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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

Guiding Principles for Great Customer Service - 11/12/24


It’s hard to know every procedure, every policy, every technique possible to handle every situation correctly.  After all, maybe our procedures are standard, but our customers are not.  Maybe our policies stay pretty consistent, but our customers’ needs and issues, their attitudes and actions can change from customer to Read more

From a Simple Question to an Exceptional Experience - 11/5/24


Phyllis loves her job.  It’s not just because she loves being a customer service representative, not just because she really likes her co-workers, and not just because she enjoys her company.  It’s because she really appreciates her customers, as well. A customer had ordered a register book off the company Read more

Fix One Problem without Creating Another - 10/29/24


If you’ve ever had an issue with your dishwasher, this will sound familiar.  I’ve dealt with so many dishwashers over the years, and they always seem to have some kind of an issue.  Maybe it’s because of the mix of water and technology, but for whatever reason, these never Read more

Delight Your Customers - 10/22/24


Buddy the Bug Man was different.  His company was new, and the only reason why Janet tried him out was that the service she had used for years just wasn’t working.  Whether it was mosquitoes in the yard, ants in the kitchen, or cockroaches flying through on their way Read more

A More Complete Definition of Responsiveness - 10/15/24


I was purchasing something recently that was being custom-developed.  At one point, the company’s employee and I had a good 20 e-mails going back and forth - 10 from each of us.  Unfortunately, I broke my own rule, and I did not pick up the phone after 2 or Read more

Have a Game Plan to Address Their Anxiety - 10/8/24


It seems like we all get deliveries - whether it is UPS, USPS, FedEx, Amazon, the local courier, or all the above.  We order.  They deliver.  Or do they? It’s times like these, when we’re expecting that package, that item that we’re looking forward to or need urgently or are Read more

How Persistence Saved the Day - 10/1/24


Sherrie saw the customer walk into her store holding his cell phone, and Sherrie immediately knew that was William.  She had spoken to William on the phone about an hour ago, he said he would be at Sherrie’s cell phone store in less than an hour, and there he Read more

Notice the Little Changes - 9/24/24


“My, how times have changed.” Yes, times have changed.  As a matter of fact, one of the biggest reasons why an organization’s customer service deteriorates is that times have changed…customers have changed…and the company has not… If we think about customer service delivery today v. decades ago, changes in technology alone Read more

Don’t Hurry…Be Quick - 9/17/24


No, this is not a take off on the Bobby McFerrin song:  Don’t Worry Be Happy. It’s actually a take off on the John Wooden quote:  Be quick, but don’t hurry. When I read Wooden’s book with this title, I liked the concept, and not just because John Wooden was a Read more

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What You Must Know to Keep Your Customers

Posted on December 19, 2012 in Business Advice, World of Customer Service Please leave a comment

Bad economies make companies truly focus on good customer service and the importance of customer retention. And when businesses try to retain more customers, they often fall prey to the desire to create a new benefit, institute a new loyalty program, or launch a new customer retention effort which is – in reality – just marketing gone bad.

So instead of suggesting you create some costly initiative, let’s start with creating a common understanding of the knowledge you need to have to best keep your customers:

  • Know why they would leave, and address it. This means, what do they expect from the experience? From the quality of the product or service? From your level of customer service?
  • Know who you want to keep most – and why (typically because of profitability or longer-term impact) – and target more of your efforts on these customers. No company has infinite resources with which to use the most personalized and labor/cost-intensive methods of keeping customers. So you have to know with whom you make the personal visit (high cost touch), and with whom you send the personalized e-mail (low cost touch).
  • Know who’s most at-risk of leaving, and create strategies to keep them. Target, target, target. Don’t spend the same time and energy and money keeping everyone, if you know a certain percentage of customers are almost certainly going to stay with you. And how will you know? Simply ask them, and also look at historical data to identify common characteristics of former customers.
  • Know how to become vital to their day-to-day lives or success. If they can’t efficiently get their job done without your software or research, if they can’t get their need met well without your product, if you are the supplier of something that’s imperative to their daily personal or professional lives, you have significant leverage in retention.
  • Know how to make it easy to become your customer…and more difficult to leave. Is the customer’s signup with your organization a piece of cake? Can a first time customer navigate your organization and your processes/policies as easy as a long-term customer? If so, you’re golden. On the back end of the relationship, you don’t want to make it impossible to leave (then you’re dealing with ethical concerns), but if the customer needs to replace what you provide, and that effort or time (in addition to the effort and time and cost of going to your competitor) are high, they may not make the move.

