Storyteller Spotlight Series: Michael R. Hoffman of Client x Client

In the most recent episode of the 2011 NACCM Storyteller Spotlight Series I had the pleasure of chatting with Michael R. Hoffman, Author of Customer Worthy, and founder and partner at Client x Client. In his work at Client x Client Hoffman has learned that innovative customer service comes from a place of trying to make every experience a customer has an exceptional, memorable moment.

For Michael, great customer experience begin simply enough with the golden rule of ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’ When you can gather enough information about a customer to discover what would make an experience extraordinary for them, everyone will profit. Explaining this, he said “because we have all this customer intelligence technology…we can then leverage our knowledge to anticipate where customers are going to go or where they should go and try to ensure that the customer meets their objective and our business meets our objective and that those two are aligned.”

Ultimately he has one piece of all-important customer advice for those looking to solve customer problems or develop new products and that is “Think like a customer.”

To hear more about this philosophy, listen to the full interview here.

Michael will be presenting one of our keynote addresses “It’s 2012, Are You Customer Worthy?” on Wednesday, November 16^th, 2011 at Disney’s Contemporary Resort in Florida. As he said in our interview, “in five years I look at the customer experience and think that it will be dramatically different then it is today…customers are coming up with the newest latest ideas, they’re showing companies how they want to do business, how they want to buy and shop, and often in ways that the companies didn’t anticipate.”

In this session learn how customers are voting with their feet, their clicks and their wallets. In 2011 customers took over brands, messaging and even countries. 2012 demands companies be customer worthy at every contact through every process – or else. To succeed companies must marry corporate objectives to customer expectations and continuously be customer worthy in every interaction. Be prepared to hear some best & worst examples and walk away with new tools.

Readers of the Customer's 1st blog can save 15% off the standard registration rate with code NACCMBlog. Register here.

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Michelle LeBlanc is a Social Media Strategist at IIR USA with a specialization in marketing. She may be reached at mleblanc@iirusa.com.