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When You’re the Educator, What Should You Teach? - 1/21/25


The best customer service professionals are also excellent educators.  Not only within the organization, but I’m talking specifically about the role they play as educator with their customers.  With all the self-service options that technology provides, customers often have the opportunity to do things on their own, to investigate Read more

Wrap It Up Right: Why Follow-Up Communications WOW Customers - 1/14/25


Dena had some questions about her water bill, so she looked for answers on the utility’s website.  She didn’t find specific answers, and she really didn’t want to get on the phone with somebody at the time and risk staying on hold.  She had lots going on, but she Read more

From Conversation to Connection: Defining Customer Engagement - 1/7/25


Maggie was sitting in the Service Excellence Training class, and the instructor kept talking about staying engaged with the customer.  Proactively engaging the customer.  Being fully engaged in the conversation. After hearing this same phrase (“engage”) used in various ways, Maggie raised her hand and asked a question probably several Read more

Self-empower for the New Year - 12/31/24


Jeff joined the company, in part, because he loved their approach to culture.  Leadership tried to create an empowerment culture.  They tried to develop an environment where, within certain parameters, individual team members could make a decision and feel confident that they would be supported by leadership. The reality was Read more

2024 Holiday Poem - 12/24/24


I sometimes hear it said That things have never been like this before. That challenges are unique, That stresses seem like more.   I sometimes hear it said That we're asked to do much more with less. That workloads are increasing, And we're resource-constrained at best.   And others often say That things are really very good. That they enjoy those Read more

Is Their Poor Planning Your Emergency? - 12/17/24


Have you ever heard the saying:  Your poor planning is not my emergency. I’ve heard it said often – not necessarily directly from one person to another.  More typical is that I hear it from the person having to drop everything and do something immediately because someone else didn’t think Read more

Empathy Examples for Everyday Situations - 12/10/24


I’ve often said that empathy is the single most important characteristic of people who are great at customer service.  If empathy is essentially “to understand the other person,” it helps so much to have that ability in order to specifically help someone.  To talk to what’s unique about them.  Read more

Tell Them Why You’re Giving Thanks - 12/3/24


Thank you! Merci! Danke! Doumo! Gracias! It seems like every language has a translation of Thank You.  Even though I only fluently speak English and speak Spanish, un poco, I – and probably most of you – have heard some or all of the translations of "Thank You” noted above.  Read more

Refine Your Decision-making Process - 11/26/24


Every day, you make decisions of what to do and what not to do.  And in the world of customer service, often the affected parties are our customers, our co-workers, and our company.  Here are a few quotes to consider when you’re thinking about evaluating and refining your decision-making Read more

Acting on the Guiding Principles for Great Customer Service - 11/19/24


In last week’s tip, we shared 5 Guiding Principles for Great Customer Service.  This week, let’s address what “taking action” looks like on those key principles.  If last week was about what to do and WHY, this week is about the HOW. Engage with Interest: To engage with interest, proactively Read more

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Service and Sales Need to Talk

Posted on December 14, 2009 in Business Advice, Sports Please leave a comment

We are fortunate to have a lot of professional sports clients. Typically when working with these organizations, the dual focus is season-ticket holder retention and sales growth. Many teams focus on creating synergies between their services area and their sales area. It is not just important for pro sports teams; it is also important for any organization. Let’s stick with the pro sports analogy to illustrate the point.

One key term used in the business side of pro sports is the need to create “synergies” between departments. In particular, one of the biggest potential areas of synergy is the service area creating sales leads for the sales division. This is a situation where service personnel identify potential group sales, event sales, or ticket sales through the relationship they have with their existing season-ticket holders. The service areas then send these leads to the sales departments to close. The synergies not only help the organization to perform better financially, but they help your organization to quickly generate sales by having the sales be created through leads generated from the greatest referral source there is – your current clients.

