apathy

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

It Shouldn’t Make a Difference, But… - 9/1/26


We have this conversation with lots of our sports clients, but the principles apply across all different industries.  Too many service representatives view a conversation with a customer as a transaction.  Just get him off the phone as quickly as possible.  The customer is Joe Public, not Joseph Pendergrass.  Read more

Re-Invigorate Your Clients – 7/30/13 TOW

Posted on in Customer Service Tip of the Week Please leave a comment

The motivational speaker had his theme for the day – Re-Invigorate Yourself! He said, “In order to Re-Invigorate Yourself, you have to make two assumptions. First, ‘RE’ means you’ve been “Invigorated” in the past so that you can be invigorated again. Second, the idea that you are going to ‘Re-INVIGORATE’ means that you are not currently invigorated. Maybe your life is stale. Your attitude has gone negative. Your perception of yourself or your life has dimmed.”

Whereas this motivational speaker was focusing on how his audience could reinvigorate themselves, one of the attendees had a different twist on the speaker’s points.

Janet was an account representative for a pro sports team, and her focus was applying this concept to her clients.

“How do I determine if my clients are currently invigorated? How can I determine their relationship with my club, their perception of their game time experience, their feelings about the value of their season tickets? How do I determine if my clients are not currently invigorated?”

“Because that lack of passion can turn into apathy, and apathy can result in lost business. And to ‘RE’ invigorate them, I have to determine when they were passionate about our club and their relationship with us. . .and why?”

Sometimes, in order to keep customers for the long-term, we have to take Janet’s perspective. We need to uncover those customers who appear NOT to be enjoying their relationship or experience with us, those that don’t appear happy, seem more apathetic, aren’t responding to messages as quickly or frequently, or aren’t participating in activities as often.

We need to proactively go to them, gain their feedback, and understand why they were excited in the past – and maybe why they’re not so excited today.

Keep in mind that your competitors’ sales people are passionate about taking your customers, so match that passion.

Find customers losing their enthusiasm for your organization, and look for ways to re-invigorate their passions in your business.