businesses need to mitigate risk with a regular cookie audit.

While audits are usually no one’s idea of fun, a cookie audit for your business doesn’t have to be complicated.

Here are five steps you can take to execute an effective cookie audit for your business.

1. Identify and categorize the cookies you already have.

First and foremost, know what you’re working with. Catalogue existing cookies on your website (all of them) and separate them by type:

• Necessary cookies: These help your website function. Examples include cookies that remember a user’s login credentials or keep items in a shopping cart.

• Preference or functionality cookies: Enable a website to remember things like language preferences.

• Statistics or performance cookies: Collect information about how users interact with a site anonymously.

• Marketing cookies: Gather identifiable data about users’ online activity for advertising purposes.

As you catalogue, check that they’re all labelled correctly. Lumping them all together as “strictly necessary” won’t give insight into your cookie practices… and could lead to overstepping compliance requirements (just because you might think it’s necessary for your business doesn’t mean privacy laws do).

Cookie consent software is helpful here. They can automate cookie discovery and categorization, making the process faster and easier. (It’s not entirely hands-off, though—you still need to regularly review the results and ensure proper categorization!)

2. Review what data privacy jurisdictions apply to your business.

Once you have an accurate cookie inventory, review which jurisdictions apply to your organization. Remember, ignorance is not absolution from the law.

Different countries and states have wide-ranging consumer privacy requirements for businesses, and these laws have different thresholds and policies for website cookies. Broadly speaking, though:

• Under GDPR’s jurisdiction, users need to opt-in to cookies

• Under the many state-level privacy laws in the United States, users need to opt out of cookies

But, as we said, this is broadly speaking.

For businesses that operate out of or serve clients or customers in Colorado, California, Connecticut and a growing list of other states, regulations require a universal opt-out requirement for cookies (also known as global privacy control).

California’s cookie policies are particularly involved. Under California law, businesses must include a link that says “Do Not Sell/Do Not Share My Personal Information” on the home page (usually done with a link in the footer) or companies can use the Your Privacy Choices icon (don’t forget to use the words and the icon).

3. Reexamine the purpose and efficacy of your cookies.

You’ve categorized your cookies (thanks to Step 1). But have you looked at what information your cookies are collecting?

This evaluation extends beyond noting business purposes. It impacts your jurisdictional privacy obligations. (Refer back to Step 2.) For example, do your cookies collect health data? Are they targeting based on health data? This could pose regulatory concerns regarding HIPAA, the FTC and states like Washington with its new consumer health privacy legislation.

You should also look at where this data goes. What third parties have access to it?

Just as importantly, have you made your consumers aware of this? If it’s not in your privacy notice, get it in there.

4. Build/test/review your cookie consent banner.

Depending on applicable jurisdictions, you may need a cookie consent banner on your website. Even if it isn’t strictly required, cookie consent banners can increase the trust between you and your consumer by creating transparency surrounding your data collection practices.

If you’re building a cookie banner, it needs to make sense. It should be:

• Visible

• Easy to understand

• Accurate

Your cookie banner should also:

• Include proper language that describes the purpose of cookies

• Include options to exercise rights

• Link to your privacy notice

• Be formatted without “dark patterns,” e.g., font/color/box shape discrepancies that push the consumer to “accept” rather than “reject” cookies. These can show up in numerous forms, but they’re uniformly detrimental to exercising privacy rights.

If you’ve got cookie banners in place, that’s great. However, they should also be part of your cookie audit.

Make sure your established cookie banner and cookie consent settings are up to date. If you add or remove cookies from your website, update accordingly (this includes your cookie consent software and your cookie policy, not just your cookie banner).

Test your banner to make sure the tech works correctly. If it says “reject,” does it block cookies from firing? Walk through each step of the process as if you were the consumer. Make sure cookies are getting blocked if the user opts out. If your banner isn’t functioning correctly, troubleshoot the issue to prevent any perception of deceptive business practices.

5. Document everything and review the results with your team.

Throughout your cookie audit, document your findings, issues, solutions and any changes required.

