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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

Manage New Customer Expectations - 8/11/26


The fan had never been to a motorsports event before, but they had been to concerts.  They had been to big conferences.  At those other events, they could park right next to the venue, many of the activities were indoors, and weather was a non-issue.  So, they were not Read more

Complement Empathy with Action - 8/4/26


A man falls into a hole, and he can’t get out.  He starts yelling for help, and a doctor walks by and looks down the hole.  The man in the hole yells to the doctor “Please help me.  I’ve fallen into this hole!”  And the doctor takes out a Read more

My 8-Minute Visit at the DMV- 7/28/26


I needed to get a Real ID, which in North Carolina facilitates airline travel and other identity verifications.  My wife suggested I go to one particular DMV that was a LONG way away from home, but where she had experienced great customer service.  I was lucky to find an Read more

When They Might Walk Out the Door…Permanently- 7/21/26


Have you ever had one of those conversations with the customer where they literally tell you they’re about to stop doing business with your company?  This is it.  They may bring up a competitor or found another way to get their need met, or they are just leaving. When we Read more

Transparency in Customer Service- 7/14/26


We’ve worked with a lot of clients in the local government sector, and many of these clients have Customer Service Standards and/or corporate values that include Transparency. Think about an old-fashioned transparency sheet, that malleable see-through page you put on an overhead projector.  You can see everything on one side Read more

See the Customer’s Journey from Their Perspective- 7/7/26


That customer is face-to-face with you right now, and you are fielding their questions or delivering your service to them.  And oftentimes and understandably, we are so immersed in the moment that we don’t think about what came before or think enough about what comes next. But in the life Read more

Gaining the Benefits of the Greeter- 6/30/26


Most likely, we’ve all entered some establishment – a retail store, restaurant, or service center - when there is a greeter at the door.  The most famous greeter position is probably the Walmart greeter.  I often thought that my father-in-law would have been a fantastic Walmart greeter, because he Read more

Seamlessness - Why the Customer Thanked You - 6/23/26


This doesn’t happen enough nowadays, but the employee received a long thank you e-mail from the customer.  A financial services account manager had taken care of the client during a period of time that was stressful for the customer. Life was unexpectedly changing quickly, and personal emotions, additional financial responsibilities, Read more

When to Avoid the Escalation - 6/16/26


The customer calls with a complaint, and the easy thing to do is to escalate it to your supervisor. That may also be the right thing to do, but how do you know when to avoid the escalation? Why You Would Escalate The first thing to consider is why you would Read more

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Review the Failures of Others to Ensure Success – 7/22/14 TOW

Posted on July 22, 2014 in Customer Service Tip of the Week Please leave a comment


“Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

Many people have said variations of this – from George Santayana to Lemony Snicket – and I’m saying it today because it reminds me of a question I was asked recently.

A French financial services firm interviewed me about customer service and client retention for their internal publication. One of the questions addressed the many seemingly excellent customer service strategies and initiatives that don’t work. Essentially, why do they fail?

Here are four key reasons I provided:

  • Leadership Doesn’t Really Buy-In – Although leaders may talk about the importance of customer service and the client experience, they make decisions based on the product, they create incentives focused on new sales only, they sign-off on strategies that focus purely on reducing cost per unit. They talk the customer service talk, but their structures and incentives don’t align with service and retention goals. Here’s an example if you haven’t heard the recent Comcast customer retention call?
  • The Company Doesn’t Dedicate Resources – While an organization may care about the customer, if there’s no designated individual, division, strategy, or budget that focuses on service and retention, it won’t work. Sustaining an organization-wide effort is impossible if the initiative is 5% of the jobs of many without ever being the totality of the job of at least a few people in the organization.
  • The CX Definition is Limited – A small business owner laughed at me once when I brought up the concept of Internal Customers. He didn’t believe that employees should view and treat each other as customers. He didn’t believe that the customer experience (CX) applied to anyone within the corporate walls. He thought culture was irrelevant in driving a great service experience and retention. Zappos would disagree.
  • Tactic Supersedes Strategic – Too many companies conduct a survey, change a computer system, start a call center, send out memos telling staff to answer calls in 3 rings, and then expect their customer service scores and retention rates to jump off the charts. For organizations to be great at customer service, they need to view their organization as a system – where all the people, processes, programs, and technology interrelate and work for the good of the customer and company. Have a strategy for sustained service excellence and growth; tactics should then flow from that strategic view.

