By Jeofey Bean

If The American Customer Satisfaction Index were to measure your business, competitors and alternatives, how would you do in an era of rising customer expectations and no middle ground?

As you may know from reading this column I really admire the companies that know what they “Do For” customers that is highly valued and have the results to show for it.

And I am dismayed about the companies that reside on the other side, the dark side, of the Do For coin. These companies consistently “Do To” customers things that they dislike and do not value, erasing customer loyalty.

Some of these companies have done this for so long and so poorly they are helping to grow competitive alternatives by distressing their customers emotionally and economically. There’s plenty to learn about what not to do from these businesses.

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By Janice Sutton

Tell me what I need to know, when I need to know it, and how I need to see it!

Laura Jozwiak, Vice President of Client Relations at Wheels, leads a dynamic team of client relations and account management specialists. In this interview, Laura gives us insight into how this company has positioned itself to deliver on the promise of its founder.

Laura says, “We don’t fight change – we’ve embraced the sourcing and we’ve embraced all of the changes. Let’s start with what hasn’t changed at Wheels. The clients have always come first, that hasn’t changed in 75 years. We started because a client had an issue that our founder Zollie Frank listened to; developing a solution that nobody else even thought about and delivered. That solution created this industry. That philosophy of listening and adapting to change has never wavered. That is what we do, and that is all we do.”

READ MORE to learn how the Wheels’ client relations team is structured to deliver service — not just for today, but three to five years from now, and what exactly their clients are asking the team to deliver.

By Wendy Eichenbaum

In a world when customer experience is becoming the key differentiator, it is critical that you understand the best-of-class experiences to determine how your experience measures up against your competitors.

A competitive analysis is an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of current and potential competitors. Marketing and business development groups have performed these analyses for decades.

But it’s not enough to compile a checklist of features to see which company provides the most functionality. Instead, the key to conversion and retention is to understand how easily and intuitively customers acquire, use, and maintain your product or service.

In the world of Customer Experience (CX), you perform a competitive analysis to understand the strengths and weaknesses of competing experiences. And this is critical because by 2020, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator.

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It’s normal for parents to start worrying when their teens get old enough to drive – but wondering whether they’ll be safe is only one of the reasons. Adding a teen to the family car insurance policy is another reason to start fretting, as it could nearly double what parents already are paying, according to a new study.

On average, premiums will rise about 80%, according to a new study by insuranceQuotes.com. But the increase is likely to run an average 92% for a teenage male. The increases vary widely, depending upon state, averaging as little as 17% in Hawaii, and as much as 115% in New Hampshire, the study revealed.

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A proposed bill would force federal automotive safety regulators to consider the presence of collision avoidance technology when determining safety ratings on new vehicles.

The legislation proposed by U.S. Sens. Dean Heller, R-Nev., and Ed Markey, D-Mass., and U.S. Reps. Todd Rokita, R-Ind., and Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., comes as the National Transportation Safety Board called once again for collision avoidance technology to be standard equipment on new vehicles.

The Safety Through Informed Consumers Act, if passed, it would require the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to integrate “active safety technology” into its five-star crashworthiness ratings.

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The Indianapolis City-County Council voted overwhelmingly Monday to sue the city to stop it from implementing a $32 million plan to rent electric cars.

By a 23-6 vote, the council authorized the council attorney to file a suit to nullify the no-bid contract with California-based Vision Fleet on the grounds that it was signed illegally.

“There were breaches all along the way,” said Councilman William Oliver, explaining his vote.

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The competition between the auto industry and the IT industry to take the driving seat in the car is heating up.

While Apple and Google with their smartphones are in a strong position to control in-car infotainment systems, car manufacturers are fighting to recover control of all the car’s advanced electronics.

Industry giants like Ford and Toyota are considering cooperating on systems to integrate smartphones into future models, according to a Bloomberg report, something which would bring them into competition with Apple’s Carplay and Google’s Android Auto.

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In this case study, Wheels reviewed over 60 different cost drivers of fleet, looking for opportunities in each area and balancing them based on the customer’s unique needs. The case study was prepared for a client of over 40 years with a 4,000 fleet size – sedans to heavy equipment.

READ the case study to learn how Wheels was able to deliver multi-year cost savings to this manufacturing company by utilizing key cost-saving strategies.

Distracted driving continues to be a major problem on the roads. Smartphones ping and buzz, drawing drivers’ attention away from what’s in front of them. A recent reminder of this came last week, when police in Tennessee said that the driver in a December school bus crash had been texting at the wheel. Three people were killed in that incident, including two elementary school students.

With demand surging for technology in vehicles, automakers recognize the need to deliver features that allow drivers to more safely interact with incoming calls and texts — without touching or looking at their phones.

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Autonomous vehicles (AVs) represent a major innovation for the automotive industry, but their potential impact with respect to timing, uptake, and penetration remains hazy. While high levels of uncertainty currently surround the issue, the ultimate role that AVs could play regarding the economy, mobility, and society as a whole could be profound.

In an effort to look beyond today’s rapidly changing predictions on AV penetration, we interviewed more than 30 experts across Europe, the United States, and Asia and combined these findings with our insights to arrive at ten thought-provoking potential implications of self-driving cars.

The widespread use of AVs could profoundly affect a variety of industry sectors. To explore these implications in depth, we focused on three time horizons of AV diffusion: before such vehicles are commercially available to individual buyers, when they are in the early stage of adoption, and when they become the primary means of transport.

READ MORE — and see an excellent infographic — on McKinsey.com