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Be Amazing - 4/23/24


Watching Michael Jordan steal a pass and then dunk a basketball is amazing.  Taking a rocket to the moon is amazing.  The taste of my mom’s homemade beef soup is amazing. We all have our personal examples of what is amazing.  Usually, it’s something that we cannot comprehend, that we Read more

Talk About Yourself to Build Customer Confidence - 4/16/24


When you’re dealing with somebody who is anxious or nervous about a situation, a customer who feels like they don’t have much control, an individual who is unsure and uncertain, it’s important to put the customer at ease.  It’s important to build their comfort level.  It’s important to help Read more

The Proven Value in What You Do - 4/9/24


Forbes wrote an article last year based on a compilation of the results of research on customer service and the customer experience; it was titled:  100 Customer Experience Stats For 2023. In reading the article, you’ll note that many of these key research findings are about you – the value Read more

A Tale of Two Texts - 4/2/24


Having to get allergy shots once a week is never fun, and for Janet, it became an even bigger frustration. She had the shots typically scheduled on Tuesday around 10:30 in the morning, figuring she would avoid the morning rush as well as the lunch rush by going mid-morning.  However, Read more

The Secret Sauce for Great Customer Service - 3/26/24


I was working with the League Office for a major American sport several years back, and one of the executives asked me to describe our Secret Sauce that helped our clients improve the fan experience and customer retention.  I gave him a sense of what makes us unique and Read more

The Miracle of an Apology - 3/19/24


Unfortunate but true story… The manager basically lost his mind.  He terminated his employee on the spot.  She had told the customer that there was going to be a delay in the shipment.  The employee called up the customer ahead of time to let the customer know what was about Read more

It’s Not About the 5-Minute Wait - 3/12/24


Robert went into his supervisor’s office to update her on a situation at the payment desk.  Robert said that a customer was about fourth or fifth in line, waiting to be served, and the customer was complaining loudly about the wait.  He was there to make a property tax Read more

Lessons from the Greats - 3/5/24


I was recently facilitating a workshop on the customer experience, and I made the point that it’s usually beneficial to look at your personal life for great experiences; identify what really resonates with you in a positive way in order to uncover ideas to improve your own customer service. So, Read more

The Empathy Roadmap - 2/27/24


For some people, empathy comes naturally.  There’s an innate desire to learn about the other person and to sincerely convey that sense of interest and caring.  But for many of us, sometimes it helps to have a communication plan.  It helps to know what to do in order to Read more

“You’re the Boss” - 2/20/24


Terrence is excellent at what he does.  From a technical standpoint, he knows how to keep the facility clean.  He’s the lead custodian, and he knows that keeping things straight does not necessarily mean keeping things sanitary.  He knows what chemicals to use and not to use, how to Read more

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Don’t Wait on Fixing Waits

Posted on December 10, 2009 in Business Advice, Healthcare Please leave a comment

Where do you hear the loudest customer complaints in the typical hospital of today? It’s the Emergency Room.

“Why have I waited so long?!” “Why did that person on the stretcher go back to a room before me?! I was here first!” “I’ve been here 2 hours, and nobody’s told me anything!”

These complaints are pervasive, but they also point to the impact of customer service. Remember that customer service involves processes. Customer service is part employee attitudes/skills/knowledge, and the other part is process. How long something takes, how long are the waits, how efficient is a process, how redundant are the processes, how smooth the flow of information and people is or isn’t – those are all characteristics of process.

And whereas businesses spend lots of money every year to have employees trained on how to deal with irate customers, a tactic just as valuable as that is to identify the root causes of why customers are irate and to address those root causes. In healthcare, so many of those complaints are about one thing – process.

So if you want your organization to be better from a customer service-perspective in your customers’ eyes, if you want to reduce the number of conflicts with customers which your employees have to address, then fix your processes. Find out where waits exist, the cause of the waits, the communications during the waits, and perceptions of the length of the wait time, and address them.

Many of our clients redesign departmental layouts, they change processes, they do a better job of scheduling staff to flex up/down with variations by time-of-day or day-of-week with customer volumes or arrival rates. They train staff on how to and how often to interact with customers during wait to provide updates, keep them engaged, convey they care, and – ultimately – to reduce the perception of the wait time. The clients create activities for the customers or distractions which help to reduce the perception of the wait times.

In other words, the hospitals and other organizations best at dealing with waits try to reduce wait times while at the same time reducing the perception of waits.

Wait times are a symptom of an issue with your customer service. Don’t wait on fixing waits.

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


Retention – They’re Finally Getting It

Posted on December 8, 2009 in Business Advice, Education Please leave a comment

If you would have spoken with 10 administrators 10 years ago in the world of higher education – from community colleges to universities – you could have easily spoken for 2 hours about their priorities without student retention ever being discussed.

My, how times have changed.

It seems that more and more often, retention is discussed whenever goal-setting for enrollment is the topic.  Retention rates are part of the performance dashboards.  Retention strategies are developed with some similar planning focus to marketing strategies.

And why is there all of this focus on retention?  Because these institutional leaders – just like smart businesspeople – understand that retention means dollars.  Retention means less effort in recruitment.  Retention means less hassle in dealing with student complaints and turnover.  Retention means less change to address.  Retention means a faster path to success.

Not all educational institutions get it, however, when it comes to retention.  An organization that truly gets it understands that successful retention strategies require a great deal of research with current students on retention drivers, likelihood to stay, preferences, and satisfaction levels.  Research is required on former students to determine the true loss reasons for controllable exits.  Strategies need to have a component to look at the relationship-building structures and processes which need to be put into place to develop relationships with students and to quickly identify students at-risk of leaving.

Strategies need to be created to address internal cultural issues and priorities that currently run counter to the goal of retention.  And measurement strategies need to be adopted to ensure that issues and solutions are identified early enough to be addressed.

An education-based retention strategy needs to have the concerted effort and focus that balances internal culture with external relationship building, where all the key impact drivers of retention are measured.

Do you have a truly comprehensive retention strategy?

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


Small Errors in Service Recovery

Posted on December 7, 2009 in Business Advice Please leave a comment

 If “Service Recovery” means that we need to “save” situations where the customer is upset, irate, or complaining, then there are right ways and wrong ways to do it. While there is no one rule to deal with Service Recovery situations, many times employees can think that they are doing things the right way, and in fact there are small errors that are causing the recovery to be unsuccessful.

Think of the following actions during Service Recovery and the issues with each:

  • The employee responds to an e-mail from an irate customer by sending an e-mail back.  Whereas this may be very effective at times, particularly when the customer prefers e-mail communications, in a Service Recovery situation you want to talk to someone 2-way, on the phone or face-to-face. Because that ability to see the body language and to hear the tone of voice enables you to deal with the emotion of the situation better. Remember that e-mail does not convey emotion well.
  • The employee responds to the customer that if they have a concern, then the customer is welcome to call back. While this may seem like a positive offer, in effect what the employee’s doing is dumping the responsibility for follow-up back on the customer. Particularly in Service Recovery situations, the employee needs to take ownership over the follow-up, to convey that they care and ensure that the follow-up happens.
  • The employee hears the complaint and gives the appropriate solution, and yet the customer is still upset. This typically happens when the employee is providing an effective solution, but they are ignoring the emotional aspect of the conversation. Most customers want to be understood and to feel like they are cared for at least as much as they are having their question answered during a Service Recovery situation. Employees need to make sure they’re not so focused on the issue and the solution that they totally ignore the emotion that comes with the issue.

When determining the best way to deal with Service Recovery situations, look at the little things that employees can do wrong to determine how to tweak the technique to make sure everything turns out right. 

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


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