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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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Van Gogh the Vision – 11/16/21

Posted on November 16, 2021 in Customer Service Tip of the Week Please leave a comment

Want to create Service Excellence in your organization?  Have a vision, then paint the picture of that vision.  It’s easier to create something if you can visualize it first, so let’s Van Gogh a Vision.

Excellent customer service is delivered in a courteous manner.  Courtesy comes through when employees are pleasant, they smile, they use the basics of “please” and “thank you,” the basics of “yes, sir” and “yes, ma’am.”  Courtesy comes through when we are polite, and we have a caring tone about us.

Service Excellence is also delivered with respect, and customers nowadays want respect.  So, what does respect look like?  Respectful customer service is delivered in such a way that our body language, our smiles, how we say things, our attentiveness to the customer, and the phrases we use – they all tend to put the customer in the light of being more important than our co-worker, more important than our paperwork, more important than any task we have in front of us.

And if you look at Service Excellence from the perspective of you being a consumer, think about what makes an organization appear to have excellent customer service.

You usually know you are experiencing great customer service when the organization seems to go above and beyond the basics for you.  They anticipate your needs.  They greet you up front and show appreciation on the backend.  They are responsive to the voicemail and e-mail messages.  They are responsive to your needs.  They tell you what to expect, and then they do what they say they are going to do.

Finally, to Van Gogh the Vision, look at organizations that have the reputation of being great at customer service – Disney, Chick-fil-A, and FedEx, for example.  What do they do?  They are consistently good.  They are accurate.  They are quick.  You can trust their timeliness.  They try to create an experience for the customer, not just a product.  They have key core mission and vision statements so that everybody knows why they exist and where they are going.  These are organizations that truly care about their customer, realizing if we convey that caring and meet their needs, then we will have the best chance possible of keeping that customer.

Van Gogh your Vision of Service Excellence.

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First E-mail Impression? I’ll Enjoy Working with You – 11/9/21

Posted on November 9, 2021 in Customer Service Tip of the Week Please leave a comment

When you provide consulting, research, and training services like we do, you meet a variety of people, and many of them are new individuals to work with even if they are in organizations you’ve worked with for years.

When I meet the new customer or they meet me for the first time, it’s easy to form a quick opinion about each other.  Much of the opinion is based on the first few interactions that we have, and often – in today’s world – those first few interactions are via e-mail.

And while my opinion may change down the road, usually the first impression tells much of the story.  So here are some aspects of my e-mail interactions with customers that suggest I’m going to enjoy working with them:

  • They respond to e-mails quickly, typically in less than a half-day.
  • They are specific in their e-mail without being too lengthy.
  • They tell me what they’ll do and by when.
  • Their messages present organized and clear thoughts.
  • There is an intent to answer my question or address the point I explained in my e-mail.
  • They use a personal greeting and a personal closing with contact information.
  • There’s enough informality to show part of their personality, and usually a little enthusiasm!

 
People like to like the people with whom they work.  That’s part of the reason I’m in this business – because most people who are serving others or trying to retain customers are genuinely nice people.

Even if it’s a simple e-mail response, communicate in a way that the other person can tell that they will enjoy working with you.

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Make it a “Good Busy” – 9/28/21

Posted on September 28, 2021 in Customer Service Tip of the Week Please leave a comment

When I’m speaking with colleagues or clients, I’ll often ask how their day is going. The response I get almost once a week is something like:  I’m incredibly busy!

When I get that response, sometimes I’ll ask whether it is a “good busy” or whether they are “fighting fires.”

I’ll ask that question to gauge how they’re feeling.  Being “good busy” with important work helps you feel positive and fulfilled.  Spending days just fighting fires – urgent tasks that pop up unexpectedly or at the last minute – can result in anxiety, stress, and poor quality work.  That can trickle into customer engagement where we’re too busy to be responsive to customers, are short in speaking with them, or make mistakes in service actions.

While fighting fires is something that we could deal with because other people fill our inbox at the last minute, some of the activities that are urgent and require us to drop everything else or cause us to work into the late hours every evening are things we can control.

If we find ourselves constantly working on the urgent to meet a deadline at the last second, if we find ourselves constantly stressing about not having enough hours in the day, if we find ourselves feeling unsettled with all the plates that are spinning around us at the same time, realize that this situation is something we can take more control over in the future.

Particularly where you have deadlines, document the key steps that need to be addressed and how much time others will need to do their part through the process.  Put those timelines on your daily To Do List.  Reflect back on how much time it takes to do these tasks so that you’re allocating enough time today on something that needs to be completed three days from now.  You have enough understanding of how many activities you can do in one day, so, where you have control over those activities and when they’re done, you can massage your schedule for the week so that the workload is a little more evened out.

We’re all going to be busy at times if not almost all times, but the type of busy we’re dealing with is often affected by how well we’re planning to meet the deadlines.

Make it a Good Busy.

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