customer experience

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

How Better Customer Service is Better for You - 8/18/26


Oftentimes, we have employees in training or workshops who really want to understand what’s in it for them to deliver better customer service.  How does the employee benefit from a better customer experience? Noted below are 5 different aspects of a great experience desired by the customer.  What if... The customer Read more

Manage New Customer Expectations - 8/11/26


The fan had never been to a motorsports event before, but they had been to concerts.  They had been to big conferences.  At those other events, they could park right next to the venue, many of the activities were indoors, and weather was a non-issue.  So, they were not Read more

Complement Empathy with Action - 8/4/26


A man falls into a hole, and he can’t get out.  He starts yelling for help, and a doctor walks by and looks down the hole.  The man in the hole yells to the doctor “Please help me.  I’ve fallen into this hole!”  And the doctor takes out a Read more

My 8-Minute Visit at the DMV- 7/28/26


I needed to get a Real ID, which in North Carolina facilitates airline travel and other identity verifications.  My wife suggested I go to one particular DMV that was a LONG way away from home, but where she had experienced great customer service.  I was lucky to find an Read more

When They Might Walk Out the Door…Permanently- 7/21/26


Have you ever had one of those conversations with the customer where they literally tell you they’re about to stop doing business with your company?  This is it.  They may bring up a competitor or found another way to get their need met, or they are just leaving. When we Read more

Transparency in Customer Service- 7/14/26


We’ve worked with a lot of clients in the local government sector, and many of these clients have Customer Service Standards and/or corporate values that include Transparency. Think about an old-fashioned transparency sheet, that malleable see-through page you put on an overhead projector.  You can see everything on one side Read more

See the Customer’s Journey from Their Perspective- 7/7/26


That customer is face-to-face with you right now, and you are fielding their questions or delivering your service to them.  And oftentimes and understandably, we are so immersed in the moment that we don’t think about what came before or think enough about what comes next. But in the life Read more

Gaining the Benefits of the Greeter- 6/30/26


Most likely, we’ve all entered some establishment – a retail store, restaurant, or service center - when there is a greeter at the door.  The most famous greeter position is probably the Walmart greeter.  I often thought that my father-in-law would have been a fantastic Walmart greeter, because he Read more

Seamlessness - Why the Customer Thanked You - 6/23/26


This doesn’t happen enough nowadays, but the employee received a long thank you e-mail from the customer.  A financial services account manager had taken care of the client during a period of time that was stressful for the customer. Life was unexpectedly changing quickly, and personal emotions, additional financial responsibilities, Read more

Become a Best Practice – 11/26/19

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

When evaluating the service that our clients provide to their customers, we look at all sorts of things – from employee attitudes to knowledge, from service skills to procedures, systems, and technology.  We look at navigation to and within the facilities, and we look at layout and signage and how they help to direct.  We notice when expectations are set, and how expectations are met.

The reason we’re looking at all these different factors is that different customers evaluate their service experience in different ways.  Consider the Millennial view v. the Boomer view.  This could be a first-time customer evaluation v. a long-term client perspective.  This could be the perspective of somebody who’s never utilized anyone in your industry v. those who have experienced your particular line of business in other parts of the country.

And although there are varied customers with varied evaluation points about their experiences, oftentimes Best Practices have certain key characteristics.  Evaluate yourself, your team, or your organization against some of these key qualities of Best Practice Customer Experiences:

  • The experience is consistently good, regardless of time-of-day, day-of-week, who the employee is, or whether it’s a call, meeting, e-mail, web visit, or online chat.
  • Staff are proactive, and there is an air of positivity and pleasantness from the staff.
  • Staff are patient, and processes are quick; when they’re not quick, there are frequent updates provided to customers.
  • There’s more of a focus on what can be done than what cannot be done.
  • Customers don’t need to know the process or know the business or know the employees to have a really good experience.
  • Everything from the web to the facility to the paperwork is intuitive to customers.
  • There is personalization and appreciation for the customer.

 
If you want to be the best you can be, then look at these characteristics of Best Practice experiences.

Make them a part of your everyday and every interaction.

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I want to be an Astronaut – 9/10/19

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

When I was young, if a child was asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, the answers were often a fireman, a Pro Football player, a teacher, somebody who got to drive a truck, or an astronaut. Maybe the question is still asked today, and, if so, I’m not sure how similar or different the answers may be from my childhood experiences. But when the question is asked, the child is basically stating what he or she wants to become. It is sharing their vision of their future.

And once a child – or anyone of us for that matter – identifies a vision, then we can start charting the course to get there. It makes no sense to chart a course to nowhere.

It’s the same thing in the world of business and in the world of customer service. We need to start with the vision.

What do we want to become or achieve as an organization or as an individual? What is our vision for the great customer experience that we’re going to deliver to our clients, and is that their vision as well?

If the vision for the great customer experience is going to help us to achieve our overall vision, then the next step is to ask: What’s our vision for the desired culture? In theory, the culture of an organization is set up to help the organization succeed, so that culture should help to deliver a great experience, it should help to deliver on the organization’s vision!

And what is culture? It is how we do things around here. It’s how we talk to each other, how we work together, how we make decisions together, how we serve each other and serve others together.

Take a few minutes individually or as an organization and just pause. Make sure that you have a clearly articulated vision. Then work back to make sure that you know what your role is and what you need to be in order to move yourself and your organization toward that vision.

Envision the future to become the future.

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Don’t Assume because… – 8/13/19

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

You’ve probably heard this statement growing up. Your parents said, “Don’t assume, because it makes…you look bad.” Or something like that…

Recently my laptop screen died, and since it was an older laptop, I decided to go ahead and buy a new one instead of paying to have the screen replaced. Along with selling the new computer to me, the store did a data transfer from the old computer to the new computer over a weekend.

They assumed I didn’t want to check it in the store before I left, but I did. They assumed all the files were transferred from the older computer, but they weren’t. They assumed that my e-mail was setup through Exchange, but it wasn’t.

They made several other assumptions that led to mutual frustration and a negative end to what had (up to that point) been a positive experience. In this encounter, the employee was going down a path for me, and at each fork in the road she made an assumption (several times the wrong assumption), and she then had to backtrack.

Recently, CSS conducted mystery shops for a client, and this client was more concerned with asking questions than making assumptions.

They asked the shopper if we were a new business, and we were not new. They asked if we knew the URL to register for a particular beverage license, and we did not know. They asked whether we’d like to know the different ways we could submit the additional documentation needed, and we did want to know the options.

In this encounter, the employee was going down a path, and at each fork in the road, she asked the shopper a question to determine which direction to go next.

To provide a better customer experience, let the customer determine what to do at the fork in the road.

Don’t assume. Instead, ask.

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