THE CAFFEINE KNOWLEDGE BANK
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- Customer Experience
Managing Your Customer Experience: The Seven Deadly Sins
Caffeine's guide to managing your customer experience and the CX mistakes that hold the greatest potential to derail all other customer experience efforts.
- Brand-led Business Strategy, Brands
John Lewis – the future of brand strategy starts now
John Lewis boss Peter Ruis has made headlines by announcing that ‘Never Knowingly Undersold’ is back – this time with AI helping to match its
- General
Holiday Reading – a tale of the unexpected
From business insights to captivating novels, five books worth packing this summer for your holiday reading.
- Brand-led Business Strategy
Why you exist is important but what you do is vital – getting brand purpose right
Brand purpose drives companies beyond profit. Patagonia focuses on environmental action, and LEGO fosters creativity, leading both to lasting success and positive impact.
- Customer Experience
AI chatbots have a customer experience problem
What are the critical elements missing from the AI chatbot experience? And how are companies like Lemonade setting the standard?
- Employee Experience
Retaining Employees In The Era Of Well-Being
“Retaining employees is more cost-effective than recruiting.” A message we consistently see, and rightly so. But this is nothing new...
- Leadership
Hate presenting? Get over yourself
Hate presenting? Learn how to deliver impactful presentations without anxiety or sleepless nights.
- Employee Experience
The employee experience starts with recruitment – and it needs a revamp.
A positive recruitment experience here can turn candidates into advocates, even if they don’t get the job. Anonymous applications, rigorous entry tests, and lack of
- Brands, Customer Experience
Luxury Brands: Combating the ‘Fast Experience’
As luxury brands reinvent retail in the age of fast fashion, here are strategies to combat the fast experience & create unforgettable in-store experiences.
- Customer Experience
Customer Experience – it’s not worth the effort…is it?
Is poor Customer Experience costing your business? Learn why prioritising CX is a business imperative and how to stand out from the competition.
- Employee Experience
Five strategies to enhance the employee experience and accelerate organisational success
Just because something is common sense, doesn’t mean its common practice. Five key strategies that can accelerate your employee experience.
- Customer Experience
The Invisible Cost of Spam: Eroding Brand Reputation and Customer Experience
Shaun Smith explores how spam undermines customer experience, highlighting its detrimental impact on brand reputation in today’s digital environment. Spam, in its many forms, from
- Customer Experience
No room at the inn? A festive look at some hotel horrors
Ahead of 'frantic Friday', Louisa Clarke shares her top 5 hotel horrors to avoid this Christmas
- Employee Experience, In the News
Caffeine/Savanta 2023 Employee Pride Survey: The Key Findings
Uncover the stark realities of the UK employment landscape in our second annual Employee Pride survey. With only 21% of employees willing to recommend their
- Brands, Employee Experience, In the News
Amazon’s Employee Experience: Navigating Tricky Waters
Amazon staff have announced strike action over pay next month, hitting Black Friday, one of the busiest shopping days of the year.
- Customer Experience
New Energy: The rise of the distinctive customer experience
Customers are expecting more of energy companies today than ever before. What does it take to create the building blocks of a great customer experience?
- Employee Experience
The power of a distinctive employee experience: Stand out and stand firm
An employee experience should be built on what matters most to employees, align with the business purpose, and support the delivery of the desired customer
- Customer Experience
The Magic Ingredient: Harnessing effort to create a Memorable Customer Experience
Shaun Smith looks at how the principle 'Effort Heuristic' can help your customer experience stand out from the crowd.
- Customer Experience
The Transformative Impact of AI on Customer Service
With the announcement that BT plans to replace 10,000 jobs with AI, Shaun Smith looks at how brands can embrace AI technology and still enhance
- Inspiration
10 Lessons Learned the Hard Way
When starting a new business, there's a thin line between success and failure. Erik Bergman gives his 10 mistakes to avoid.
- Brand-led Business Strategy, Brands, In the News
The purpose of chocolate: Why laughing at purpose misses the point
The idea that purpose and profit are entirely unrelated is nonsense. Your brand purpose is an articulation of what your brand is here to do.
- Brands
Your Twitter is not your Brand
Brand loyalty is real. It always has been and always will be. Every time you receive your monthly social messaging plan from your social media
- Brands, In the News
John Lewis’ Brand: Back to the future?
