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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

It Shouldn’t Make a Difference, But… - 9/1/26


We have this conversation with lots of our sports clients, but the principles apply across all different industries.  Too many service representatives view a conversation with a customer as a transaction.  Just get him off the phone as quickly as possible.  The customer is Joe Public, not Joseph Pendergrass.  Read more

Use What the Customer Gives You - 8/25/26


Scenario #1: The customer sent an e-mail to the general inbox at the company.  The message noted that the customer needed to get a family member added to their account, but they couldn’t tell from the website how to do so. The next morning an employee opened up the e-mail, Read more

How Better Customer Service is Better for You - 8/18/26


Oftentimes, we have employees in training or workshops who really want to understand what’s in it for them to deliver better customer service.  How does the employee benefit from a better customer experience? Noted below are 5 different aspects of a great experience desired by the customer.  What if... The customer 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 Please leave a comment

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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