Know what you need to know to keep your customers.

Read our New Book – “Ask Yourself…Am I GREAT at Customer Service?” http://www.amigreatat.com/

Listen to our latest podcast episode of “Stepping Up Service” on The MESH Network at http://themesh.tv/stepping-up-service/

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


A Face Lift…for Your Patient Satisfaction

Posted on December 5, 2012 in Business Advice, Healthcare Please leave a comment

When measuring patient satisfaction, healthcare organizations often make two key errors. First, they focus on measuring how often something happens? For example, How frequently did the nurse check on you? How often did they ask about pain? How many times did they clean the room? While these functions are important, the quality of the interaction and care provided are just as important if not more so. Also, some patients want to be checked on continuously and others want to be told how long the wait will be until the next step and only checked on when there may be a delay. So measuring frequency alone limits what you can learn, and it can point an organization down the wrong road in their improvement efforts.

The second error? Focusing too much on employee attitudes. Yes, these attitudes have a huge impact on patient satisfaction, but the best attitude in the world cannot overcome inordinately long waits, redundant paperwork, lack of responsiveness, poor quality food, lack of cleanliness, and unacceptable patient care. Attitudes are but a piece of the patient satisfaction puzzle.

In the article, Dr. Patti Flint Touts Importance of Surveys to Improve Patient Experience, an Arizona plastic surgeon is highlighted because of her improvement in patient care – which she notes as having been driven by the results of patient satisfaction surveys. But what’s interesting about the surveys is that much of the focus was on measuring patient perceptions of key touch points in the care process. According to the article, “Because every interaction from the first phone call to the last follow-up appointment factors into a patient’s overall satisfaction, each point of patient contact is scrutinized for ways to improve the patient experience. Creating a positive atmosphere for her patients involves the entire staff at Patti Flint MD PC, and survey responses lead to constant innovation in practice procedures.”

When asking patients to evaluate their experience, address employee Attitudes, Processes, and the Quality of the Services provided. But don’t just look for overall evaluations. Get the patient and their family to evaluate key contact points through the entire process.

Understand where communications flowed well and didn’t. Learn how hand-offs of the patient and their information from one step to another worked…and didn’t. Identify what needs improvement in the entire service delivery chain…and doesn’t.

To give your patient satisfaction a face lift, first start by understanding all the steps involved in the patient experience through the customer’s eyes.

Listen to our latest podcast episode of “Stepping Up Service” on The MESH Network at http://themesh.tv/stepping-up-service/

Check out our Healthcare Patient Satisfaction Evaluation and Improvement Services at http://cssamerica.com/csshealth.htm


Zappos Customer Service – Measure to Make it Great

Posted on November 28, 2012 in Business Advice, World of Customer Service Please leave a comment

Want some shoes? Want some great customer service? Many people who answer “yes” to these questions, head to Zappos.com. And although Zappos has a reputation for great customer service, its customer service reputation is not built on hype (although I’m sure there’s some of that) and subjective self-evaluations.

Sustaining great customer service is built on sound business practices, data, decision-making, and a focus on continuous improvement.

In the article A Zappos Lesson in Customer Service Metrics, CRM blogger Ashley Furness details some of the metrics Zappos uses to measure customer service success. Here are four metrics on which a customer service representative’s performance is measured:

  • “Did the agent try twice to make a personal emotional connection?
  • Did they keep the rapport going after the customer responded to their attempt?
  • Did they address unstated needs?
  • Did they provide a “wow experience?”

If you dig deep into why they’re measured, you see that the first three metrics suggest that creating and sustaining a personal connection is important, emotion is important, and being inquisitive is important.

The fourth metric about the “WOW experience” is more difficult to measure. We created a podcast episode on the WOW experience because a WOW experience is not easy to create each time, but it is something that can be somewhat planned. And the WOW experience is also customer-dependent – what might WOW one customer might not WOW the next.

So focus on the first three metrics, and ask yourself, do you create personal connections with customers? Do you sustain them throughout the conversation? Do you see or feel emotion from the customer? And are you asking enough questions to identify and address unstated needs?

Design the WOW, but make sure you consistently deliver on these other keys to customer service success.

Listen to our latest podcast episode of “Stepping Up Service” on The MESH Network at http://themesh.tv/stepping-up-service/


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