The retail landscape has changed dramatically, and John Lewis has faced increasing challenges to remain competitive. In our new blog, Shaun Smith outlines his recommendations
- Brands
The myth: branding is just about the logo and advertising
For the modern brand builder in a multichannel world in which people are craving authentic and engaging experiences and not just entertaining advertising, remembering to
- Customer Experience
The secret to ensuring your customer experience strategy becomes a reality
When implementing a CX strategy, it often requires the culture to become customer-centric and able to ‘Stand Firm’ in the face of competing pressures and
- Brands, Customer Experience, Employee Experience
The myth: A strong brand can be used to prop up a bad business
Brands are often credited with powers they simply don’t have. Chief among them is the idea that, a strong brand (or strong advertising) could mask
- Brand-led Business Strategy
Fourth year in a row: The UK’s Leading Management Consultants 2023 by the FT
Caffeine has been awarded The UK’s Leading Management Consultants 2023 by the FT for the fourth year in a row.
- Employee Experience
Purpose, Pay or Perks? What Matters Most to UK Employees
With hundreds of thousands of workers striking over disputes in pay and conditions across the UK, Caffeine discusses the need for businesses to refocus.
- Brands
Good News in Bad Times
Brand Trust: Brands, just like people, get things wrong. Yet mistakes can actually increase brand loyalty if the brand humanizes itself and takes steps to
- Customer Experience
How to beat a bear market? Invest in your customers.
We see many examples of companies panicking and cutting costs haphazardly, so here are our top tips for managing in a recession and emerging even
- Brands, Customer Experience
What’s in a name?
If you want to change your fortunes then you need to change your behaviour, not your brand name. Understand what your customers expect and invest
- Brand-led Business Strategy, Inspiration
This Christmas, be a Muppet
It’s perhaps overlooked that Kermit is a businessman – or businessfrog. He leads a team which is as about as diverse as you could imagine.
- Brand-led Business Strategy, Customer Experience
Brands Behave or Beware
Brands seem to struggle with striking a balance between bad behaviour and virtue-signalling. You don't need to be a saint, just have a moral compass.
- Customer Experience
We Need to Talk About the ‘C’ Word
The word ‘customer’ has moved from the fringes of the housing sector to the forefront of its marketing communications.
- Employee Experience, Leadership
What Matters Most to UK Employees? Survey Launch
With a ‘war for talent’ in almost every sector in the UK, businesses should be doing everything they can to attract, develop and retain people.
- Customer Experience
Getting the measurement right
As customer experience consultants it is great to see leading companies, SMEs and start-ups making CX a non-negotiable foundation of their business operations.
- Employee Experience, Leadership
Do you deserve to be followed?
“Why should anyone be led by you?” was the chilling headline of a McKinsey award-winning Harvard Business Review article (subsequently becoming a book) in 2000.
- Brands, Customer Experience, Employee Experience
Being The Brand
When the strain upon the operations of a company is too much for the system itself, what hope is there for a brand to inspire
- Brand-led Business Strategy, Customer Experience, Employee Experience
Richer Experiences Make Richer Brands
There’s no such thing as the perfect brand. However, our decades working with leading brands to help them with their brand experience, have shown us
- Employee Experience
The Employer Brand
Work culture is a vital ingredient to sustaining success, but how does a brand create and then sustain that culture? The answer is through creating
- Employee Experience
Employee Loyalty = Customer Loyalty
It is a common myth across the business community that brands have a lot to do with what happens on the outside of a business
- Brand-led Business Strategy
Good PR for your HR won’t compensate for a poor Customer Experience
This month, telecoms giant Virgin Media O2, announced that it would offer staff free gender transition therapy in order to provide “support and allyship to
- Brand-led Business Strategy
Four questions to ask your agency in the pitch
Earlier this month the extraordinary case of a fake marketing agency was the feature of a BBC expose. Mad Bird was created entirely online, the
- Brand-led Business Strategy
What are the Key Components of a Brand?
