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Last Impression Faux Pas - 11/4/25


Rightfully so, many customer service experts harp on the importance of the first impression.  It happens quickly, and it can impact the individual’s perception of you and the organization.  We even wrote a Tip of the Week on this years ago called First Impression Faux Pas. What many people tend Read more

Familying with Customers - 10/28/25


In our transactional society, it’s hard to think about customers in the long-term.  But if we want to be as successful as we can as an individual or as a business, we need to view customers through a relationship lens. What do we need to know about them to Read more

Avoid These Techniques - 10/21/25


We had a Customer Service Tip of the Week recently that addressed gaining control of the conversation.  One of the key points was that the focus should be on gaining control of conversations in various circumstances, but trying to avoid making it your goal to gain control of the Read more

View Quality through the Customer’s Eyes - 10/14/25


Geri had been dealing with backups in the downstairs plumbing system of her house on and off for the past year.  The most recent company that she called in to unclog the pipes stated that they could send a camera down the pipes and tell her exactly where the Read more

Be Supportive, Not Defensive - 10/7/25


[An employee on the phone with a customer…] Who told you that you didn’t have to submit that form? … Bob?  Oh brother!  You see Bob is our “special” co-worker.  He seems to always tell customers the wrong thing to do, and we’re having to clean up after him.  Read more

Some Customers LOVE Predictability - 9/30/25


I was facilitating focus groups of businesses that utilize local government services.  The phrase that popped up multiple times was “Time Is Money!”  What these municipal customers were conveying was that their time was valuable, and delays were wasting their time.  But the conversations were not just about how Read more

Find Your Special Sauce - 9/23/25


When I watch a football game and I see a great quarterback (somebody who may be considered a “Star”), he might be an excellent runner, have a big arm, be able to diagnose the defense and get his team into the right play.  But he’s likely not great at Read more

Gain Control of the Conversation - 9/16/25


The customer’s angry or upset or they have a complaint.  They’re very chatty or very wordy or they just want to talk to somebody.  You’re on a time crunch, and the customer obviously is not. There are times when you need to gain control of the conversation.  It’s important for Read more

Complement with a Compliment - 9/9/25


We perform many tasks for our customers every day, and when we’re done with a step in the process, oftentimes we will tell the customer what’s been done.  But if we want to create more of a WOW experience, if we want to make the customer feel a little Read more

When Patience Begets Patience - 9/2/25


Jennifer, the server, walked toward the couple in the restaurant.  The customers had been seated for a minute or two, and they noticed the server was walking briskly toward their table.  Jennifer recognized the couple she was about to serve, because they had been in the previous week. Since the Read more

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Last Impression Faux Pas – 11/4/25

Posted on November 4, 2025 in Customer Service Tip of the Week Please leave a comment

Rightfully so, many customer service experts harp on the importance of the first impression.  It happens quickly, and it can impact the individual’s perception of you and the organization.  We even wrote a Tip of the Week on this years ago called First Impression Faux Pas.

What many people tend to forget (or at least not focus on) is the fact that the LAST impression is just as important.  What they think at the end of the conversation has a huge impact on the customer’s impression of you, the organization, and now also the experience.  We see this a lot when we conduct event-related surveys with fans of sporting events.  It could be the greatest event in the world, but if they had a major hassle and confusion and delays exiting the arena or getting home, their overall experience was soured by that last impression.

Since you – as an individual – likely don’t have a tremendous amount of control over the exit traffic after a big event, let’s talk about aspects of the last impression where you may have the ability to make an impact.  Here are some things to AVOID doing when trying to make a great LAST impression:

  • Don’t forget to state their name as you end the conversation.  Make sure they don’t perceive that you view them as just another task, just another number.
  • Don’t focus on your computer or phone at the close with the walk-in customer – don’t make them take a back seat to technology.
  • Don’t forget to confirm satisfaction or that the need was addressed.  Never let the customer leave without your knowing how they felt.
  • Avoid letting your voice appear impatient – by rushing your speech or talking over them, giving the impression you’re just trying to get them off the phone or out the door.  Ensure the customer feels you would do whatever is needed to support them.
  • Don’t forget to smile (even if you’re on the phone).  We should be happy to serve customers, so we need to convey that happiness.
  • Don’t make the customer end the conversation.  Don’t make them thank you first, especially since they made the effort to call or took the time to travel in to see you.

 
To leave them with the best impression possible, avoid the last impression faux pas.

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Familying with Customers – 10/28/25

Posted on October 28, 2025 in Customer Service Tip of the Week Please leave a comment

In our transactional society, it’s hard to think about customers in the long-term.  But if we want to be as successful as we can as an individual or as a business, we need to view customers through a relationship lens. What do we need to know about them to keep them and grow our business with them?  What if we truly viewed customers…as family?

Believe it or not, there is a word (depending on what dictionary you check) called Familying.  It is defined as:  Supporting, providing emotional or practical help to family members.

If we consider customers in a long-term relationship-oriented manner, we could define our role in a customer family as being those supporting, providing emotional or practical help to customers.

