Archive for the Best Practices Category


    Averting Service Disasters – Quicken Loans the Sequel

    July 7th, 2010

    Last week, I used my unpleasant mortgage application experience with Quicken Loans to demonstrate the danger of force locking in consumers instead of fostering loyalty. Since then, I have received some interesting communication from Quicken Loans. As a consumer, I emerged from the entire experience feeling OK again about Quicken Loans as a lender. While [...]


    Best Practices — Engaging Customers at ING Direct

    September 28th, 2009

    Established about about nine years ago, ING Direct (the US subsidiary of the Netherlands-originated ING Group) has quickly become a popular bank among tech-savvy and savings-oriented customers.  Much of its success can be contributed to the way it engages and empowers consumers, as described in the book The Orange Code coauthored by ING Direct’s founder [...]


    Best Practices — Effective Use of Twitter

    April 10th, 2009

    What is it? In this entry, I am going to discuss two organizations: McKinsey Quarterly and Brooklyn Museum.  These two organizations are very different in many ways.  But they share one commonality in that they both use Twitter very effectively in gathering customer intelligence and strengthening customer relationships.  McKinsey Quarterly’s Twitter username is @McKQuarterly; and [...]