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Build Goodwill with Co-workers and Customers - 11/10/26


All relationships are different.  We want to have good relationships with co-workers, after all – those are the people we spend the most time with each week.  We want to have good relationships with customers since they’re the ones that provide the revenue and inflows that allow us to Read more

How to Avoid “Groundhog Day” - 11/3/26


It’s Groundhog Day, where you’re living the same day over and over and over again. You have heard basically the same complaint from 4 different customers in the past week.  The bill is incorrect or confusing, and you’re having to spend a ton of time explaining things to the customer. You’ve Read more

Beware of Scary Telephone Customer Service - 10/27/26


As we near the Halloween holiday in the United States, it seems appropriate to discuss examples of scary customer service, particularly on the telephone.  Here are a few common issues that frustrate and annoy customers.  These are experiences to avoid delivering, and alternatives to adopt: The customer calls, describes their Read more

The Art of the Successful Script - 10/20/26


You’re the customer.  You go to the store, and they ask if you have a loyalty card.  You call the doctor’s office, and they ask for your birth date.   You walk up to the counter, and they ask if you found everything you were looking for. These are all valid Read more

The Key Building Block for Your Customer Relationship - 10/13/26


An automotive manufacturer gets supplies for their vehicles from all over the world.  They have arrangements, service level agreements, expectations for timing and quality of all the parts.  And when they gather all these supplies, they assemble the cars.  They test the cars.  Then they take pictures of those Read more

Be Flexible to Fill the Gaps - 10/6/26


The non-profit has the expected challenges.  There are only 3 people in the organization, yet, they have the same responsibilities of a larger company.  They have to do finance, sales, marketing; they deliver their services to the community, and they need to keep a pulse on what’s going on Read more

Is This Good Customer Service? - 9/29/26


A friend of mine reached out to me recently as she waited for the electrical technician to show up at her house to do some minor repairs.  She had never worked with this company before, but they sent a text about the tech who was soon to arrive. The message Read more

Ownership when Fixing Others’ Errors - 9/22/26


We were conducting training with a client recently, and one of the participants, Jackie, is in a role in his organization where he goes out to the customer site to investigate issues, address customer complaints, and fix problems.  While he’s at the site, he often gets an earful from Read more

Why “No” is So Important - 9/15/26


The employee told the caller: “I don’t think that is possible.” The customer eventually hung up, and redialed to ask a different employee the same question. The employee responded to the customer: “That’s probably not the best way to do it.”  Then, the customer kept asking question after question, arguing Read more

It’s Not “You,” It’s “I” - 9/8/26


During a business writing course that I took years ago, the instructor had us write an e-mail.  I can’t recall if it was written to a co-worker or customer, but after writing this e-mail, she had us count every “I” and “You.”  We talked about how we need to Read more

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When You Can’t Say “Yes to the Address” – 2/7/23

Posted on February 7, 2023 in Customer Service Tip of the Week Please leave a comment

I was interviewing a frontline staff person for one of our local government clients recently as part of our CSS Training Development Process.  They described their customers and the difficult situations that they face, their tougher conversations with customers.

This individual supports local events, so there’s a lot of planning involved.  Unfortunately, this person oftentimes has to say No to the specific request.  His agency has to deal with staffing shortages.  They receive requests from local residents and organizations that result in fees that those groups are not used to paying.  They want the event held at a certain address, but the location is unavailable on that date.

When I asked him for keys to addressing these situations – where they repeatedly have to say No to the specific client request – this is what the individual shared:

  • Regarding fees, try to ease them in lightly. Note the different fee ranges for the different types of services, and let them know what they can do within their range even if it’s not everything they wanted to do.
  • If it’s a first-time customer, let them know that they can build toward their perfect event over time. Year 1 could be a streamlined and lower cost version, but they could build in Year 2, and by Year 3 have the event they want, the scale they want, the schedule they want.
  • Identify alternatives. When the exact location isn’t available on that date, share the alternative addresses, share the no cost options that are in different locations.

 
Get them focused on the end goal – what they’re trying to accomplish with their events – so that there’s some flexibility in the details of when and how and where that event could be held…and still accomplish the same goal.

When you can’t say “Yes to the Address,” find ways to say Yes to their goals.

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Apply These Values for Great Customer Service – 12/6/22

Posted on December 6, 2022 in Customer Service Tip of the Week Please leave a comment

One of the industries where we do a lot of our work is local government.  These CSS clients are not necessarily selling a product or having the number of competitors that a lot of our private industry clients and our sports clients face.  But they need to deliver a great customer experience.  They need to excel at customer service.  They need to have core values that everybody can live.

The core values of a local government entity can often tie-in really nicely with any type of business.  Think about these example core values and how they can apply to your organization:

Trustworthy.  Can your customers trust what you’re saying?  Have the expectations you’ve set in the past been met by reality?  Or have the promises of sales not been able to be delivered by operations and customer service?  Make sure your operations can deliver on what is promised.

Clear. Sometimes confusion can lead to complaints.  Because where there’s confusion, customers and employees can more easily do something wrong or miss a step.  Where there is lack of clarity, sometimes two people can have very different expectations.  Are your communications clear – simple, specific, repeated, and documented?

Timely.  This is a nebulous word when it comes to customer service.  What one person thinks is timely may not be the same as another.  So, it’s important to define timely expectations for the customer, or ask what their definition of timeliness is, and – if unrealistic – redefine that to a reasonable expectation.

Open. Since local governments are typically funded by tax dollars and fees, transparency and openness are an expectation.  So, when you think about your business, is there information that is hidden from the customer because of fear of the reaction or how it might affect their decision?  Has that hiding of information – or at least not sharing of information – ever come back to bite the company in the end?  Make sure we’re open up front, so the customer doesn’t get the unnecessary surprise on the back end.

Learn a few lessons from our local government clients.  Make sure your customer service is trustworthy, clear, timely, and open.

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Redefine “Access” to Treat Customers Special – 11/29/22

Posted on November 29, 2022 in Customer Service Tip of the Week Please leave a comment

One of our clients puts on major events throughout the country.  When we conduct post-event surveys, many of the attendees rave about the access they had to certain entertainers, locations in the venue, parking lots, or even information.  Others decry the fact that they lacked that access.

This does pose an interesting question:  If we want to treat our customers special – even if we’re not in the entertainment industry – what kind of special access can we provide to customers?

In some ways, “Special” is in the eye of the beholder, but allow yourself the opportunity to think on the following questions for those customers where something a little special, something above and beyond, makes them walk away feeling a little special.  Let’s redefine “Access.”

People: In what cases can you grant a customer access to a particular co-worker or department within your organization that is not commonly promoted as a point of contact in communications or the company website?  Maybe it’s access to a leader, an expert, a not highly-publicized telephone line or department.

Resources: When can you provide access to resources that are not commonly available?  It could be some internal documents, some How To’s, an online portal or an app, information you can e-mail, or key lessons learned from other similar clients.

Locations: Where can you provide physical access to a certain location at your facility, special parking or entrances, or certain special locations?  The information or the product or service is the same, but how they get there may be unique, where it’s located might be special.

Experiences: What are the types of experiences you can grant access to for this individual?  You could invite them to a webinar or a town hall meeting.  They could attend some special entertainment or presentation.  Think about even small gatherings you have for those community, civic, or charity events that might be promoted to the general public but not directly communicated to the customers.

Granted, access is tough to offer to customers, at times, but if we take a step back and redefine what could be considered a “Special Access Opportunity,” we might be able to grant access to our customers in new ways.

Redefine “Access” to Treat Customers Special.

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