As you make changes to your privacy practices, make sure they are reflected in your privacy policy; your privacy policy should contain an up-to-date description of your data activities that is accurate to your current practices, not aspirational.

Once your cookie audit is complete, create an internal standard and controls for cookie practices. This can be used for a consistent approach for future cookie audits.

Consumer data privacy isn’t a requirement for a single department or team. It often involves teams like legal and compliance, marketing, HR, IT, web development, and, of course, executive leadership. Ensure that anyone who works with consumer data is kept up to date with any changes in your cookie policy and any new requirements they must follow.

Clear and transparent communication between your departments—and between you and the consumer—will help mitigate risk and build trust. It’s just good business.

Feature Image Credit: GETTY

By Jodi Daniels

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website.

Sourced from Forbes

By Gary Drenik

From scanning QR codes to checking menus, accessing customer loyalty coupons on apps, and scanning reviews online, smartphones are now a vital tool for consumers. According to a recent Prosper Insights & Analytics survey, 37% of Americans use their smartphone to scan a QR code, 27% use their phone to redeem coupons while at checkout, and 24% use their phone to pay for in-store transactions. Not only are these smartphone use cases enhancing the customer experience, but they are also integral to helping retailers and restaurateurs provide a quick and easy checkout process, reduce wait times, and enhance overall efficiency.

In this retail and restaurant environment, connectivity becomes a key issue, said Stephen Kowal, Chief Commercial Officer at Nextivity – a provider of intelligent cellular coverage solutions. While Wi-Fi is great at many things, when it comes to delivering the best mobile experiences in-store or in a restaurant, businesses need to look at alternative coverage solutions.

The unstoppable rise of phygital experiences

“A few years ago, it was fashionable to predict the end of brick-and-mortar stores. The internet was thought to out-compete stores both in terms of cost and convenience, and it was only a matter of time before the shutters came down on malls and stores forever,” explained Kowal. “The sentiment was the same for restaurants – why travel out for a meal when a few swipes of an app can bring the meal to you? However, physical stores and restaurants have proved much more resilient.”

Around 63% of Americans do most of their shopping at physical retail outlets, while Americans are spending more than ever on eating out. Yet, the way they shop and dine is changing. The boundary between physical and digital channels is blurring, and many consumers choose to use both at the same time.

The rise of so-called phygital experiences is everywhere to see. Mobile payments at the point of sale are now commonplace (53% of Americans now use digital wallets more frequently than traditional payment methods). Stores and restaurants increasingly use branded apps to anchor their customer loyalty programs, including enabling mobile couponing and ordering. According to a recent Prosper Insights & Analytics survey, 15% of Gen-Z Americans eat at that fast-food restaurant most often due to access to mobile app ordering – an increased preference when compared to Millennials (13%) and Gen-X (11%).

With the rise of these mobile services and countless others, adequate connectivity in stores and restaurants is imperative. Patchy connectivity will leave customers feeling frustrated, increasing the risk of losing them to competitors. This is one challenge that will not be solved by Wi-Fi alone.

Why Can’t We Rely on Wi-Fi?

For Kowal, a key issue with Wi-Fi is around the customer experience: “With Wi-Fi, users have to search for the right network and enter personal information or accept long-winded terms and conditions before being granted access,” he says. “They then need to repeat this process for each store or restaurant they enter. This is not a good customer experience, particularly in large retail and restaurant venues such as malls and food courts.”

Security is also a key issue. As Kowal points out: “More often than not, public Wi-Fi connections are unencrypted, so anyone using the same network can potentially intercept your data. In stores and restaurants, this will include personal information such as passwords, emails, and credit card numbers.”

The security concerns of public Wi-Fi are well known. Indeed, just 23% of people believe public Wi-Fi to be safe. “This perception is a problem in itself,” says Kowal. “It means that consumers may be put off using public Wi-Fi at your store or restaurant, even if you have put in place encryption and tied down the security. This results in you losing out on providing an enhanced customer experience through loyalty apps.”

