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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

When to Avoid the Escalation - 6/16/26


The customer calls with a complaint, and the easy thing to do is to escalate it to your supervisor. That may also be the right thing to do, but how do you know when to avoid the escalation? Why You Would Escalate The first thing to consider is why you would Read more

Let’s be Clear on Clarity - 6/9/26


When trying to manage expectations, it’s vital to be clear with the customer.  But what specifically does it mean to be “clear?” Clarity is in the eyes and ears of the beholder, so what may be clear to one customer may be unclear to another.  However, there are some basic Read more

Allow Yourself to Solve a Couple Puzzles Every Day - 6/2/26


Frank had never been a dog owner before, and when he first got Bosco at the shelter, Frank didn't really know what he was doing.  He would try to be a good parent - feed the dog, play with it, take it on walks - but he was doing Read more

Improve with a Purpose - 5/26/26


If you’re reading these customer service tips, you likely want to get better.  You want an idea, a technique, a reinforcement, or a question that helps you improve. But why improve? At some point you may waver on the commitment to improve, because it can take effort, introspection, time, and change.  Read more

Reciprocate the Thanks - 5/19/26


Jasmine had a great experience with the company, and the company sent her a link to provide an online evaluation following the visit.  So, she clicked the link, gave a rating, and made a comment about her experience. The company monitored their online reviews, saw the positive response, and replied Read more

Don’t Skip the Recap - 5/12/26


The playoff hockey game goes on for almost 3 hours.  There’s non-stop action, with plenty of penalties and takeaways and hits against the boards…and a few goals, as well. You didn’t get to watch the whole game because you had other plans, but you wanted to know what happened.  So, Read more

Finalize the Solution with the 6 Step Checklist - 5/5/26


In last week’s Tip, we showed why and how to Use the 6 Step Checklist before Resolving the Issue.  We noted the importance of taking 15 seconds to mentally walk through the Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How to feel confident that you know what’s needed to fix Read more

Use the 6 Step Checklist before Resolving the Issue - 4/28/26


We talk about trying to resolve the issue right the first time, sharing the technique on how to manage the conversation to get clarity on the real issue, need, or goal, and confirming your understanding before moving forward. But what are you trying to clarify?  What are you trying to Read more

Use the Customer’s Words - 4/21/26


The customer is describing a problem on what they call their “computer.” They mentioned that the “screen” doesn’t “move from one page to the other.” They say that the “website’s name is typed at the top,” and it says sample.com with a “line, and then it says ‘home’ after Read more

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Do Some Root Cause Analysis on Customer Retention Issues

Posted on August 15, 2012 in Business Advice, World of Customer Service Please leave a comment

Here are comments from a Reuters article on Leap Wireless’ earnings issues:

  • Churn — or customer defection rate — rose to 4.4 percent from 4.2 percent a year earlier
  • Customer retention programs did not work out as well as expected and came at a higher-than-anticipated cost
  • Customer retention in the quarter was also hurt by reduced promotional activity.

Now, let’s do a little root cause analysis. To analyze these points, think “cause and effect.”

The first bullet is an effect – customer churn is up. But what was the cause? The second bullet says that customer retention programs didn’t work. So that was the cause? No, that wasn’t the root cause because the 3rd bullet says that customer retention was hurt by reduced promotional activity.

So reduced promotional activity was the root cause, correct? No, because promotional activity is needed due to something else missing.

So what’s the real root cause? They obviously have more work to do to determine the root cause(s); it’s unclear if they’ve surveyed exited clients. I’m uncertain if they’ve researched demographics and other characteristics of the customers, their usage patterns, their plans to determine key drivers of churn. It’s not clear if they survey clients to identify retention drivers and act on that intelligence.

What is clear is that the company is losing money and losing customers. As with any company in this situation, they need to systematically identify the root cause instead of jumping from symptom (i.e., lower profitability or retention) to solutions (increased promotions).

Do some root cause analysis on customer retention issues.

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


Use Hospital Data to Drive Patient Loyalty

Posted on July 26, 2012 in Business Advice, Healthcare Please leave a comment

What’s most important – Satisfaction or Loyalty? In healthcare, it’s not necessarily an either/or proposition. To get to loyalty, you typically need satisfaction. Building satisfaction is facilitated by multiple visits reinforcing positive experiences. But whereas data has been vital for decades in treating patients and measuring patient satisfaction, data is much more recently being tapped to track, predict, and facilitate patient loyalty.

In the article Where do Patients’ Loyalties Lie? Building Revenue by Improving Satisfaction, the author interviews a Texas data provider to address the use of data to drive loyalty in healthcare. The author quotes a data provider that stated “they should measure their performance on [satisfaction] drivers and develop strategies to close gaps and improve performance. Hospitals should first focus on the areas with the least satisfaction and where improvement is feasible.” The article then notes that “Another way to build loyalty among patients is to ensure easy access to the organization’s services.”

So a couple of the key points – that apply to any business – include:

  • Know Satisfaction Drivers – Your organization may measure satisfaction, but does your organization statistically correlate satisfaction of individual attributes to overall Satisfaction, Willingness to Return, Willingness to Recommend, and Loyalty? Identify satisfaction and retention drivers.
  • Prioritize Improvement Efforts on Satisfaction Drivers Performing Poorly – Your organization may try to improve on poor aspects of the customer experience, but is it improving on attributes of the experience that truly impact loyalty? In other words, try to improve on what really matters.
  • Ensure Ease of Access to Services – What barriers exist to customers accessing your services, your information, your answers? Assess your website’s ease of navigation, your phone system, your directional signage to the facility, and your employees’ responsiveness to needs and requests to make sure they facilitate customer contact, not impede it.

Target improvement efforts, and eliminate barriers to loyalty.

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Achieve and Improve

Posted on June 12, 2012 in Business Advice, Healthcare Please leave a comment

Hospitals learned years ago that their reimbursement from the Federal Government would begin being impacted by patient satisfaction. Essentially, the higher patient satisfaction, the higher the reimbursement. The hospital could potentially make less money for the same services provided if the patient satisfaction level was low.

But when that impact became more well-defined over the past couple years and has become a reality, it’s interesting to see how the Federal Government adjusts its reimbursement. HCAHPS (this new government mandated measurement/reimbursement program) is changing how hospitals get reimbursed, how they’re measured, and about what they care most.

According to Janette Jones, a consultant and HCAHPS expert with the healthcare research firm The Jackson Group, starting this summer, the Government will begin withholding reimbursement from hospitals based on patient satisfaction and clinical measures. The dollar impact can be as much as $500,000 for mid-sized hospitals, and more for larger hospitals.

And while the Achievement of key levels of performance comes into the calculation today, Improvement will also be considered down the road. And as Improvement in performance is taken into account, gradually the overall impact of the reimbursement will increase until 2% of Government reimbursement (in some cases equating to millions of dollars annually) is at-risk.

So the Government is focused on patient satisfaction, and it’s asking the hospitals to focus on two factors: Achievement and Improvement.

Think about your business in this manner. If your financial success was determined in part by achieving certain levels of customer satisfaction and then continually improving customer satisfaction, how would your priorities change? How would your strategies change? How would your decisions change?

When it comes to customer satisfaction – focus on Achievement and Improvement.

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/


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