Guest Blog: Building a Human Powered, Technology-aided 21st Century Customer Experience

This week we feature an article by Joseph Michelli who has written a new book about how Airbnb has used convenience and personalization to deliver an amazing experience.
Years ago, while writing my book The Starbucks Experience – 5 Principles for Turning Ordinary into Extraordinary, former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz shared that “we aren’t in the coffee business serving people, but in the people business serving coffee.” Unfortunately, many senior leaders, managers, and frontline team members don’t understand that every business is a people business.
As a reader of Shep’s blog, I’ll assume you know you’re in the people business. In fact, you probably spend time trying to inspire people (yourself and team members) to serve and create loyalty-building experiences for other people (customers). This type of effort likely has placed you on a challenging yet rewarding journey toward customer experience excellence.
From my perspective, success in delivering memorable customer experiences begins with