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Be Supportive, Not Defensive - 10/7/25


[An employee on the phone with a customer…] Who told you that you didn’t have to submit that form? … Bob?  Oh brother!  You see Bob is our “special” co-worker.  He seems to always tell customers the wrong thing to do, and we’re having to clean up after him.  Read more

Some Customers LOVE Predictability - 9/30/25


I was facilitating focus groups of businesses that utilize local government services.  The phrase that popped up multiple times was “Time Is Money!”  What these municipal customers were conveying was that their time was valuable, and delays were wasting their time.  But the conversations were not just about how Read more

Find Your Special Sauce - 9/23/25


When I watch a football game and I see a great quarterback (somebody who may be considered a “Star”), he might be an excellent runner, have a big arm, be able to diagnose the defense and get his team into the right play.  But he’s likely not great at Read more

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

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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/


What’s Your HCAHPS Strategy?

Posted on August 21, 2009 in Healthcare Please leave a comment

As healthcare administrators know, HCAHPS is a comparative database to which they are reporting many different pieces of information about hospital performance, including customer service and patient satisfaction indicators.  Essentially, any individual with web access (i.e., any current or prospective customer) can go to the internet and compare your organization side-by-side with other local hospitals.  It’s a scary thought to have that kind of comparative information readily available to your customers, when you have no control over what’s displayed or how it’s displayed.

When organizations have issues in the patient satisfaction or customer service indicators, they immediately think of the need to do scripting with nurses or rounding on the floors, or training for personnel.  And while these might all be appropriate actions to take, these are typically only a part of a strategic action plan.  If you want to make adjustments and improvements in customer service and patient satisfaction performance, at some point you need to have a strategy behind it.  Most hospitals have marketing strategies. They have advertising strategies.  They do detailed planning when opening up a new wing or building a new patient tower.  But how many of them have a customer service strategy?

An effective customer service strategy focuses on the customer experience, service delivery, the corporate culture, and metrics to measure all of those components.  It focuses on management’s role in preaching and modeling the types of behaviors that lead to high levels of customer and patient satisfaction.  It has tactics listed out in a Gantt Chart format over time that helps to change the culture, get more focused on the patient, and specifically help employees to know what to do right and how to stop doing what’s causing problems.

If you want long-term success in your organization in the areas of customer service and patient satisfaction, develop, commit to, and execute a Customer Service Strategy.

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


Customer Service is Not a Privilege or a Right

Posted on August 19, 2009 in World of Customer Service 2 Comments

Many companies just flat out do not care about customer service. Even if they say that they do, many are not doing what they need to do with their operations and employee training to make that focus a reality. They often view great customer service as a privilege that they deliver when it’s convenient to them or behooves them.  That’s a lousy corporate position to take; customer service is not a privilege; customer service should be delivered if any company wants to stay in business.

But customer service also is not a right. Many consumers feel that receiving great customer service is a right, but as long as consumers have the choice of going from “Company A” to “Company B,” great customer service will never be a right.

Even though we think great customer service should be delivered, no company should have to deliver great customer service. Any company can make the decision not to deliver great customer service and therefore can suffer the repercussions of that poor service. So if great customer service is not a privilege and it’s not a right, what is it?

For the consumer, it’s a choice.  It’s a choice they have to make that if they want great customer service, they have to go to the companies that deliver great customer service. In some cases, that might mean that they have to drive an extra mile. It might mean that they might have to pay a couple percent extra. It may mean that they might not get the exact item that they want. But if people want great customer service, they usually can find it if they’re willing to make the choices they need to make.

From the company’s perspective, great customer service is a commitment.  It’s a commitment from senior management to invest in a vision and to develop and execute a plan to be great. It’s a commitment on the part of the employees to learn what they need to learn, and to deliver beyond what the customers would expect.  And it’s a commitment to a business model that firmly believes that an organization’s success starts and stops with the customer.

Great customer service is not a privilege or a right. It is a choice by the consumer, and a commitment by the company.

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


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