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Affirming the Customer with Empathy - 4/14/26


We’ve spoken and written about empathy for the 20+ years of these customer service tips, noting empathy as the most important quality any individual can have if they want to be great at customer service.  We’ve shared that - in order to serve our customers most effectively – it’s Read more

The Power of Teaching While Helping - 4/7/26


If you’re trying to develop a relationship with the customer rather than just simply handling their transaction and moving on, you are taking a long-term view.  You realize that that individual is someone you want to keep with your business for months or years to come, so it’s a Read more

Bear with Me - 3/31/26


As a customer, you’ve probably called a company and heard the phrase “bear with me.”  At that point, you know there’s going to be some sort of delay.  The CSR is giving you a heads up that there’s going to be additional wait time.  Essentially, they are trying to Read more

Slowing Down the Fast Talker - 3/24/26


Jeffrey had always been told by his manager to figure out the issue quickly and wrap up the conversation as fast as possible.  So, Jeffrey was hyper-focused at finding that one key word that could identify the issue and help him to transition quickly to what might be some possible Read more

Don’t Bury the Lede - 3/17/26


Mary was working at the office, and she received an e-mail alert from the water company.  There was a water outage in her neighborhood.  It looked like it was going to be a couple hours to fix the issue. Sure enough, a few hours later around mid-afternoon, Mary received another Read more

Confirm the Real Issue Before You Start Solving - 3/10/26


Have you ever gone “down the rabbit hole?”  It involves going deep into some topic, some discussion – with analysis that creates complexity as much as it resolves it.  And that dive into the rabbit hole often starts with a simple question. Going down that rabbit hole takes time and Read more

One Question to Prevent a Follow-up Call - 3/3/26


The way some performance metrics work, you would think companies would prefer for their staff to talk to the same customer 4 times on the same topic for 8 minutes each rather than talking to them once for 10 minutes.  Many management metrics are too focused on average length Read more

Stay Calm When the Customer Isn’t - 2/24/26


There are all sorts of others’ emotions that you have to deal with as a customer service professional.  The other person could be anxious or upset, they could be angry or agitated.  It can run the gamut of emotions, but for you to deal with them in the best Read more

Don’t Begin with the Dead End in Mind - 2/17/26


Habit #2 of Stephen Covey’s “Seven Habits of Highly Successful People” is “Begin with the End in Mind.”  It speaks to the need to have a clear vision or goal for what you’re trying to ultimately achieve, so you understand the purpose of what you’re doing.  It helps you Read more

Explain without Over Explaining - 2/10/26


The customer has a question, and we have an answer.  They need to learn something, and we’re in the position to be the educator.  There’s a process they have to go through, and we need them to understand. We know so much, and we could impart so much, but sometimes Read more

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Capitol Customer Service

Posted on January 19, 2010 in Business Advice, Government Please leave a comment

The White House held a forum with dozens of CEOs last week, and the topic moved to customer service. The government was trying to learn how to be more customer-friendly, and they were particularly interested in what Southwest Airlines CEO, Gary Kelly, had to say.

Now I know many of you are thinking such things as “it’s about time!” or “isn’t that an oxymoron – government customer service?” But one particular reaction might be “why would a government agency turn to an airline for advice?”

The answer is the same reason why an airline would turn to NASCAR – the stock car racing league – for advice.

You may have heard the story of the airline that was trying to improve the speed and efficiency with which it “turned” planes at the gate. So where did they go to determine how to improve? They went and met with NASCAR pit crews to observe, talk, and learn about how they could do so much so fast so effectively in a 5, 10, or 15 second pit stop.

Kelly suggested at the forum that to satisfy customers, “It’s more important for us to be on time and have great employees…than offer frills.”

In other words, do what you do with great efficiency and great attitudes, and that’s more important in engendering customer loyalty than offering a perk or two.

The next time you’re trying to get better, to learn, to grow, don’t just look at yourselves or at an organization just like you.

Benchmark with the best, regardless of industry.

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


Break Your Customer Service Season into Quarters

Posted on October 19, 2009 in Business Advice, World of Customer Service Please leave a comment

A quarter is a very interesting thing. A quarter can be a form of money.  A quarter is a time period where public companies report their financials. A quarter is the portion of the pro football schedule where most coaches have divided up their season into four sets of four games each. They do this to best approach a segment of their schedule as well as analyze that segment.

To a business, when it comes to customer retention and growth, a quarter should be equally of interest.

When you are assessing the performance of your business as it relates to customer service, satisfaction, loyalty, and retention-driven growth, you need to also think of your measurements in terms of quarters. Those measures can come in the form of mystery shopping, satisfaction surveys, or focus groups. No matter in what form they come, you need to be evaluating your customer satisfaction at a minimum on a quarterly basis.

Keep in mind that customer satisfaction is driven in any organization by three factors:

  • The Attitudes, Skills, and Knowledge of the employees
  • The Processes within which the customers experience your organization
  • The Products and Services themselves.

So on a quarterly basis, you need to be assessing, analyzing, and addressing these keys to customer satisfaction and loyalty just as you would any other set of key metrics in your business.

Through the different methods of acquiring customer data as referenced previously, and including assessments of internal operational service metrics such as process times, wait times, queue times, first contact resolution, etc., you should have a dashboard of metrics that enables you to quickly see trends in satisfaction, loyalty, and growth.

If you always want to be able to make data-driven decisions that are the best for your company’s future performance, make sure you have hard numbers on such metrics as satisfaction with Attitudes, Processes, and Products.  Make sure you have hard metrics on customer retention rates or attrition rates.  Make sure you have hard metrics on average purchases per customer and frequency of visits.  Make sure you have hard metrics on referral rates from existing customers, and make sure you have hard metrics on the financial impact of each customer to your organization’s bottom line.

You need to manage the biggest component of your top line financials (the customer) at least as well as you manage all those detailed accounts on the expense side of the ledger. Create and utilize customer retention and growth metrics to help guide your company’s planning and performance improvement initiatives.

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


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