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Last Impression Faux Pas - 11/4/25


Rightfully so, many customer service experts harp on the importance of the first impression.  It happens quickly, and it can impact the individual’s perception of you and the organization.  We even wrote a Tip of the Week on this years ago called First Impression Faux Pas. What many people tend Read more

Familying with Customers - 10/28/25


In our transactional society, it’s hard to think about customers in the long-term.  But if we want to be as successful as we can as an individual or as a business, we need to view customers through a relationship lens. What do we need to know about them to Read more

Avoid These Techniques - 10/21/25


We had a Customer Service Tip of the Week recently that addressed gaining control of the conversation.  One of the key points was that the focus should be on gaining control of conversations in various circumstances, but trying to avoid making it your goal to gain control of the Read more

View Quality through the Customer’s Eyes - 10/14/25


Geri had been dealing with backups in the downstairs plumbing system of her house on and off for the past year.  The most recent company that she called in to unclog the pipes stated that they could send a camera down the pipes and tell her exactly where the Read more

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

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Act During Customer Service Week – This Week!

Posted on October 6, 2009 in Business Advice Please leave a comment

The clock is ticking. We are in the middle of Customer Service Week, and there are few times during the year when the gods of customer retention look down on us and place a gift right in our lap. The gift is having a week set-aside for us to focus on two key customer groups: 1) Those clients of ours that buy our products and services and help us to stay afloat, and 2) Our key internal customers — the employees.

With Customer Service Week here, we all have the perfect excuse to reach out to our clients to thank them for sticking with us, to convey appreciation for their referrals, to ask about what we can improve, and to reignite relationships that had gone flat because you’re so busy searching for the next new customer. We have the perfect excuse to interview them, survey them, ask them questions, use them as a supplier of information to make us better. We have the perfect excuse to say “hello” without putting them under pressure to buy our services.

So much of customer satisfaction is driven by the employees. Employees convey the attitudes of whether we care or are indifferent. The employees execute the processes that result in quick turnaround or long delays. The employees do the work that makes things happen right the first time or results in errors and rework. And employees act on the communications that convey that we are responsive or that we are lax in our customer dealings. The employees have such a huge impact on the end-customer’s satisfaction that we need to model, as managers, the behaviors that we expect of these employees by treating them as we would expect them to treat their customers.

So this is a great time to recognize employees for the tremendous value they provide in our ongoing operations and our trek toward our long-term vision for success. Reward employees for staying with you and growing with you, so you don’t have to spend so much time working your HR people to death, trying to find warm bodies to replace highly skilled individuals.  This is a time to simply thank employees for making your organization look good, since to many customers the employees ARE your company.

Take action this week to appreciate your internal and external customers.

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


What David and Goliath Can Learn From Each Other

Posted on September 14, 2009 in Business Advice, World of Customer Service Please leave a comment

Customer service may be a universal term, but it does not have universal definition. Oftentimes that difference in the definition is based on the size of the businesses.  So let’s look at what the Davids and Goliaths of the business world can learn from each other.

Most small businesses are about client relationships. Relationship building is vitally important to small businesses because they don’t have large budgets for advertising and marketing; so when they get a customer, they must whatever they can to develop relationships with and keep those customers.

Next, small businesses typically have personnel who are easy to get a hold of. If you have a question or you need something, you’re typically no more than a couple conversations away from talking to the company president. When you call in, you’re often talking to somebody who has a vast knowledge of the entire operations as well.

Finally, small businesses work extremely hard to quickly resolve issues – to keep that customer.  Keep in mind that customers – based on many national studies – have a much higher likelihood of repurchase if issues are resolved and resolved quickly.

Large businesses need to do likewise. They need to focus on relationship building, not just transaction closing.  They need to make it easy for customers to get an answer to a question.  And they need to have dedicated resources who can jump on issues when they arise.

But small businesses can also learn from large businesses.

For example, large organizations who are great at customer service have strategies on how to manage customer data, track information on customer utilization of products and services, and retain and grow with those clients.

Large organizations also measure a great deal.  They want to know how the customers feel, so they do customer satisfaction surveys. They want to understand what the customer experience is like, so many do mystery shopping. They measure issue resolution rates and helpdesk inquiries.

Many large businesses also focus heavily on alignment.  They have accountabilities in place for when staff fall short of expectations as well as incentives so that employees will have some reason to exhibit the behaviors with customers that will actually achieve the organizational goals.

Small businesses need to do likewise. They need customer retention and growth strategies.  They need to track customer satisfaction, issues, and other factors so they can make data-driven decisions to continuously improve their customer service.  And they need accountability and incentive pieces in place to align behaviors of staff with organizational goals.

To improve customer service performance, sometimes it helps to look at the nimbleness and personalized characteristics of the small business as well as the structure and data-driven orientation of the large business.

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


Understanding the “Community” Aspect of Community College

Posted on September 11, 2009 in Business Advice, Education Please leave a comment

When most people think of college, they think of going to an institution to learn. They think of the classes and the schoolbooks. They think of teachers and the classroom environment. In the world of community colleges, life is no different. However, when you think of the term “community college,” at some point we need to focus on the word “community.”

The word “community” is important because the community college typically supports a relatively small geographic region. It typically supports a population of people in close proximity.  What is said about the college, what is believed about the college can be transmitted from person to person very quickly in a community.  And so much of the success of community colleges is the success (or lack thereof) of that word-of-mouth – the conversation that takes place between family members and friends and co-workers about what experiences are like at a community college.

And that word-of-mouth is important.  It’s important because it helps to either raise the profile in a positive way such that people are drawn to the college, or it can bring down the general perception of the college such that individuals are unwilling to even give the college a chance.  And the perception that led to that word-of-mouth is often a perception in the mind of existing students who potentially could drop out or come back for additional courses. The perception is in the mind of potentially qualified employees who are considering where to work. If they hear great things, then they might apply for a job. If they hear awful word-of-mouth, then they may go elsewhere. So the perception that the community has of the community college can impact volumes, revenues, retention rates, and the ability to acquire and retain highly qualified employees.

Community colleges need to make sure they understand the drivers of the perception that others have of the institution, they need to understand how to develop relationships with the community, they need to understand how to create a culture of responsiveness and customer service, and they need to make sure that they are measuring this perception and acting on trends over time.

Make sure that the community has a positive perception of your organization.

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


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