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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

Use What the Customer Gives You - 8/25/26


Scenario #1: The customer sent an e-mail to the general inbox at the company.  The message noted that the customer needed to get a family member added to their account, but they couldn’t tell from the website how to do so. The next morning an employee opened up the e-mail, Read more

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The Key Building Block for Your Customer Relationship – 10/13/26

Posted on October 13, 2026 in Customer Service Tip of the Week Please leave a comment

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 cars, and they put them in glossy brochures to aid sales.  To sell the cars in the end, the manufacturer relies heavily on the suppliers in the beginning.

In our world of customer service, client retention, and fan renewals and growth efforts, we’re not manufacturing a vehicle.  We are building a relationship.  And we have a lot of suppliers of information regarding the customer.  There’s internal data we have on customers, including work orders, purchase patterns, and service histories.

Your BEST Supplier

But the greatest single source of information about the customer is…the customer.  There’s nobody who knows the customer better than the customer themselves.  Fortunately, we have innumerable opportunities to utilize this supplier.  Every communication we have with them is an opportunity for us to document some intelligence on the supplier.  Every email we get from them, every text they send – these are sources of intelligence.

One source that the vast majority of companies underutilize is research.  Many companies don’t survey their customers, and even more don’t track and append those results to the individual customer.  They’re not utilizing that information in future conversations.  They’re not tapping into that supply of information when looking to increase sales, when trying to renew an annual agreement, when sending an email to make it look more personalized – and less like a generic marketing campaign.

With customers being the greatest supplier of information you need to keep them and build your relationship with them, be intentional about how you acquire that information.  Document and utilize what the customer supplies to you to better serve them.

Use the customer as the best supplier of the information you need to build a long-term relationship with them.

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Don’t Let the CRM Tail Wag the Dog

Posted on February 8, 2012 in Business Advice, World of Customer Service Please leave a comment

Lacking a strategy on how to retain customers, many businesses look at their cool new CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system and go down the wrong path.

You mean we can setup the system to e-mail the customers? Great! Our retention plan is to blast our customers with e-mail marketing messages!!

You mean we can pull in fields from the sales module and use those with our current customers? Great! Let’s figure out what fields those are so we can make sure we get that information…so that we can have that information…so that we can look at that information…and we can manage our customer relationships!

You mean there are standard surveys and dashboards that we can use? Great! We’ll use those survey questions and those dashboards to manage our customer relationships!

Now what’s wrong with all these scenarios? Hopefully you’ve guessed it. The company is devising a Touch Point Plan based on a computer system’s feature. The company is determining what intelligence to acquire based only on what the system gives them. The company is surveying and managing through standard reports from a system.

The system is creating, executing, and managing the strategy. The tail is wagging the dog.

Instead, companies should determine their own retention and growth plans with existing customers, and determine how to leverage the CRM system to help when needed. Companies should determine what intelligence to gather, how to gather, and – actually as the starting point – what they’re going to do with that intelligence. Companies should determine how they want to analyze it; then get the system to do what it needs to do for them.

Systems are generally built generically – for broad application.

Your business is built SPECIFICALLY – for your customers. Lead your systems; don’t let them lead you.

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

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

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


In Pursuit of…a WOW Director

Posted on February 15, 2011 in Business Advice, World of Customer Service Please leave a comment

In yesterday’s article titled Assistly Redefines Customer Service With New Role, VP of Customer Wow, a CRM/Customer service software firm (Assistly) touts a newly created position – “VP of Customer Wow.”

Whether this position will do what it’s marketed to do remains to be seen, but we like several aspects of it.

First, this is a CXO level position, and we often talk about organizations who care about customer service needing to have structures that support that culture and management that models what’s expected of employees.

Second, the “Office of Customer Wow” is supposed to have broad-based authority across divisional silos, so that should help in their role as problem solver for their customers.

Third, the Office must spend about 20% of its time on “Random Acts of Kindness” for its clients – essentially proactive free work.

Look inside your own organization, and think about the culture you want to create. Do you have the structure, the leadership, the proactive customer touches that drive client retention and growth?

Look at your own organization to find your inner Customer Wow!

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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