This year is the 100th anniversary of the first radio commercial. In the succeeding century, business marketing has evolved to almost unrecognizable levels and brands,
- Brand-led Business Strategy, Customer Experience
What Matters Most
Our work to help clients to identify and deliver what matters most has led to Caffeine partner Smith+Co being awarded The UK’s Leading Management Consultants
- Brand-led Business Strategy
The purpose of brands
“Brand purpose truly is a bunch of crap, because it’s disingenuous. You’re saying, ‘My purpose is to make the world a better place’. No, your
- Customer Experience, Employee Experience
‘There are no customers in the office’ – the benefits of talking to strangers.
Fear of rejection stops us from making the first move. It stops us from speaking to people we don’t know. But think about the first
- Brand-led Business Strategy
The time is NOW
Learn how 175 year old law firm William Fry acted like a start up to launch two brand new propositions in ten weeks.
- Brand-led Business Strategy
How to act like a start-up and deliver a GREAT! result
Over the past few months, we’ve been working with a group of highly successful entrepreneurs and investors, on the creation of a new channel brand
- Brand-led Business Strategy
Great brand stories have one purpose
This week The Story Museum opened in Oxford. A wonderful and inventive experience for all ages, it especially focuses on young people, encouraging them to
- Brand-led Business Strategy
Abrdn stands out but will it stand up?
This week an eye-catching new brand identity was launched - eye-catching both because it changed the name of an organisation that had existed for over
- Customer Experience, Employee Experience
Being human will be at the heart of brand purpose
We are entering a new era, one that will require new approaches to marketing and customer experience, but it will go way beyond that. It
- Brand-led Business Strategy, Employee Experience
It pays to be bold – how investing in brand purpose creates rapid returns
We help companies build a brand and customer experience that reflects the scale and ambitions of the business and helps simplify increasing complexity as they
- Brand-led Business Strategy
“The Biden brand is suited to the moment”: The Power of the Personal Brand
More than any previous political event, the 2020 US Presidential Election was a battle between two brands. Trump and Biden offered very different visions of
- Brand-led Business Strategy
Congratulations to Rita Clifton CBE
We are delighted that Rita Clifton CBE has been appointed the Deputy Chair of John Lewis Partnership. It’s a perfect match. Rita is a great
- Brand-led Business Strategy
Depp & Dior: A Savage Arrangement
Last weekend, Caffeine’s Managing Partner Simon Bailey contributed to a Sky News piece on Dior’s decision to continue to employ Johnny Depp as celebrity endorser
- Customer Experience
Why COVID is not a valid excuse (and other musings from a crazy year) Part Two
In my last blog I reflected on how customer experience has been impacted by the Covid-19 crisis and which brands are succeeding in spite of
- Customer Experience
“We’re just about delivering happiness” Tony Hsieh
Tony Hsieh, 46, the former CEO of Zappos, died on Friday from head injuries sustained during a house fire whilst he was visiting friends in
- Customer Experience
Why COVID is not a valid excuse (and other musings from a crazy year) Part One
It has been a crazy year. Smith+Co were honoured by being awarded ‘UK’s Leading Management Consultants 2020’ following independent research by Statista. That was a
- Brand-led Business Strategy
On Purpose Interactive Assessment Tool
Welcome to the On Purpose Interactive Assessment Tool. You can use this tool to measure how purposeful your business is. It’s also a chance to
- Employee Experience
The Employee Experience Measurement Survey
The Employee Experience Measurement Survey is a simple, quick tool to help you identify what helps or hinders your organisation in delivering a distinctive customer
- Brand-led Business Strategy
This Christmas, be a Muppet
The Muppet Christmas Carol is one of my favourite films. It’s a wonderful, irreverent, but faithful adaptation, in turns funny, moving and uplifting with some
- Brand-led Business Strategy
What’s the purpose of housing?
I recently attended the UK’s biggest conference on housing. Government, local governments, housing associations, developers, construction companies, outsourcing consultancies, mortgagers, homeless charities – they were
- Brand-led Business Strategy
Mankind is our business – a lesson not just for Scrooge but for everyone
“But you were always a good man of business, Jacob” faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself. “Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing
- Brand-led Business Strategy
If the cap fits – the role of the trusted advisor
We see the year out – and what a year – in a fog of unreason and contrary forces: more rejection this week of the
- Brand-led Business Strategy
Dinner Party Shame: A story of Brand Pride
This week I’ve been a Dragon. It’s been fun. I’ve been part of a judging panel on a ‘Going Further’ competition where students from the