But thinking a little out of the box in terms of the relationships between these two areas, one great way where service and sales need to talk is where the education of one group by the other will pay dividends to the company. For example, salespeople know how to sell. They know the strategies, the mental decision trees, and the techniques to utilize. While many customer service people may detest selling, they must also realize that to do the best job possible in serving their clients, they need to periodically make offers on products and services to help address client needs. You’re actually doing a disservice if you don’t sell to some of your clients because they’re not getting their needs met. The sales personnel need to train service on key selling techniques.

Similarly, service needs to train sales. Sales people often think in a very transactional manner. While some are very process or relationship oriented, many more don’t understand how to think long-term and how to develop relationships using a long-term strategy. Service people in pro sports teams understand the concept of Touch Point Planning. They understand how to develop a relationship over time, viewing your customers as suppliers of information that will help you to retain them and sell to them in the future. Service personnel can teach sales folks how to be very disciplined and how to structure communication points with their clients, realizing that they need to get information from the customers in order to best sell to the customers.

While there are many organizations that experience friction between service and sales, the organizations that are most effective are those where service and sales talk with and teach each other.

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


Electric Service

Posted on December 11, 2009 in Business Advice, Carolinas Please leave a comment

Do you have an electrical problem in your house? You know, your front porch light never comes on, or you wake up to find your ceiling fan dangling by a few wires above your bed. Maybe you need a new light installed or you need a lamp you bought at a garage sale to be rewired.

In most communities, finding an electrician that you can trust is like finding the proverbial needle in the haystack. But in Charlotte, North Carolina, we are blessed with a small firm that has won recognition for their customer service in national publications. The company is Amherst Electric. The reason why were talking about them in a customer service blog is that customer service is what makes them special. They always do the install correctly, and they always fix the problem. And they do so at a reasonable price, where you never feel like the business is taking advantage of your lack of technical skills or knowledge.

What makes them special is that this is the company you call on the phone, and they immediately answer. You ask for advice, and they give it to you over the phone. If you want to try something yourself, they give you some pointers to consider. They schedule the time, and then they actually show up when scheduled. It’s the kind of company that you want to refer to others. It’s the kind of people that are a joy to talk to.

When they are working in your home, they don’t wish you to leave them alone. If you have things to do, that’s fine. But if you’d like to talk to them about what’s going on, they’re more than happy to walk you through the process as they are doing the fix or the install.

There are gems out there in the service world. And usually those organizations are gems not just because they’re technically proficient, but it’s because they understand and live the true value and meaning of service excellence.

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


Don’t Wait on Fixing Waits

Posted on December 10, 2009 in Business Advice, Healthcare Please leave a comment

Where do you hear the loudest customer complaints in the typical hospital of today? It’s the Emergency Room.

“Why have I waited so long?!” “Why did that person on the stretcher go back to a room before me?! I was here first!” “I’ve been here 2 hours, and nobody’s told me anything!”

These complaints are pervasive, but they also point to the impact of customer service. Remember that customer service involves processes. Customer service is part employee attitudes/skills/knowledge, and the other part is process. How long something takes, how long are the waits, how efficient is a process, how redundant are the processes, how smooth the flow of information and people is or isn’t – those are all characteristics of process.

And whereas businesses spend lots of money every year to have employees trained on how to deal with irate customers, a tactic just as valuable as that is to identify the root causes of why customers are irate and to address those root causes. In healthcare, so many of those complaints are about one thing – process.

So if you want your organization to be better from a customer service-perspective in your customers’ eyes, if you want to reduce the number of conflicts with customers which your employees have to address, then fix your processes. Find out where waits exist, the cause of the waits, the communications during the waits, and perceptions of the length of the wait time, and address them.

Many of our clients redesign departmental layouts, they change processes, they do a better job of scheduling staff to flex up/down with variations by time-of-day or day-of-week with customer volumes or arrival rates. They train staff on how to and how often to interact with customers during wait to provide updates, keep them engaged, convey they care, and – ultimately – to reduce the perception of the wait time. The clients create activities for the customers or distractions which help to reduce the perception of the wait times.

In other words, the hospitals and other organizations best at dealing with waits try to reduce wait times while at the same time reducing the perception of waits.

Wait times are a symptom of an issue with your customer service. Don’t wait on fixing waits.

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


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