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Is Their Poor Planning Your Emergency? - 12/17/24


Have you ever heard the saying:  Your poor planning is not my emergency. I’ve heard it said often – not necessarily directly from one person to another.  More typical is that I hear it from the person having to drop everything and do something immediately because someone else didn’t think Read more

Empathy Examples for Everyday Situations - 12/10/24


I’ve often said that empathy is the single most important characteristic of people who are great at customer service.  If empathy is essentially “to understand the other person,” it helps so much to have that ability in order to specifically help someone.  To talk to what’s unique about them.  Read more

Tell Them Why You’re Giving Thanks - 12/3/24


Thank you! Merci! Danke! Doumo! Gracias! It seems like every language has a translation of Thank You.  Even though I only fluently speak English and speak Spanish, un poco, I – and probably most of you – have heard some or all of the translations of "Thank You” noted above.  Read more

Refine Your Decision-making Process - 11/26/24


Every day, you make decisions of what to do and what not to do.  And in the world of customer service, often the affected parties are our customers, our co-workers, and our company.  Here are a few quotes to consider when you’re thinking about evaluating and refining your decision-making Read more

Acting on the Guiding Principles for Great Customer Service - 11/19/24


In last week’s tip, we shared 5 Guiding Principles for Great Customer Service.  This week, let’s address what “taking action” looks like on those key principles.  If last week was about what to do and WHY, this week is about the HOW. Engage with Interest: To engage with interest, proactively Read more

Guiding Principles for Great Customer Service - 11/12/24


It’s hard to know every procedure, every policy, every technique possible to handle every situation correctly.  After all, maybe our procedures are standard, but our customers are not.  Maybe our policies stay pretty consistent, but our customers’ needs and issues, their attitudes and actions can change from customer to Read more

From a Simple Question to an Exceptional Experience - 11/5/24


Phyllis loves her job.  It’s not just because she loves being a customer service representative, not just because she really likes her co-workers, and not just because she enjoys her company.  It’s because she really appreciates her customers, as well. A customer had ordered a register book off the company Read more

Fix One Problem without Creating Another - 10/29/24


If you’ve ever had an issue with your dishwasher, this will sound familiar.  I’ve dealt with so many dishwashers over the years, and they always seem to have some kind of an issue.  Maybe it’s because of the mix of water and technology, but for whatever reason, these never Read more

Delight Your Customers - 10/22/24


Buddy the Bug Man was different.  His company was new, and the only reason why Janet tried him out was that the service she had used for years just wasn’t working.  Whether it was mosquitoes in the yard, ants in the kitchen, or cockroaches flying through on their way Read more

A More Complete Definition of Responsiveness - 10/15/24


I was purchasing something recently that was being custom-developed.  At one point, the company’s employee and I had a good 20 e-mails going back and forth - 10 from each of us.  Unfortunately, I broke my own rule, and I did not pick up the phone after 2 or Read more

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Govern Strategically for Great Customer Service

Posted on July 13, 2010 in Business Advice, Government Please leave a comment

When working with a government agency recently, we were planning to customize customer service training content for them. During the course of the training development interviews we conducted, it became clear that customer service training had never been done before at the agency. Customer service skills were not addressed in the organization’s hiring processes. Customer service was not part of the organization’s reward system, and customer service only briefly appeared on the staff performance evaluations.

Yet, management sincerely stated that customer service was important. It was important that customers were treated with respect, that the residents felt they were important, that upset customers got their issues addressed professionally, and that staff could appropriately address each customer based on that unique customer’s characteristics and needs.

So why was there the disconnect between management wanting to have great customer service and their doing what needed to be done to get great customer service?

Assuming the sincerity of the management team, the answer had to lie in the organization’s leaders not really knowing HOW to get great customer service. In the past, most businesses assumed that employees were generally nice, respectful, caring, and communicative people. Customer service is just common sense, and everybody knows how to deliver customer service, right? Those particularly assumptions were wrong then, and they’re REALLY wrong now.

For organizations to go from wanting great customer service to delivering great customer service, they need to understand strategically how to do so. It’s about the culture, the hiring, the training, the rewards, the accountability, the processes, the organization’s goals, the management team’s support and modeling of great customer service behaviors, and much more.

If you ever feel a disconnect between what your management says they want in customer service and what the organization actually delivers, have them take a step back, and start with a strategy.

Interested in improving your company’s customer service? See more information at: http://www.cssamerica.com/

Check out our new customer service book at http://www.amigreatat.com/


Do You Know if They Know?

Posted on June 8, 2010 in Business Advice, Government Please leave a comment

We’ve designed a great number of surveys for municipalities and their agencies, focusing on customer satisfaction, perception, and awareness. What is so important with these government-based research instruments that is often downplayed or overlooked entirely is the focus on awareness.

Awareness questions typically focus on two areas: (1) Gauging the resident’s awareness of services and programs offered by the municipality and its agencies and (2) Gauging the resident’s awareness of processes – essentially how to do things.

These questions are vital because all the radio public service announcements, flyers, and government TV channels cost money; but the goal is not to implement a strategy to push information to residents. The goal is for the residents to understand, to remember, to be aware. So that awareness has to be measured – municipalities want participation (i.e., people using their parks, getting access to support services, attending events, and utilizing their recreation centers), and they want whatever revenue is associated with that participation.

But in this age of customer service being balanced with customer “self-service,” residents must also be aware of HOW TO do things. What’s the process to apply for Medicaid, to reserve a park shelter, update my business listing online, get a new recycle bin, or report that the neighbor puts oil down the sewer drain? The more educated residents are on how to do things themselves, the more efficient a municipality can be in providing that service since the resident either goes through the process on their own or they contact the right employee to help them the first time.

These principles are universal in business – customer awareness is a huge asset to any business wanting to grow (i.e., increasing awareness of products/services) and any business wanting to improve efficiencies (i.e., increasing awareness of service processes).

When you conduct your customer surveys, make sure you’re researching your customer’s awareness.

Interested in improving your company’s customer service? See more information at: http://www.cssamerica.com/


To Streamline or To Serve? Yes, and Yes

Posted on May 6, 2010 in Business Advice, Government Please leave a comment

Many municipalities are taking on the dual goals of streamlining operations and improving customer service. It’s an interesting set of goals since so many people in business assume that improving customer service means adding people, adding services, and adding costs.

But customer service done right should facilitate cost reduction. It should do this primarily because of two different outcomes that effective customer service should achieve. The first is that improved customer service should reduce complaints and redundant contacts from customers. Processes are a huge part of customer service, and if the property bill is right, the resident is less likely to call to complain. If reserving the park shelter online worked, there is no need to place a complaint call to the municipality. If the caller calls in and gets to a person without an undue wait, they’re not going to abandon the call and make a second call. Doing things right the first time reduces contacts and other efforts that result from customer complaints.

The second way that great customer service facilitates cost reduction is that customer service done right implies having standardized and efficient processes which allow less room for individual employees to do things wrong, for errors to occur, for rework to be required. Customer service done right means that the self-service processes which customers use are simple, self-evident, timely, and attractive enough that the customer often prefers doing their own work over contacting an employee to do it for them.

Streamlining operations and improving customer service can co-exist…they SHOULD co-exist.

If your organization can do it right the first time, and if you can make your processes quick, simple, efficient, and high quality, you’ll notice customers are happier, and the workload will decrease.

It’s the win-win-win that customer, company, and employees all want.

Interested in improving your company’s customer service? See more information at: http://www.cssamerica.com/


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