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Rita McGrath Group

Rita McGrath

Author. Speaker. Consultant.

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Customer insight

January 24, 2023

A heartwarming customer service story

The state of customer service across most of the economy is dreadful. A recent delightful experience at Patagonia proves that it doesn’t have to be that way. The sad world of customer service As I… Read more »

Filed Under: Business Strategy, Customer insight, Discovery Driven Planning, Growth, Seeing Around Corners, Thought Sparks

July 12, 2022

7 Ways to Take Smart Career Risks: Lessons from Sharon Price John, CEO of Build-A-Bear Workshop

Fear is one of the great barriers to career advancement. Sharon Price John’s fabulous career is full of lessons on how to get past those fears and get out of your own way. Being afraid… Read more »

Filed Under: Business School, Careers, Customer insight, Friday Fireside Chat, Growth, Growth Options / Real Options, Innovation, Leadership, Seeing Around Corners, Thought Sparks, Women's leadership

June 22, 2022

Eyes glaze over when we talk about inflation? You’re not alone. But what you don’t know can hurt you.

Chart credit:  https://www.macrotrends.net/2497/historical-inflation-rate-by-year   For anybody born after about 1985, meaning most folks under 40, all this talk about inflation seems kind of old-timey.  Indeed, as Public Radio host Kai Ryssdal (citing a story in… Read more »

Filed Under: Articles, Careers, Customer insight, Individuals, Seeing Around Corners, Thought Sparks

October 5, 2021

Positioning: Beyond the Statement

Developing a positioning statement is often done as a fill-in-the-blank “Mad Libs” exercise. The power of insightful positioning, however, goes right to the heart of how you are creating value, and for whom. In marketing… Read more »

Filed Under: Business Start Ups / Entrepreneurship, Business Strategy, Checkpoints, Customer insight, Innovation, Strategy Execution

September 29, 2021

Thought Sparks Wrap Up – September 2021

Dear colleagues, Hey, everybody! We’re already through September?—?back to school, back to work, back to thinking about Q4! This monthly wrap-up of my weekly Thought Sparks news pieces will give you a short summary and… Read more »

Filed Under: Business Start Ups / Entrepreneurship, Business Strategy, Customer insight, Innovation

July 27, 2021

Key Ingredients of a Killer Prototype

We often think of prototyping as something only a gifted designer or developer can do. But there are lots of examples in the real world of how ordinary people can pull it off.  If you… Read more »

Filed Under: Checkpoints, Customer insight, Discovery Driven Planning, Innovation

July 20, 2021

The Lesson of the Direct to Consumer Revolution: Strategy 101 still matters

Every so often a new business model, often enabled by technology, takes the world by storm, attracts a lot of hype, eventually proves unable to live up to the headlines and disappears or becomes a… Read more »

Filed Under: Business Strategy, Competition, Customer insight, Growth, Profitable Organic Growth, Strategy Dynamics, Transient Advantage

July 13, 2021

3 Ways to Completely Mess Up Customer Surveys

Customer surveys are everywhere – and most of them aren’t going to offer one ounce of insight. Instead, learn to use them properly and for the right reasons. Customer surveys are inescapable these days.  They… Read more »

Filed Under: Customer insight, Innovation Maturity Scale

June 1, 2021

Not Buying It: When your biggest challenge is non-consumption

We’re used to thinking of competition as the biggest challenge for getting customers to buy from us.  But a much bigger challenge is non-consumption – especially when the reasons people aren’t buying have more to… Read more »

Filed Under: Business Strategy, Checkpoints, Customer insight, Innovation

April 7, 2021

The better your automated customer service options, the worse your customer service experience

The unintended consequence of so much high-quality customer service automation is that by the time your customers get to a real person, they are already enraged and their problems are mercilessly complicated. Yes, customer service… Read more »

Filed Under: Customer insight

July 31, 2005

Flowers at Chevron-add empathy

Loved the snippet on Seth Godin’s blog (http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/2894478) showing a photo of fresh flowers at a Chevron station. Reminded us of the many ways we have observed companies to create differentiation through adding a quality… Read more »

Filed Under: Customer insight, Technology

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