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Gain Control of the Conversation - 9/16/25


The customer’s angry or upset or they have a complaint.  They’re very chatty or very wordy or they just want to talk to somebody.  You’re on a time crunch, and the customer obviously is not. There are times when you need to gain control of the conversation.  It’s important for Read more

Complement with a Compliment - 9/9/25


We perform many tasks for our customers every day, and when we’re done with a step in the process, oftentimes we will tell the customer what’s been done.  But if we want to create more of a WOW experience, if we want to make the customer feel a little Read more

When Patience Begets Patience - 9/2/25


Jennifer, the server, walked toward the couple in the restaurant.  The customers had been seated for a minute or two, and they noticed the server was walking briskly toward their table.  Jennifer recognized the couple she was about to serve, because they had been in the previous week. Since the Read more

Address the Expectations that Were Set - 8/26/25


Before the caller ever got to Marco – the customer service representative, the customer had been working with the company for months.  They had read the marketing brochures, had a conversation with a sales rep, reviewed the new customer information on the website, and read all the information e-mailed Read more

When Technology Fails the Customer - 8/19/25


Technology is a wonderful thing…until it isn’t.  The website is down, the mobile app won’t work, the system keeps kicking them out of their account, or they received a spoofing phone call supposedly from your department. If you’ve ever been manning the phones or managing the department inbox, you know Read more

The Misunderstood Physician - 8/12/25


I was speaking with one of my personal physicians years ago, and when we were talking about my work – particularly customer satisfaction research - he started talking about online physician ratings.  He lamented that a few low ratings were dinging his overall score.  Then he shared that the Read more

Uncover Silent Concerns - 8/5/25


One of the customer service statistics we have quoted many times over the years is:  For every complaint you do hear, there could be 26 other customer issues that you don’t hear. And when we bring up that statistic, we bring it up because we want to make sure companies Read more

Talk Yourself Up to Take Down Their Anxiety - 7/29/25


I believe that most customer service people are pretty humble, so I’m not asking you to lose your humility.  But I do have one ask of you… When that customer is anxious or nervous, when they fear the future because the future is unknown or it could be laced with Read more

Use Little Acts to Make a Big Impact - 7/22/25


A WOW Experience is not always one instance, one act that blows away the customer.  It’s not always an over-the-top-the-employee-saved-the-day act of brilliance.  Sometimes a WOW is the sum total of a series of little things that others don’t do – those actions that differentiate you from others.  The Read more

Avoid Some Stress by Addressing Issues Quickly - 7/15/25


It’s good customer service to resolve issues quickly.  The customer sees the light at the end of the tunnel.  They more quickly bring their anxiety and stress, their negative emotions down.  And they more quickly get to a solution. But this tip is not about them.  This tip is about Read more

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How Fast are Your Customers Churning?

Posted on January 25, 2011 in Business Advice, World of Customer Service Please leave a comment

In the TMC.net article titled A Challenge for T-Mobile: Reducing Sky-High Customer Churn Rates, author Tracey Schelmetic discusses the high turnover rate of customers at T-Mobile and what the company is doing about it. Essentially, over 2% of customers leave their long-term contracts monthly, or about 25% per year. To address that, the organization is going to make several changes – the first of which is tying executive compensation to customer turnover.

So this article begs the question for every company – what is your customer churn rate? I know every business has a Profit & Loss statement that shows top line revenues, but what percentage of the customers that produced those revenues last year are producing revenues for you this year? How much money did you lose last year that you have to backfill with new business this year?

Let’s just say it’s 25%. What is that in terms of dollars? How much effort has to be put into place by your Sales & Marketing forces to attract that level of dollars in new business – just to get you back to where you were last year?

Any business – large or small – needs to know their customer churn rate, their revenue loss. When you do, you begin to realize the true financial impact of customer retention. You begin to understand the importance of every interaction with customers. You begin to define how you can improve your bottom line by improving your customer service.

So how fast are your customers churning?

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/


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/


Is Patient Satisfaction More Important Than Clinical Care?

Posted on January 18, 2011 in Business Advice, Healthcare Please leave a comment

In the Healthcare Leaders Media article titled “Editor’s Note: Patient Satisfaction on the Rise,” a New England Journal of Medicine article is referenced since it noted that patients feel that the non-clinical experience is “twice as important as the hospital’s clinical reputation.” In other words, patients feel that the level of clinical care is less important than the other aspects of the experience such as customer service, communications, timeliness, processes, etc.

While I wasn’t surprised at the findings (we’ve discussed it on this blog previously), what is surprising is that the author seemed to say that this fact is actually a concern. He stated that healthcare organizations need to essentially educate the patients on healthcare quality so that they understand the greater importance of and distinctions of quality clinical care in comparison to the non-clinical experience.

Let’s look at this a different way. Let’s say that customers prefer Google over your search engine because it’s faster and easier than yours. But you feel that your search engine has prettier colors on the home page. So your approach is to educate Google customers that they need to view the colors on the home page as more important than the speed or ease of use of a search engine.

Huh?

Companies that want to retain customers will be metaphorically banging their heads against the walls if they strive to change what the customer feels is most important. The customer decides what they care about, what they feel is most important.

It’s then up to you and me to be as great as possible at delivering what the customer feels is important.

So is patient satisfaction more important than clinical care? The answer: Whatever the customer feels is most important is most important.

Don’t tell the customer what they care about isn’t that important. That’s an EASY way to lose a customer.

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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