Drummer Bernard Purdie has played on over four thousand recordings in his fifty-year career. The self-proclaimed "Hitmaker", he has recorded with Steely Dan, B.B. King, Hall and Oates, Miles Davis, and Louis Armstrong among many others. Included in his many contributions to music is his famous half-time "Purdie Shuffle". You'll hear it featured in such songs as Led Zeppelin's "Fool in the Rain" and Toto's "Rosanna".

Check out Purdie explaining how he created his unique shuffle:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOWdp1sOxvA

The Purdie Shuffle is immediately recognizable within just a few notes.  It begs the question: Does to the customer experience you provide make you immediately recognizable? For example:

• Can customers tell they're interacting with your businesses within just a few moment of engaging?
• Are you delivering generic experiences that could be from any number of companies?
• Do you use generic greetings, hold music, stale scripts and minimal branding in your contact center processes?

People begin to make an assessment on an individual within just a few seconds of meeting them. The same concept applies to your company -and the stakes are high. Customer experience is as much about how your customersfeelabout your business as a function ofwhatthey do. Winning strategies embed your unique attributes into each customer engagement as soon as possible. -Customers know it'syourbusiness.

Try an experiment:

1. Contact your own company in every manner you've established with your customers.
2. Remove the name of your business when it's presented.

Can you tell it's your unique business from your competition? If not, it may be time to invent your own version of the "Purdie Shuffle" for your customer engagement strategy.

Cisco Customer Collaboration Solutions are a great starting point. Improve your customer experience. Embed the unique rhythm of your business into your customer engagements.