Boosting cellular coverage to plug connectivity gaps

One alternative solution to the Wi-Fi connectivity challenge is to use cellular signal boosters, devices that harness outdoor cellular networks to bring robust and reliable connectivity into the building.

The choice of a signal booster is key. Legacy distributed antenna systems (DAS) are not suitable for retail or restaurant environments. This is because they primarily address the issue of capacity rather than coverage (so, for example, they would be great for ensuring that a sports stadium can support large numbers of users concurrently). Legacy DAS can also be costly and time-consuming to set up, as they require getting approval from carriers, which can take many months to secure.

“Newer Active DAS Hybrid solutions address these challenges. Active DAS Hybrid technology provides reliable cellular coverage by bringing strong cellular signals from outside the building indoors,” explains Kowal. “They also cost less than legacy solutions and are much faster to set up since they do not require extensive testing and implementation processes. By effectively amplifying cellular signals, they ensure seamless cellular connectivity and enhance the overall customer experience in buildings.”

According to Kowal, cellular signal boosters should be seen as a foundational element of phygital experiences. “These boosters represent an important piece of the puzzle in overcoming the connectivity challenges faced by retailers, restaurants, and their customers, ultimately contributing to the successful digital transformation of the industry,” he says.

Mobile-based phygital experiences are only going to become more common in the years ahead as retailers and restaurants look to streamline their operations, reduce costs, and meet customer demand for richer experiences. Businesses that focus on ensuring reliable network coverage will be best placed to realize the opportunities that come with the phygital revolution including higher sales and sticker customers.

Feature Image Credit: ADOBESTOCK_672007925

By Gary Drenik

I cover consumer-centric insights and analytics that provide executives with solutions needed to drive strategy. I am the CEO of Prosper Business Development where, for more than 20 years, we have provided market leadership and developed contemporary solutions to help Fortune 500 companies navigate change that impacts their business. I got my start in the radio industry.

Sourced from Forbes

By Megan Crouse

Plus, Google reveals plans to unleash Gemini across Workspace to make interpreting long email threads or creating spreadsheets easier.

Gemini summarization and other features will be attached to Google Workspace

Google Workspace is getting several AI enhancements, which are enabled by Gemini 1.5’s long context window and multimodality. For example, users can ask Gemini to summarize long email threads or Google Meet calls.

Gemini will be available in the Workspace side panel next month on desktop for businesses and consumers who use the Gemini for Workspace add-ons and the Google One AI Premium plan. The Gemini side panel is now available in Workspace Labs and for Gemini for Workspace Alpha users.

Workspace and AI Advanced customers will be able to use some new Gemini features going forward, starting for Labs users this month and generally available in July:

• Summarize email threads.
• Run a Q&A on your email inbox.
• Use longer suggested replies in Smart Reply to draw contextual information from email threads.

Gemini 1.5 can make connections between apps in Workspace, such as Gmail and Docs. Google Vice President and General Manager for Workspace Aparna Pappu demonstrated this by showing how small business owners could use Gemini 1.5 to organize and track their travel receipts in a spreadsheet based on an email. This feature, Data Q&A, is rolling out to Labs users in July.

Next, Google is adding a Virtual Teammate to Workspace. The Virtual Teammate will act like an AI co-worker with an identity, a Workspace account and an objective (but without the need for PTO). Employees can ask the assistant questions about work, and the assistant will hold the “collective memory” of the team it works with.

Google hasn’t announced a release date for Virtual Teammate yet. The company plans to add third-party capabilities to it going forward. This is just speculative, but Virtual Teammate might be especially useful for business if it connects to CRM applications.

Voice and video capabilities are coming to the Gemini app

Speaking and video capabilities are coming to the Gemini app later this year. Gemini will be able to “see” through your camera and respond in real time.

Users will be able to create “Gems,” customized agents to do things like act as personal writing coaches. The idea is to make Gemini “a true assistant,” which can, for example, plan a trip. Gems are coming to Gemini Advanced this summer.

The addition of multimodality to Gemini comes at an interesting time compared to the demonstration of ChatGPT with GPT-4o earlier this week. Both Gemini and ChatGPT held very natural-sounding conversations. ChatGPT responded to interruption, but mis-read or mis-interpreted some situations.