To be most effective in helping them long-term, we have to get to know them.  Let’s break down FAMILYING in terms of what we need to know to build relationships with customers:

F is for Fiscally understanding our customers.  They are customers of our business because they are spending money or resources with us.  The better we can understand their economic situation, the parameters within which they can spend money on the types of products and services we have to offer, the better we can tailor our offerings to meet their needs.

A is for understanding the customer’s Attitude and their emotions.  Some customers in the moment or in general are very emotional, and we have to be cognizant of that and address the emotions as much as the topic at-hand.  Others are less emotional, and we can deal more with them on the facts and the figures.  The better we can understand the emotions, the better we can understand how to engage them effectively.

M is for understanding their Motivators.  Why are they with us as a customer, and why could they leave?  The more we understand the reasons behind their decisions, the better chance we have of affecting their decisions to stay or to go, to spread positive or negative word-of-mouth.

The ILY is embedded in understanding our customer’s fiscally, attitudinally, and motivationally.

The ING in FAMILYING with customers is the ING I’ve brought up a few times before in these tips. The better we understand their Issues, Needs, and Goals, the better we can help them resolve their Issues, address their Needs, and support them in achieving their Goals.

To develop a long-term relationship with customers, get to know them Fiscally, Attitudinally, Motivationally, and what are their Issues, Needs, and Goals.  Start with a little FAMILYING.

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Lessons Learned for COVID Era Sporting Events

Posted on September 22, 2020 in Business Advice Please leave a comment

Since the sports world has begun inviting fans back to their events on a limited basis, CSS has been fortunate to work on multiple events with our sports clients.  Much of our work is fan research-oriented, where before or after events, we are engaging fans to identify expectations, potential concerns, and overall experiences.  Needless to say, we’ve had a ton of lessons learned that we’re sharing with you today.

Find the Customer’s Sweet Spot

Every event is going to have precautionary measures – protocols to utilize in order to keep staff and fans comfortable and safe.  Realize that you are striving to provide a great fan experience, but part of that great experience involves the fans being comfortable enough to have a good time.  So before events, conduct research with fans so you have a sense for what are the most important characteristics or potential protocols that you could put in place, from the fan’s perspective.  Understand what their expectations are and their needs are to have the comfort and confidence to have a great experience.  Before trying to do too much or too little from a sanitization perspective, make sure you have an understanding of those key perception drivers from the fan’s perspective so you have a better chance of hitting their sweet spot for protocols.

Educate New AND Old Customers

Most sports organizations, if they do any pre-event education with fans, tend to tailor those communications to the first-time fans.  This is being done for obvious reasons – first-time fans are the least experienced in how to navigate the fan journey and how to do their part to have the best experience possible.  But in this COVID world, keep in mind that even long-term fans and season ticket holders have never experienced an event of any kind – particularly a major sports event – within a COVID environment.

Make sure that the educational path you take is geared toward these two distinct groups – the first-time fans and the long-term fans about to have their first COVID event experience.  Remember in these times, in order for the customer to be comfortable and confident, you need to become an educator to the fans of what the experience will be like and what THEIR part is in helping to create that safe environment.

Post-event: Research, Refine, Reinforce

Finally, we’re going to discuss post-event activities from 3 perspectives:  Post-event Research, Refinement of plans, and Reinforcement.

First, make sure that you’re conducting Post-event Research on the fan experiences and future expectations.  You want to know what you did great so you can recognize staff. You want to know what was most appreciated by fans, so you can replicate that action.  And you want to know what needs to most be improved upon, because just like the COVID findings and recommendations seem to change every day or every week, the approach for events is going to slightly change every day or every week.

Also make sure that you understand their future expectations.  Identify whether their likelihood to return will go up or down based on whether the number of protocols go up or down.  Gauge their likelihood to return and their likelihood to bring more people to the next event.  Gauge their likelihood to be a repeat COVID Era customer.

Refinement relates to operations and communications.  Based on the feedback from the fans, make those adjustments in your operations.  If you were successful enough to find the sweet spot in your protocols, then you’re just tweaking your operations event-to-event.  In terms of communications, if you do a good job proactively engaging and educating fans and asking how they want to be communicated with, if you do a great job after the fact in your post-event research of asking them what communications were most useful, most used, and most effective, then refine your communication strategy with fans so that you can – again – continuously improve.

Reinforcement relates to changing perceptions.  Fans have the experience that they have, and down the road when they’re making their decisions about recommending your event to others, coming back themselves, spending more money with you, the memories that they have and the perceptions they have days weeks and months down the road are going to help them make those decisions.  You can impact those down-the-road perceptions.  Send them communications about their experience, reinforcing what a great experience that they had, what success that the event had in mitigating negative outcomes from a health perspective, sharing visuals of people having a great time, and highlighting fan comments from post-event surveys about how much they enjoyed their experience and how much the protocols oftentimes enhanced that overall experience.

Take these lessons learned that we’ve gleaned from our client work, and make sure that your COVID Era sporting events deliver a great experience your fans as well.


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