 
Align Around the Customer, Dedicate Resources, Look Within, and Think Strategically.

Ensure your organization doesn’t repeat the failures of business history.

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It’s Okay if You Don’t Know Anything about Tomatoes – 7/15/14 TOW

Posted on July 15, 2014 in Customer Service Tip of the Week Please leave a comment


Going to Otto’s Home Improvement to get an opinion on a tomato – it shouldn’t be an aggravating experience. But for Lance, it resulted in a nail-on-the-chalkboard (do they still have chalkboards?) feeling.

Lance’s wife was growing tomatoes on the back deck, and several tomatoes were growing quickly. Good news, right? Well there was a problem – the tomatoes were still green on top but becoming black underneath and starting to shrivel up.

Luckily Lance had a “go to” lady in the garden center at Otto’s, so he drove to the store seeking advice. He walked up to 4 staff chatting with each other at the garden center entrance and asked for the “go to” lady, but she was off that day.

So Lance showed a tomato to others and asked for advice. He was greeted by blank stares and no response for about 15 seconds. Then one employee walked up, took the tomato, looked closely, said “that’s a fungus,” and started walking.

Lance took off after the employee, and they walked into the store toward the outdoor chemicals. The employee stopped in front of the plant chemicals, started staring, and didn’t say a word. After about a minute of quiet staring, Lance asked “what are you looking for?”

“A green bottle,” was the reply.

“What is it?”

“I’m not sure, but it works.”

“What brand?

“I don’t know.” There was a long pause, and then the employee said “it’s not there; sorry.” He walked off.

Lance was able to grab the tomato before the employee walked away and then went home to his wife. The next day Lance’s wife took the tomato to another garden center, and the issue was a lack of calcium. The store sold her a spray to add calcium, and the tomatoes grew perfectly thereafter.

In the world of serving others, none of us are omniscient. We don’t know all, and that’s okay. In those times when we don’t know the answer, it’s okay to say “I don’t know,” but follow that up with “I’ll find out.” Take initiative on behalf of the customer, but don’t let that initiative lead you down a path of time wasted and misinformation. Admit the knowledge gap, and quickly move to get the answer.

It’s okay to say you don’t know anything about tomatoes.

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Jason Millard did the Right Thing – 6/24/14 TOW

Posted on June 24, 2014 in Customer Service Tip of the Week Please leave a comment


It’s living your dream – or at least having the opportunity to compete in the pinnacle of your profession. There’s no guarantee you’ll succeed, but it’s important to at least have the opportunity.

Jason Millard had that opportunity. As a pro golfer, there would have been nothing more exciting than to have had the opportunity to compete in the U.S. Open golf tournament.

Jason had that opportunity. And he gave it away.

Jason was playing in a 36-hole qualifying tournament in Tennessee, and he played well enough to make the U.S. Open field that was to take place just a couple weeks later at Pinehurst in North Carolina. Despite qualifying for this major tournament, Jason didn’t feel right. He wasn’t certain, but he thought that his golf club may have touched the ground in a sand trap – a 2-stroke penalty in the world of golf. He was not sure he did it, and nobody was around to confirm that he did or didn’t ground the club.

After the round, he asked a rules official what to do, and the rules official said it was up to Jason.

For days, Jason continued to practice for this glorious opportunity at the U.S. Open, but his stomach, his nerves, his inner feelings kept eating at him. He wasn’t sure if he had grounded the club, but what if he had done so? If he had, he should have been penalized two strokes and not qualified.

As he began the long drive to the Open on tournament week, about an hour into the drive, he knew he couldn’t continue. It was that one potential thing he might have done wrong that stopped him; whether he grounded the club or not would never have been proven on Twitter or television, never confirmed or denied by a playing partner.

It was all on him.

He decided to call a penalty on himself, and he was disqualified.

Sometimes doing the right thing should occur because it’s the right thing to do – even if there’s short-term pain involved. To be great at customer service, you need to do the right thing – even when nobody is looking over your shoulder, nobody is listening in on your call, nobody is evaluating you at that moment.

Ethics and great customer service go hand-in-hand. They both involve integrity and trust.

Do the right thing, even if nobody is looking.


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