Companies Are Spending More on Employee Engagement Than Ever. Gallup Says It’s Getting Worse. Here’s Why.

August 03, 2026 | By: John DiJulius

Global Employee Engagement Just Hit a Five-Year Low. The Problem Isn’t Awareness — It’s the Absence of a System. The Number That Should Be Keeping Every Leader Up at Night Gallup’s 2026 State of the Global Workplace report contains a finding that deserves far more attention than it has received. Global employee engagement fell to... Read Full Article

Adobe Just Paid $150 Million to Learn What Every Great Service Brand Already Knows

July 28, 2026 | By: John DiJulius

Making It Hard to Leave Is Not the Same as Making Customers Want to Stay — and the Difference Will Cost You A $150 Million Lesson in What Customer Loyalty Actually Means In April 2026, a federal judge approved a $150 million settlement between Adobe and the U.S. Department of Justice, resolving FTC allegations that... Read Full Article

Your Industry is Innovating Service Delivery…So Why Are Your Customers More Frustrated Than Ever?

June 29, 2026 | By: John DiJulius

I See This All the Time — and It’s Genuinely Hard to Watch A leadership team spends 18 months rolling out a new service delivery platform. They’ve done the demos, run the pilots, built the business case. They’re proud of it. And within a few months of launch, the customer complaints start climbing. I’ve walked... Read Full Article

The 20% Rule Every CEO is Ignoring

June 15, 2026 | By: John DiJulius

The Stat That Should Stop Every CEO in Their Tracks Here’s a number I keep coming back to: companies with satisfied employees achieve a 20% higher customer satisfaction rate. Not 2%. Not a rounding error. Twenty percent. 2026 job satisfaction analysis that compiled data across thousands of organizations. And yet, when I walk into most... Read Full Article

Same Sky. Opposite Outcomes. What Delta’s Record Quarter Tells You About Competing on Experience.

June 15, 2026 | By: John DiJulius

While Spirit Airlines Collapsed in May 2026, Delta Posted $14.2 Billion in Revenue. The Difference Was Never About Price. Two Airlines. One Month. Everything You Need to Know About Competing on Experience. In April 2026, Delta Air Lines reported a record March quarter with $14.2 billion in total revenue — up 9.4% from the same... Read Full Article

Amazon Calls Itself “Customer Obsessed.” Then It Cut 30,000 People Who Served Those Customers.

June 08, 2026 | By: John DiJulius

When Your Brand Promise and Your Internal Culture Point in Opposite Directions, Your Customers Feel the Gap The Most Ironic Headline in Business Right Now Amazon has now cut nearly 30,000 corporate roles since late 2025 — its largest workforce reduction in company history. Thousands of those roles were in customer service, human resources, and... Read Full Article

Harvard Business Review Just Validated Everything I’ve Been Teaching for 25 Years.

May 26, 2026 | By: John DiJulius

The May/June 2026 Cover Story on Customer Loyalty Says “Good” Is Not Good Enough. Here’s How to Get to “Love.” Harvard Just Said What I’ve Been Saying Since 1998 The May/June 2026 issue of Harvard Business Review landed on my desk this week, and I want to be direct with you: I read the cover... Read Full Article

What Are the Top Service Trends CEOs Can’t Ignore?

March 30, 2026 | By: John DiJulius

Why the Companies Rushing to Replace People with AI Are Already Reversing Course The Research That Confirms What I’ve Been Saying for Years I’ll be honest — I wasn’t surprised when I read this. But I was glad the data finally caught up. According to new research from Gartner released in February 2026, half of… Read Full Article

What Target’s Brand Collapse Teaches Every CEO About Culture, Identity, and the Frontline

March 16, 2026 | By: John DiJulius

What the fall of one of America’s most beloved retail brands teaches every CEO about culture, identity, and the one thing no restructuring plan can fix. There used to be a joke that only insiders understood. Customers didn’t say they were going to “Target.” They said they were going to “Tarzhay” — the faux-French pronunciation… Read Full Article

Your Customers Aren’t Tired of Subscriptions. They’re Tired of Being Lied To.

February 20, 2026 | By: John DiJulius

How subscription price increases exposed the companies that forgot what a promise means. On February 2, 2026, anime streaming service Crunchyroll raised prices across all tiers for North American subscribers. The Fan Tier jumped from $7.99 to $8.99. The Mega Fan Tier went from $9.99 to $11.99. And the Ultimate Fan Tier climbed from $14.99… Read Full Article