by Annette Franz | Sep 9, 2026 | customer effort, customer experience, customer retention, customer service, customer-centric, price, Uncategorized
I originally wrote today’s post for MarTech. It appeared on their site on April 3, 2026. Leaders often treat fees as a pricing decision, but customers experience them as a trust decision. Every fee sends a signal about how a company thinks about the relationship:...
by Annette Franz | Sep 4, 2025 | communication, customer effort, customer expectations, customer experience, customer experience design, customer service, Uncategorized
Back in 2012, I wrote about how companies make it unnecessarily difficult for customers to cancel subscriptions and memberships. Fast-forward more than a decade, and sadly, little has changed – despite proposed new laws requiring brands to make it easy. (Like...
by Annette Franz | Feb 21, 2024 | customer effort, customer expectations, customer experience, customer experience design, customer experience journey, Uncategorized
Years ago, I wrote a post titled, What Exactly is Employee Experience?. I know I’ve written tons about customer experience, and I’ve included my definition here and there, but there are always new folks coming into the discipline, so why not do a refresh....
by Annette Franz | Jun 28, 2023 | customer effort, customer expectations, customer experience, customer understanding, customer-centric, customer-centric culture, Uncategorized, voice of customer
For all the talk about customer-centricity, some businesses ironically downplay the actual voiceof the customer. They chase trends and make investments without fully considering how theseinitiatives will transform the customer experience. That’s how CCW starts...
by Annette Franz | Apr 28, 2021 | customer effort, customer experience, employee effort, ROI, Uncategorized
I originally wrote today’s post for GetFeedback. It appeared on their site on February 27, 2020. As a follow on to the post, Four Actions to Take on Customer Effort Feedback, you’re likely going to need to prove the ROI of reducing customer effort. In this post,...
by Annette Franz | Apr 21, 2021 | customer effort, customer experience, customer feedback, feedback, metrics, Uncategorized, voice of customer
I originally wrote today’s post for GetFeedback. It appeared on their site on February 26, 2020. One of the biggest mistakes companies can – and do – make with customer feedback is to do nothing at all with it. Remember the old Gartner statistic: 95% of companies...
