Jon Picoult
Customer Experience and Leadership Expert; Acclaimed Speaker; Published Writer; Founder, Watermark Consulting
Jon Picoult helps companies impress their customers and inspire their employees, creating raving fans that drive business growth. Jon is the Founder of Watermark Consulting and a noted authority on customer experience. His insights have been featured in dozens of publications, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, NBC News and Inc. He has worked with some of the world’s foremost brands, collectively representing over 750,000 employees and $500 billion in annual revenue. Jon has helped these organizations capitalize on the power of loyalty – both in the marketplace and in the workplace.
The Art and Science of a Great Customer ExperienceTM
How do you get your business to stand out from the crowd? Many sources of competitive differentiation can be fleeting – product innovations can be mimicked, technology advances can be copied, and cost leadership is difficult to achieve let alone sustain.
But as Jon Picoult describes in this presentation, a great customer experience can deliver tremendous strategic and economic value to a business, in a way that’s difficult for competitors to replicate.
Filled with compelling statistics and fascinating case studies, this program will give your audience specific, actionable ideas for enhancing their firm’s customer experience. Topics covered include:
- What great companies know about the difference between “customer experience” and “customer service”
- How great experiences boost financial results and accelerate business growth
- The current state of customer experience in the marketplace and the competitive opportunity it implies
- Time-tested principles used by legendary companies to actively manage and differentiate their customer experience
Don’t Just Make It Easy…Make It Effortless!
Lots of companies fly the “easy to do business with” banner. Few ever actually fulfill that promise, as most consumers can attest.
In this fascinating talk, Jon Picoult will challenge your audience to raise the bar – so they seek to make it not just easy for customers to do business…but effortless.
Using eye-opening statistics and amusing real-world examples, Jon explains why an effortless customer experience is such a rare and powerful competitive differentiator.
Topics covered include:
- What bad “customer effort” is and why it saps brand loyalty.
- How you can detect drivers of bad customer effort, in sales and service interactions.
- Why it costs less to deliver an effortless customer experience.
- How you can create a more effortless experience – quickly and cost efficiently.
- The critical connection between “employee effort” and “customer effort.”
Grow Your Business "On Purpose"
Many businesses focus on what they do, but fewer focus on why they do it.
In this presentation, Jon Picoult opens people’s eyes to the concept of a purpose-driven brand – that is, an organization whose “reason for being” goes well beyond the traditional measures of success (e.g., creating shareholder value or growing revenues).
It’s an approach that’s worked exceptionally well for companies spanning a variety of industries – Patagonia, USAA and Southwest Airlines among them.
The program includes mini case studies of those organizations and others which have established a compelling brand purpose that engages customers and employees alike. Topics covered include:
- What is “purpose” and how does it differ from “mission”
- Why is purpose so vital – to leaders, employees and customers
- Why is purpose good for business
- How should an organization go about defining its purpose
- The “5 Ds” – a short list of essential principles for creating and fulfilling a purpose-driven brand
The Forgotten Customer: A New Perspective On Winning The War For Talent
Many businesses are routinely ignoring one of their most important customers. As a result, they’re not only tarnishing their brand, but they’re also losing the war for talent.
Based on Jon Picoult’s popular New York Times feature, this presentation offers a compelling case for viewing employment candidates as customers. It illustrates how companies can turn administrative recruiting touch points into persuasive marketing opportunities that help draw talented people into an organization.
The program also highlights the often overlooked connection between job applicants and actual customers, demonstrating how recruiting interactions can influence your company’s brand and shape consumer perceptions.
Topics covered include:
- Why the “applicant experience” is broader and more influential than you think.
- Why talent acquisition is a business like any other – product, provider and customer.
- What job applicants think of companies’ current recruiting experiences.
- What companies have to gain from a great applicant experience.
- How customer experience management principles can be applied to the recruiting arena.
Lessons From The Apocoflix: Navigating People Through Change
It was the day Netflix customers saw red – July 12, 2011. That’s when the company announced a series of changes, including an increase in prices and a spin-off of its DVD rental business.
Customers revolted against the moves, and Netflix employees weren’t too happy about it, either. Within three months, the firm lost nearly a million customers and saw its stock price plummet by over 75%.
In this fun and interactive presentation, Jon Picoult uses the Netflix debacle to illustrate key principles for successfully navigating customers and employees through significant change.
Topics covered include:
- Why people typically reject change.
- Twelve essential strategies for helping people embrace change.
- How to inspire people to change, rather than force them through it.
- How personal leadership behaviors can remove obstacles to change.
- The importance of “choreographing” the change experience.
It’s All In Your Head: Cognitive Science And The Customer Experience
The mind works in mysterious ways. When people interact with a business, their satisfaction and loyalty is shaped by how they perceive, process and remember those experiences.
In this fascinating presentation, Jon Picoult describes how companies can capitalize on cognitive science to create a stronger, more memorable customer experience. From improving sales close rates to building positive word-of-mouth to enhancing employee engagement – you’ll find the principles outlined in this program to be invaluable. Topics covered include:
- How memories are formed and then shape customer perceptions about your business.
- Why some business brands inspire intense consumer appeal, while others fall flat.
- How customers can be satisfied – even if your customer experience is far from perfect.
- How service failure can turn everyday customers into loyal brand advocates.
- How common cognitive biases can be turned into competitive business advantages.
“Jon Picoult has been a cornerstone of our leadership development programs and one of our most highly rated and highly respected speakers. He does his homework to ensure he knows the audience and tailors the content to be fully relevant and insightful. The breadth and depth of the knowledge, perspective, and insight he brings has been invaluable to our leaders. Jon is an impressive, inspiring, and engaging presenter…a true professional in every sense of the word.”
“Hire him! As our keynote speaker, Jon Picoult spoke with such authority, such passion and such authenticity, that our membership, mainly senior insurance marketing executives, shared that his hour talk was worth their two day conference admission. Hire him! If you are looking to engage your audience with insightful, purposeful, and actionable concepts, you have that in Jon. Hire him!”
“Jon was fantastic! His presentation was extremely informative and highly entertaining. He gave us invaluable insight into what it takes to create a great customer experience – not only in terms of how we interact with our customers, but also how we interact with each other. He’s one of the best outside speakers we have ever brought in.”
“As our keynote speaker, Jon Picoult absolutely captivated our entire audience of senior leaders with his practical, pragmatic and humorous session. His experience was real and he gives excellent takeaways that are immediately actionable. If you want a speaker who ‘gets it’ and has instant credibility – do not hesitate to call Jon.”