Imagen 3 improves at generating text

Google announced Imagen 3, the next evolution of its image generation AI. Imagen 3 is intended to be better at rendering text, which has been a major weakness for AI image generators in the past. Select creators can try Imagen 3 in ImageFX at Google Labs today, and Imagine 3 is coming soon for developers in Vertex AI.

Google and DeepMind reveal other creative AI tools

Another creative AI product Google announced was Veo, their next-generation generative video model from DeepMind.Veo created an impressive video of a car driving through a tunnel and onto a city street. Veo is available for select creators starting May 14 in VideoFX, an experimental tool found at labs.google. Google plans to add Veo to YouTube Shorts and other products at an unspecified date.

Other creative types might want to use the Music AI Sandbox, which is a set of generative AI tools for making music. Neither public nor private release dates for Music AI Sandbox have been announced.

Sixth-generation Trillium GPUs boost the power of Google Cloud data centres

Pichai introduced Google’s 6th generation Google Cloud TPUs called Trillium; Google claimed the TPUs show a 4.7X improvement over the previous generation. Trillium TPUs are intended to add greater performance to Google Cloud data centres and compete with NVIDIA’s AI accelerators.

Time on Trillium will be available to Google Cloud customers in late 2024. Plus, NVIDIA’s Blackwell GPUs will be available in Google Cloud starting in 2025.

By Megan Crouse

Sourced from TechRepublic

By Micah Solomon

Micah Solomon is a customer experience consultant, speaker, and trainer who has worked with grand hotels, auto dealerships, regional banks, credit unions, healthcare organizations, and more. He was termed “the world’s #1 customer service turnaround expert,” by Inc. Magazine and named by the Financial Post “The New Guru of Customer Service Excellence.” His writing is regularly featured in Forbes, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Harvard Business Review, Washington Post, and elsewhere.

Below, Micah shares five key insights from his new book, Can Your Customer Service Do This?: Create an Anticipatory Customer Experience that Builds Loyalty Forever. Listen to the audio version—read by Micah himself—in the Next Big Idea App.

I’m going to guide you in creating, delivering, and sustaining exceptional customer service using the same approach I apply professionally to companies in practically every niche in the marketplace. But first, in cold, brutal business terms, why is delivering great customer service so valuable? Why is it worth investment and attention alongside all the other challenges a business faces?

Well, not to go all Eeyore on you, but it’s highly unlikely that your company and what it offers are entirely unique. Most companies hover much closer to the deadly commodity zone than anyone at those companies realizes. Odds are reasonable that this includes your company as well.

The commodity zone is one of the scariest places for a company to find itself. It’s when your business is viewed as more or less interchangeable with the competition, so your current customers are happy to jump ship to one of your competitors for a myriad of minor reasons:

• A slightly lower price.
• A faster website.
• A shinier app.
• A slightly more convenient location.

Or, sometimes, for no discernible reason at all. But there is a way you can spare your company from this fate: Build such a reputation for customer service excellence, and such a strong connection with every customer you touch, that your service becomes a point of distinction, a survival lifeline, and a powerful engine for growth.

An exceptional customer experience will create multiple positive results for your business, most centrally, the creation of passionately loyal customers. Loyal customers are:

• Less price sensitive.
• More likely to be interested in any new products, services, or brand extensions you may roll out.
• More understanding when things go sideways. (Once you’ve done so much, so well, for your customers, you achieve a state where the little mistakes—and even the occasional massive blunder—are looked upon in a better, more forgiving light.)

A loyal customer is also your best form of marketing. There is nothing more powerful than the ambassadorship of customers who are so engaged, so activated, that they take on the mission of spreading the good word about your company, sharing their passion with their online connections and real-life contacts.

2. Anticipatory customer service is service at the highest level.

The baseline customer service equation is when a customer asks for something, and you provide it to them. This has value, of course, but it’s not enough to build the loyalty relationship with your customers that will ultimately grow your business.

