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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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Don’t Be Afraid to Ask the Tough Questions

Posted on September 8, 2009 in Business Advice, Government Please leave a comment

We have worked with several business retention and expansion organizations (BRE) that support local municipalities and economic development associations over the years.  These BRE groups are charged with trying to retain and grow local jobs.  In order to be successful, these organizations need to have some information in advance of what could happen to local jobs, of what could happen to local facilities, of what could happen to local employers.

So with our BRE clients, we suggest that they conduct surveys, if possible, on an annual basis. These surveys are either online, via the telephone, or via in-person interviews where local business leaders 1-on-1 are providing information. The information they provide to the BRE staff includes their thoughts on the local business climate, trends in their industry, and their current company’s financial performance. But one key set of questions that also needs to be included relates to business retention. In other words, if you are a business retention and expansion organization wanting to be proactive in retaining and growing local jobs, you need to have intelligence that enables you to look into the future.

Every survey, every tool, every instrument that is trying to garner intelligence for BRE organizations needs to make sure it is asking the basic and tough questions that it should:

  • How likely is the business to relocate in the next 12 months?
  • What leadership changes are expected over the next 1 to 2 years?
  • If facilities are leased, will those leases come due in the next 12 months?
  • Are you being recruited right now by other municipalities?
  • What change in the number of jobs are you expecting locally over the next 12 months?

If organizations truly want to live their core mission, they need to be willing to ask the tough questions.

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


What is Your Post-Exit Strategy?

Posted on August 31, 2009 in Business Advice, Sports Please leave a comment

Every year, professional sports teams lose season ticket holders.  These season ticket holders exit the organization because of a myriad of reasons.  With the economy like it has been over the last 18 months in particular, professional sports teams are losing season ticket holders at an alarming rate.  Many pro sports organizations deal with these issues by ramping up their advertising and marketing efforts.  Many others chalk up the losses to a bad economy, but few of these organizations really have a strategy targeted at these former season ticket holders.

These ticketholders have left; so what is your strategy post-exit?

Some of the best sales prospects your organization can have are former customers. You already have a great deal of intelligence on your former customers. You already know their likes and dislikes, their preferences, what’s most important to them, key demographic information, and their purchase history. Well, at least you should know all this information.

The two things you don’t know are two pieces of information that can make you a lot of money very quickly. The first piece of information is the specific reason or reasons why they left. This is where you avoid making broad assumptions about the season ticket holder base, and you look specifically at each one to determine why they left. You would probably be shocked to find out why the individual season ticket holders left even though you might be able to guess broadly about the major reasons why season ticket holders left. By knowing why they left, it helps in future conversations to help get them back.

The second piece of information that’s vital is their likelihood of future interest in your products and services, or as pro sports teams focus, on tickets. You have to know what level of interest they have and in what type of individual game ticket, a mini plan, or some form of full season plan. Without this information, you don’t know enough to have an efficient sales pitch with a former client.

So what is your post-exit strategy?

With our pro sports clients, it includes conducting Exit Interviews in a soft form with the season ticket holders to gather intelligence about these key pieces of information. And then to use the results of that research to both apply to current season ticket holders to best retain them but also — in the hopes of increasing revenue — to make targeted sales pitches at the former season ticket holders.

Your lost season ticket holder is one of your greatest sources of future revenue. Have a strategy for getting them back.

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


With Customer Service in the Education Industry, Perception is Reality

Posted on August 28, 2009 in Business Advice, Education Please leave a comment

Our company has conducted literally thousands of mystery shops in the Education industry, everything from an elementary school to a four year university. And one thing we have noticed consistently is that when it comes to customer service in Education, perception is reality.

When you don’t respond to e-mails in Education, they perceive you’re non-responsive. When customers or parents or students are forced to wait long periods of time without having the wait acknowledged, they perceive that they are not important to you. When the customer has to complete the same information on multiple forms, they feel you’re inefficient. When they leave you a voice mail, and you don’t respond two or three days later, they feel like you don’t care.

Maybe you are organized, maybe you do care, maybe you are responsive, maybe you are organized.  But from the customer’s perspective, you’re not.  And if the customer – whether that be a student or parent or family member or even an internal customer or co-worker – perceives something, then to them it is a reality. And when those people are making decisions about whether to recommend you or not, they are making the decision based on their perception.

When they’re making a decision about whether to talk bad about your organization or you personally in front of others or whether to talk positively, they are making that decision based on their perceptions. When they are recommending you to others or recommending that others go elsewhere and avoid your educational institution, they are basing their recommendation on their perceptions of your organization.  And if they are deciding to attend your school or go elsewhere, if they are deciding to pay tuition or just delay some payments for a while, they are basing these decisions on how they feel about, how they perceive your organization.

For educational institutions, if you want to improve what others perceive about you, you need to be measuring it and taking it seriously.  Because in the decisions people make, it doesn’t matter what you do or what you intended to do as much as it matters what they perceive about you and your organization.

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


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