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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

Customer Understanding Leads to Relationship Growth - 2/13/24


We’ve worked with educational organizations at all grade levels over the years.  One special and unique characteristic about the staff who work in these organizations is that there’s a clear intent to know about the students as individuals, to focus on them rather than purely focusing on what’s delivered Read more

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Banking on Deposits Requires More Than Acquisitions

Posted on February 23, 2012 in Business Advice, Carolinas Please leave a comment

Many small banks are trying to increase their core deposits, relying less on fees to generate revenue. And while this is a good thing for many banks, there needs to be a retention component to the core deposit growth strategy.

In the article Small Charlotte-area banks get creative in boosting core deposits, Adam O’Daniel makes the point that small banks in the Carolinas are attempting to increase core deposits (i.e., local deposits) to help fund growth because of their stable nature; remember that cash that comes in from loans or short-term investments creates more variability, uncertainty, and risks for banks than cash from core deposits.

The way many of these banks are growing core deposits is through acquisition. The concept is that if the small banks buy even smaller banks in small towns, the acquirer would have that stable cash flow for a long period of time to fund other activities. Without getting too much into the minutia, here’s the key customer retention-related point – just as banks have acquisition strategies to buy other banks, they need culture-oriented strategies and client retention and growth strategies which address the employees and customers they acquire.

Internally, these banks need to be looking at how they retain the small town staff that have formed the relationships with the customers – because the customer relationship and loyalty may be more with “my Teller, Betty” than with “Bank XYZ.” The banks need to ensure that executives are incented for retention just as much as profits, since the acquisition assumed that the core deposits would be retained. And the banks need to have processes in place to quickly analyze and get to know their new customers, build relationships with them, and proactively seek to grow those relationships once retention is solid.

When trying to grow through acquisition, make sure you’re not going to lose the good employees and solid clients you acquire. Understand what drives loyalty at the local level.

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

Read our New Book – “Ask Yourself…Am I GREAT at Customer Service?” http://www.amigreatat.com/

Listen to our latest podcast episode of “Stepping Up Service” on The MESH Network at http://themesh.tv/stepping-up-service/


Customer Service Lessons from a Kidney Stone – An E.R. Story

Posted on October 27, 2011 in Business Advice, Healthcare 1 Comment

I was an Emergency Room patient recently thanks to a kidney stone. I learned some painful lessons about how I need to modify my diet. I learned some financial lessons about how to avoid the E.R. next time, now that I know how to read kidney stones symptoms. And I learned some customer service lessons from the experience.

Let’s focus on customer service. Here are a few lessons learned:

· Accessibility to service is a wonderful thing. To get my question answered about my symptoms, I was able to reach an on-call nurse at my physician’s office at 5:00 a.m. on a Monday. I was aware of that service, having used it before for less painful reasons, and that accessibility, that free advice is one of the things I love about my physician’s office.

· Employee knowledge is a component of the service delivered. That same nurse told me to go to the E.R. because she thought it was gallbladder-related. It turns out that she misinterpreted my symptoms, and the E.R. triage nurse knew immediately I had symptoms of a kidney stone, not a gallbladder issue. If the first nurse would have better “read” my symptoms, she may have saved me an E.R. trip (not complaining, mind you – just an observation).

· An hour wait is not an hour wait is not an hour wait. Wait times can be made to seem shorter or longer than they are in actuality. My wait time to see the triage nurse was only 20 minutes, but it seemed interminable. There was no dialogue during the wait, and I was told they’d see me “quickly” – a nebulous term at best, and one that led me to believe it would be immediate. However my 3.5 hour wait between when my x-rays were done and when the physician saw me wasn’t nearly as bad as you’d think. Although I wasn’t thrilled with the wait, I was given some pain medication early on, was checked on several times by the nurse, was taught how to use their funky television remote control, and was given a warm blanket and offers of other support by a volunteer.

· Much of customer service is about managing expectations. Whether it was my understanding of a next step in a process, understanding who would be my care giver, knowing what the diagnosis could be, understanding whether I’d be released that morning or whether I needed to be held – anything that the organization did to give me a clearer expectation of what would happen next and when it would happen helped to make the experience that much easier to bear.

Learn the lessons of my encounter with customer service during the attack of the kidney stone (sounds like a bad 1970’s movie title, huh?). Be knowledgeable and accessible. Communicate with customers, and “distract” them during waits. Set and manage customer expectations.

Relieve your customer’s pain.

Read our New Book – “Ask Yourself…Am I GREAT at Customer Service?” http://www.amigreatat.com/

Listen to our latest podcast episode of “Stepping Up Service” on The MESH Network at http://themesh.tv/stepping-up-service/

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


How I Gave Away $5,000 in Free Consulting…and Didn’t Even Know It

Posted on January 19, 2011 in Business Advice, World of Customer Service Please leave a comment

I was giving a speech to the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce last year to small business owners, and a client came to co-present with me. The focus of the talk was Driving Customer Retention and Growth, and I was there to talk strategy, and my client talked about how his organization implemented that strategy – how it worked.

After the meeting, many of those in attendance came up to me for a chat, and it was great hearing their stories and learning about some of the points they particularly liked, but one attendee made an especially big impression. He said to me “I feel like you just gave me $5,000 of free consulting!” He smiled, I smiled, we talked some more, and we both walked away happy.

Should I have been happy? It would have been nice, of course, to have been paid for the guidance provided, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that I wanted to share something of value. If they could take it and run on their own – then great! If they needed more outside support, I was there to help.

So yes, I was and should have been happy.

What’s the point to you?

Building and maintaining client relationships is not all about “What’s in it for me?” as the service provider. It’s about “What’s in it for the customer?” If our constant focus is how we can help our customers to have a great experience or for them to be successful, then what we decide to do changes. We become more concerned with learning about our customers, their needs, goals, and preferences. We become more concerned with their satisfaction. We become more concerned with offering something of value, even if it doesn’t obviously benefit us. We become more concerned with them than we are with ourselves.

And when the customer senses that caring and concern, they are more attracted to us, more loyal to us, and more willing to refer to us. Oh, and yes, I did get business as a result of that speech – from a different attendee.

So there’s a benefit to us by our focusing on them.

Find a way to give for the sake of giving, and you’ll be surprised what you receive back.

Read our New Book – “Ask Yourself…Am I GREAT at Customer Service?” http://www.amigreatat.com/

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


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