The secret to getting there is what I call anticipatory customer service. This means getting to where the hockey puck is headed before it gets there. It’s giving the customer what they want before they ask for it—and before they even know they want it.

“Anticipatory customer service involves hearing more than what a customer says out loud.“

Anticipatory customer service occurs when you seek out and take care of desires and needs that a customer has left unexpressed. Customers don’t ask for what they need because, among other reasons, they aren’t knowledgeable enough to realize that they could benefit from some aspect of your product or service, or they don’t even know that you can offer it. Or maybe they aren’t assertive and don’t want to be “too much of a bother,” so to speak.

Anticipatory customer service involves hearing more than what a customer says out loud. Taking care of unspoken needs and wishes and answering unvoiced questions is a master customer service behaviour that will bring your company into a new reality: a destination populated with delighted customers who provide you with the kind of enthusiastic referrals that will help your company grow and prosper for the long term. There is nothing more powerful in the world of business.

3. Practice gold-touch customer service.

Let me tell you a story. Feeling the ever-more insistent tug of nature but not wanting to leave my laptop unattended for even a minute, I asked my server at the Madera restaurant, a Five-Star location in the heart of Silicon Valley, “How comfortable should I feel leaving my laptop on the table while I step out for a minute?”

“Very comfortable,” she answered, “because I will be here with it.” Then, she moved into an arms-crossed, standing guard position like a sentry guarding the Tower of London. And she was still holding that position (with perhaps a bit of humorous exaggeration) when I returned. What my spectacularly well-trained server at this Forbes-rated restaurant was practicing is what I call gold-touch customer service.

Gold-touch customer service comes in two varieties. The first is the do-extra: giving a customer more of your effort than they’ve asked for or could reasonably expect. The second variety of gold-touch is the tell-extra: providing a customer with unexpected, additional value by answering a question with particular thoroughness or by making a connection with a customer on a human, shared passion level.

Here are a few Gold-Touch examples in various industries and contexts. First are some do-extras:

• A pet grooming outfit could send their furry customer home with a blue or pink bandana after the poor guy makes it through the grooming ordeal.
• An employee at a car dealership could pair a customer’s cell phone before they drive off the lot, rather than allowing them to drive away only to get frustrated (and perhaps even into a fender bender) while trying to handle it themselves down the road.
• A hair salon employee could run out and feed the parking meter for an arriving client so they don’t have to fumble around trying to find change.

And here are some examples of tell-extras:

• A cashier at the checkout line could admire— sincerely—one of the articles a customer is purchasing. (This one requires nuance. Trader Joe’s is generally great at this, but sometimes they overdo it and don’t seem completely sincere.)
• If your company sells a product that new customers sometimes find confusing, you could include helpful, very specific links or even a brief and highly personalized introductory tutorial video.

Now I hear you saying, “Seriously, Micah, how am I expected to find time for this?” But while more elaborate gold touches do take time, if you don’t have time for those yet (and I predict you will start to make time once you see how effective this is), there are still opportunities for gold touches that are ripe for easy plucking, so long as you have a gold-touch mindset and are paying even a smidgeon of attention:

• Any time something doesn’t go as well as expected, you have a chance to go the extra mile in a gold-touch sort of way and possibly turn the customer’s day around.
• Any time something goes right for a customer is also a great time to gold touch them, whether it’s simply expressing to the customer your happiness at hearing how happy they are or sending them a card congratulating them on their new success.
• And any time a customer neglects to ask for something that you, in your professional judgment, know they would benefit from. This could be, for a security company, introducing your customer to the value of installing water leak sensors before they go away on vacation and a leaky disaster occurs in their absence.

4. A sense of purpose is what drives exceptional service.

Let’s focus for a moment on one hypothetical employee: a groundskeeper on the campus of a technology company, starting her workday early in the morning. The functional item that she intends to get done this morning is planting tulip bulbs—two cartons’ worth, 200 bulbs in all.

That is, until she notices a small sinkhole—deep enough to turn an ankle—right in the middle of the gravel path that the company’s clients, vendors, and employees will be walking on later in the day as they make their way between buildings on the company’s campus. At this point, the groundskeeper has two options:

Option 1: She can stay focused on accomplishing her functional, prescribed task by just working on planting those tulip bulbs all morning long.

