Where are we playing? How do we win? So many businesses these days don't see to really be able to answer these questions. Now, while they seem straight forward and simple, they are actually extremely powerful questions and answering them properly requires quite a bit of work; but for the companies that can answer them properly, they are successful in what they do. Businesses of all sizes struggle with really understanding where to play. A company that tries to be everything to everyone while being everywhere is a great example of a company that doesn't really know where to play (and how to win). The underlying premise of those two questions is to really understand where or what your competitive advantage is. For anyone who wants to read more, please see: Competitive Advantage . Simply put, a competitive advantage is an advantage over competitors gained by offering consumers greater value, either by means of lower prices (cost) or by providing greater benefit...

What does "customer experience" mean to you? Or maybe better yet, the real question should be what is "customer experience" to your customers? I often see two types of streams when this topic comes up, and you can usually see which a business adopts pretty quickly. The first I would say is a functional one.  Under this model, a business prides itself on their processes and creates good workflows for the fact that they deal with a lot of different customers, and try to be something for everyone. This business pride themselves on their clean invoices, their simply payment options, their execution of basic services ... all in all, they are essentially easy to deal with but still relatively impersonal. The second type is more personalized. Here, you will find a business that leverages their people and their ability to create connections with their customers (on top of focusing on be great at what they do) in order to "wow" their customers. Wowing y...