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Don’t Harp on the Customer’s Mistake - 6/24/25


Seth’s daughter, Sarah, had missed some swim classes, and Seth remembered that the aquatics center had several make-up classes available late in the summer.  So Seth pulled up the class schedule on his phone, found one that worked on his and Sarah’s schedules, and planned to attend a session Read more

Create Customers for Life - 6/17/25


Veronica has gone to the same automotive service shop for at least 20 years.  She bought a new car about a year ago, and this is the third car she’s brought to the shop instead of taking her car to the dealer where she bought it.  She’s had three Read more

Don’t Turn the Customer into the QA Department - 6/10/25


Roberta received a form with information filled in by the company after her conversation with the account rep.  Roberta just needed to review the information, fill in some of the blanks, sign it, and resend it in order to set up a new account. She noticed that the effective date Read more

Imitate to Improve - 6/3/25


Oscar Wilde said that “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”  Now this doesn’t mean that plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery.  Nor does it mean that great impersonators such as Rich Little, Dana Carvey, or Frank Caliendo are always offering flattering portrayals of those that they imitate. Wilde’s Read more

How the Customer Perceives a Truth as a Lie - 5/27/25


You’re the customer, you’re asking about an unused item that you’re returning, and you hear the employee say: “The refund process takes 7-10 days.”  You’re thinking: “Great!  I can get the refund check as early as a week from today!”  The reality is that the company means that they’ll Read more

Tell Customers What’s Next - 5/20/25


In most businesses that have been around for a while, how a process was originally designed is not how it currently operates.  Sometimes this change is referred to as “practical drift,” where the actual process moves further and further away from the documented steps over time.  Maybe the changes Read more

Questions to Guide You to Empathy - 5/13/25


“If I was him, I would do ABC…” If you’ve ever heard somebody say this - whether it’s a friend or acquaintance, whether it’s some TV reporter or podcaster - you may get as frustrated or as annoyed as I do. I get annoyed because we are not that other person. Read more

Negate the Nervousness - 5/6/25


The customer needed a loan, so he walked into the bank, but he was a little nervous.  He knew that launching his business would be easier if he had some working capital, but that’s about all he knew.  He was anxious because he didn’t know what to expect in Read more

Don’t Rush to Resolve Quickly - 4/29/25


The customer is angry, so you use the CSS LEAD technique as designed.  You, listen, empathize, accept responsibility, and deliver on a remedy.  But it doesn’t work.  The customer is still upset, and maybe even a little more frustrated than when you started…why?! If the use of this technique fails, Read more

Energy v. Apathy - 4/22/25


I asked a couple friends who are much more scientifically-oriented the question: What is energy?  I didn’t mean E=MC2.  I meant physiologically, what is energy? They described a lot of things that sounded really good, yet far too advanced for my non-medical mind. Part of the reason why energy is of Read more

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Government Charges You to Wait?

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

The San Francisco Chronicle published an article on April 1 (no joke) about new fines and fees being instituted by the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency. The article (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/cityinsider/detail?&entry_id=60331) noted how recipients of parking tickets in San Francisco are being charged $2 more, and people using the government customer service center will be charged $3 to be able to wait in line to pay tickets, purchase parking cards, or buy Fast Passes.

All this is understandable. Municipalities in California are having a particularly difficult time financially, and they need to increase revenue. So charge more for parking. Charge more for tickets.

But charge for the right to wait in line? Charge to be inconvenienced? Charge for the opportunity to buy something from you?

When I work with a client considering levying a new fee on the customer, the questions I ask include: How will this impact your relationship with your customer? How will this impact your customer retention? How will this impact the customer’s word-of-mouth? How will this impact your long-term success?

Most businesses – if they asked themselves these questions – will do everything they can to avoid increasing prices unless they can show some equal increase in value to the client.

In municipalities, the same questions are not asked, and maybe it’s because they don’t think they need to be asked. After all, where else is the customer going to go to pay a ticket, buy a parking pass, or buy a Fast Pass?

Whether you work in a municipality or a private business, before you put an additional burden on the customer, before you expect more from your customer, before you put barriers between them and your organization, think about the long-term impact.

Exhaust every opportunity to improve your organization’s performance before dumping that responsibility on your customer.

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


Hockey Team Listening to Learn…Today

Posted on April 2, 2010 in Business Advice, Sports Please leave a comment

The Chicago Blackhawks professional hockey team announced this week (http://blackhawks.nhl.com/club/news.htm?id=523044) that they are launching a new program to improve the fan experience. Chris Werner, the Blackhawks Senior Executive Director of Ticketing and Business Development stated “Quality customer service has been an ongoing priority over the course of the recent seasons. We are working hard at using different innovative methods to gather fan feedback to measure guest’s overall experience.”

This program focuses on getting fan feedback during the games. While that’s not novel, per se (many teams over the years have conducted in-game surveys), what it does suggest is that this organization understands that if it truly wants to impact fan satisfaction, it has to go to the fans and talk to fans. It has to make it easy for fans to get in touch with them. It has to be proactive and seek the input. It has to gain the information as real-time as possible.

These are all great principles for any organization to consider. Does your organization go to where the customers are (when they’re already interacting with your business) and ask for feedback? Does your organization make it easy for them to provide feedback? Do you try to gain information on the customer’s experience while the customer is…well experiencing?

Rethink your research strategies to go away from customer satisfaction surveys conducted over the phone when all your business is done face-to-face. Make sure your research strategies are not purely retrospective, when a customer’s memory cannot always be trusted.

Make sure that you’re asking and receiving real-time input from your customers today.

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


Take the Pulse

Posted on March 16, 2010 in Business Advice, World of Customer Service Please leave a comment

Organizations often have to deal with internal rumors. Maybe it’s the staff that think they’ve heard about the possibility of a leadership change or a facility relocation or a reorganization or layoffs or changes in wages or benefits.

Rumors are typically negative, often foreshadowing something that could happen down the road that people don’t want to happen. The negativity of these rumors can start to eat away at the framework of an organization’s culture, just like thousands of tiny termites eating away at the foundation of a home.

If these rumors are not dealt with, then their negative impact will grow and grow and grow to the point that the culture suffers, the productivity suffers, the service suffers, the internal relationships and the work environment suffer, and – in the end – the customer will suffer, too.

To make sure that rumors are identified quickly and acted on, and to make sure that leadership has a strong ongoing understanding about what’s going on at the staff level, one thing organizations can do is to implement an ongoing system of taking the employee pulse. These are typically very short but very frequent and ongoing surveys that focus on several key questions that are high-level indicators of employee satisfaction and morale.

If leaders want to make sure that they have some good, objective data telling them the direction of their employees’ satisfaction and morale, they need to proactively seek it on an ongoing basis (at least monthly in most organizations).

To make sure that the foundation and core of your organization are not slowly but surely being eaten away by rumors and a negative internal work environment, make sure you’re getting frequent and objective feedback from your employees.

Continually take the pulse of your people.

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


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