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Build Goodwill with Co-workers and Customers - 11/10/26


All relationships are different.  We want to have good relationships with co-workers, after all – those are the people we spend the most time with each week.  We want to have good relationships with customers since they’re the ones that provide the revenue and inflows that allow us to Read more

How to Avoid “Groundhog Day” - 11/3/26


It’s Groundhog Day, where you’re living the same day over and over and over again. You have heard basically the same complaint from 4 different customers in the past week.  The bill is incorrect or confusing, and you’re having to spend a ton of time explaining things to the customer. You’ve Read more

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

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Easy v. WOW!

Posted on August 4, 2011 in Business Advice Please leave a comment

What do Nike, Bank of America, and Earthlink have in common?

They were all part of a research study recently conducted by the Corporate Executive Board. One of the core focus areas of the study was the link between customer service and loyalty. Although much of the study addressed the call center experience, the key findings were meaty enough for any organization to learn something.

There were 3 key findings I want to highlight:

· Exceeding customer expectations had a moderate impact on loyalty.

· Satisfaction does not predict loyalty.

· Reducing effort has the greatest impact on loyalty.

Again, this is a call center-focused survey, but the key point to glean is that the effort that the customer has to go through to work with your organization (to get their question answered, to get an issue resolved, to go through a process) has a significant impact on their loyalty.

This gets at process. This gets at looking at process from the customer’s perspective. This gets at having an organization that tries to make it easy on the customer to do business with you.

This says that in many cases, “Easy” is more important than “Wow!”

So ask yourself, how easy is it for your customers to do business with you? How easy is it for them to get a question answered, an issue resolved, or to go through a process of yours?

To impact loyalty, make it easy on the 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/


Why the President Wanted to Mystery Shop

Posted on July 27, 2011 in Business Advice, Government, Healthcare Please leave a comment

You may have read the articles that came out recently that addressed the Federal Government’s plans to call different physician practices as a prospective patient. These callers would not have asked questions for the true purpose of learning the answer or becoming a patient. These are mystery shoppers. These are individuals who call to see how certain questions are answered and how certain policies are applied.

Essentially what the Federal Government wanted to do was to determine if some physician practices are turning away patients or delaying their access to care/appointments if they do not have a preferred form of health insurance. It wanted to use these mystery shoppers to identify people who are not doing essentially what they’re supposed to be doing.

It’s interesting that many companies use mystery shopping in this “gotcha” manner. This is why so many employees are negative toward mystery shopping. They feel like it is something being done to catch employees doing wrong. Staff feel like the only reason why they’re being shopped is so they can be caught and dealt with in some kind of a punitive manner.

But mystery shopping done effectively tries to gauge consistency of service, responses, and processes across the organization, from person-to-person and facility-to-facility. Mystery shopping done right tries to identify what internal best practices exist so that they can be leveraged across the organization. Mystery shopping done right identifies organizations do great, and what organizations need to improve upon. And mystery shopping done right also includes sometimes contacting your company’s competitors to see where you have a competitive edge and where you’re falling short through the customer’s eyes.

So while we understand the Federal Government trying to identify who is doing things in the most appropriate way, we encourage you to have a broader perspective in the use of mystery shopping. Use mystery shopping to reward, recognize, find internal best practices, find areas which are opportunities for improvement, and find ways to beat your competitors.

Mystery shop to improve performance.

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/


Shuttering Self-Checkout?

Posted on July 14, 2011 in Business Advice, World of Customer Service Please leave a comment

No more self-checkout at the grocery store?

According to the Dallas Morning News, several grocery store chains are going that direction. Some are eliminating self-checkout entirely (like Albertsons) while others are going to a Euro checkout style (like Krogers) where one main customer line feeds the multiple checkout registers.

While we’re not going to suggest that these stores are simply nuts for eliminating self-checkout (I haven’t yet seen the true, financial rationale they used to make this decision), there are some potential issues with shuttering self-checkout. The main issue is that some customers prefer self-checkout. It’s about choice. It’s about control. It’s about usually having a shorter wait. It’s about privacy.

There are LOTS of reasons why people like self-checkout, so my question comes down to “Are the financial benefits of not offering it (e.g., efficiency gains and potentially reduced theft) outweighing the potential in lost business from customers who will go elsewhere for this self-serve option?”

When making decisions impacting the bottom line, make sure your business doesn’t just focus on cost savings. Make sure it takes into account the revenue impact of customer loss.

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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