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Don’t Harp on the Customer’s Mistake - 6/24/25


Seth’s daughter, Sarah, had missed some swim classes, and Seth remembered that the aquatics center had several make-up classes available late in the summer.  So Seth pulled up the class schedule on his phone, found one that worked on his and Sarah’s schedules, and planned to attend a session Read more

Create Customers for Life - 6/17/25


Veronica has gone to the same automotive service shop for at least 20 years.  She bought a new car about a year ago, and this is the third car she’s brought to the shop instead of taking her car to the dealer where she bought it.  She’s had three Read more

Don’t Turn the Customer into the QA Department - 6/10/25


Roberta received a form with information filled in by the company after her conversation with the account rep.  Roberta just needed to review the information, fill in some of the blanks, sign it, and resend it in order to set up a new account. She noticed that the effective date Read more

Imitate to Improve - 6/3/25


Oscar Wilde said that “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”  Now this doesn’t mean that plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery.  Nor does it mean that great impersonators such as Rich Little, Dana Carvey, or Frank Caliendo are always offering flattering portrayals of those that they imitate. Wilde’s Read more

How the Customer Perceives a Truth as a Lie - 5/27/25


You’re the customer, you’re asking about an unused item that you’re returning, and you hear the employee say: “The refund process takes 7-10 days.”  You’re thinking: “Great!  I can get the refund check as early as a week from today!”  The reality is that the company means that they’ll Read more

Tell Customers What’s Next - 5/20/25


In most businesses that have been around for a while, how a process was originally designed is not how it currently operates.  Sometimes this change is referred to as “practical drift,” where the actual process moves further and further away from the documented steps over time.  Maybe the changes Read more

Questions to Guide You to Empathy - 5/13/25


“If I was him, I would do ABC…” If you’ve ever heard somebody say this - whether it’s a friend or acquaintance, whether it’s some TV reporter or podcaster - you may get as frustrated or as annoyed as I do. I get annoyed because we are not that other person. Read more

Negate the Nervousness - 5/6/25


The customer needed a loan, so he walked into the bank, but he was a little nervous.  He knew that launching his business would be easier if he had some working capital, but that’s about all he knew.  He was anxious because he didn’t know what to expect in Read more

Don’t Rush to Resolve Quickly - 4/29/25


The customer is angry, so you use the CSS LEAD technique as designed.  You, listen, empathize, accept responsibility, and deliver on a remedy.  But it doesn’t work.  The customer is still upset, and maybe even a little more frustrated than when you started…why?! If the use of this technique fails, Read more

Energy v. Apathy - 4/22/25


I asked a couple friends who are much more scientifically-oriented the question: What is energy?  I didn’t mean E=MC2.  I meant physiologically, what is energy? They described a lot of things that sounded really good, yet far too advanced for my non-medical mind. Part of the reason why energy is of Read more

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In Government, Do You Want Good Customer Service or Low Costs?

Posted on March 19, 2014 in Business Advice, Government Please leave a comment

Blog 3-19-14Quality, Price, Service – Select any 2.

This is the sign that supposedly hangs (or hung) in dry cleaners across the country. The point is, you can’t have all 3, so figure out – essentially – what you DON’T want.

In the world of customer service, organizations often have a similar question – Do we want good customer service or low costs?

This is based on the assumption that you can’t have great customer service without increasing costs. The recent article Water operations review in GA county seeks cost savings, customer service improvements notes how one Georgia county is trying to do both.

The DeKalb County Department of Watershed Management (DWM) has hired a consulting firm to evaluate organizational efficiencies, but in doing so also improve customer service. There isn’t a great deal of detail in the article, but you can glean some of the strategy by what’s included in the article: “The partnership is also expected to improve customer service and reduce wait times for customers. A thorough review of the utility’s administration, planning, operations, maintenance and capital programs, customer service, and billing and collections will also occur.”

To improve customer service, one key is to view customer service as the composition of the employee attitudes and the service processes. More standardized, high-quality processes often are more efficient and result in less rework, fewer complaints to address, and higher productivity. This equates to lower cost.

The review of multiple departments suggests that they’re looking from a structure and process perspective to find inefficiencies in internal processes, internal communications, and communications about customer needs/issues. Streamlining internal processes often results in improved efficiency, and designing processes and customer communications to be better coordinated usually improves the customer experience.

It is definitely possible to reduce costs and improve customer service at the same time. The key is to look at processes and communications: Where is the poor quality? There’s a cost to poor quality. Where are the complaints? There’s a cost to address those. Where is there a lack of standardization? There’s financial benefit to moving to best practice. Where are the redundancies? There’s savings from eliminating waste.

Learn a little from these water works – focus on process and communications to reduce costs and increase customer satisfaction.

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