Or Option 2: Now that she’s discovered this safety risk, she can find some spare soil and start filling in the sinkhole before anybody’s ankle gets turned.

Option 2 sounds great on paper, but is the employee really going to make that choice? Consider: There’s no manager nearby to say okay to her ankle-preserving decision. Therefore, the groundskeeper’s safest option in most organizations, if she doesn’t want to get in trouble, is to stick to planting those bulbs.

However, if she’s a purpose-driven employee working for a purpose-driven organization, she is going to choose to pull herself away from her assigned duties without worrying about the repercussions if she doesn’t get all 200 bulbs into the ground on time.

“Celebrate your employee’s great customer service behaviours and accomplishments when they happen.”

With her sense of purpose prompting her to do so, she’ll be taking care of the comfort and safety of clients, vendors, and her fellow employees—an action that her purpose-driven organization will encourage and applaud. This is the concept of Function Versus Purpose.

Sparking this kind of pro-customer behaviour in your employees requires creating an environment in which every employee understands that “my typical, day-to-day function here may be to [plant tulip bulbs, park cars, answer the phone, schedule appointments, etc.], but my purpose calls on me to do whatever is required, whether it was on my functional to-do list for today or not. Here are two recommendations for how to make this happen:

• In both day-to-day training and especially when onboarding new employees, focus on the purpose of the organization and how the employee’s work will figure into it. It’s ideal if you can start talking about purpose right away, yet most companies drown their onboarding programs in legalese and warnings about how you can get fired at your brand-new company.
• Celebrate your employee’s great customer service behaviours and accomplishments when they happen.

I suggest you systematize this celebration along the lines of what has worked for decades at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company. Twice a week, every Ritz-Carlton hotel and resort shares a “wow story” of over-and-above hospitality from one of its more than 100 properties. This works wonders in inspiring all employees to ever-greater heights.

5. None of this works without empowerment.

You’re going to move a lot further, a lot more quickly, toward being an organization where purpose-driven employees contribute their elective efforts if you get serious about employee empowerment.

Exceptional customer service requires room for interpretation with talented, well-trained, fully empowered employees serving as the interpreters—those who decode and manifest what exceptional customer service really looks like in action. If they lack power, they’ll remain hobbled, no matter how good their intentions.

When a leader encourages pro-customer efforts, almost everything else will fall in place, with employees eagerly contributing their elective efforts time and again. Conversely, if a company’s leadership doesn’t provide such encouragement and leeway—if it rules with excessive rigidity—these unyielding ways will blight the organization in the eyes of its customers. An employee cannot fully contribute to an organization and the service of its customers without being empowered.

Implementing any or all of these five principles of customer service excellence isn’t easy, but it would result in the following payoffs: You’ll retain a higher proportion of existing customers, increase per-customer spending, attract new customers, and you’ll do it in a way that is nearly immune to being knocked off by competitors.

“If they lack power, they’ll remain hobbled, no matter how good their intentions.”

If this last claim, “immune to knockoff,” sounds farfetched, I’m making this claim because I have a strong hunch that if you do the work in all the areas I’ve suggested, you can sleep easy knowing that it’s unlikely that your competition will buckle down and do the same. Your competition may copy pricing, mimic innovations, duplicate the feel of your website, and so forth, but they’re unlikely to muster the vision, energy, and follow-through required to replicate the customer-centred organization you’re on the road to building.

I won’t pretend that the fruits of your labour will fall off the vine and into your hands overnight. As a businessperson myself, I know all about the challenges of getting through the grind of making payroll week by week while striving to move forward strategically. But I know it can be done, as I’ve been a part of making it happen time and again. The serious stakes I play for are the growth, the improved profitability, and ultimately, the survival of the companies and business leaders for whom I consult, train, and speak. And now this circle includes you, my kind reader.

To listen to the audio version read by author Micah Solomon, download the Next Big Idea App today:

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