survey | Customer Service Solutions, Inc. - Page 14

Home  /  The Higher Ed Student Retention Strategy – The Upfront Approach  /  survey

Find a Connection Point – Part 2: Situational Connection - 10/4/22


Last week we highlighted key topics to consider when you want to find Personal Connection Points with the customer.  Today, we’ll cover some key questions to ask to uncover information about today’s situation that you can use to establish a rapport with the customer.  This is Part 2 - Read more

Find a Connection Point – Part 1: Personal Connection - 9/27/22


Some people are born almost like a master at communication.  They know how to establish rapport with just about anybody, and they do so in a way that seems so natural and so real.  They can form relationships and be laughing with somebody they met two minutes ago like Read more

Be Proactive without being Pushy - 9/20/22


Delivering great customer service isn’t just about responding and reacting.  It’s also about being proactive.  Developing relationships involves reaching out first, not just extending our hand when somebody reaches out to us. But it’s all too clear that those of us who are in service roles prefer those roles to Read more

Be Kind to Yourself When the Customer Isn’t - 9/13/22


I was having a debrief call with one of my clients recently, and this was regarding a survey of employees who work events.  One of the survey questions asked employees for advice on how to improve the customer experience.  When the employees shared their input on the guest experience, Read more

Being the Emphatic Employee - 9/6/22


Empathy is the key quality of somebody who’s great at customer service.  We talk about it often - what it is, how to convey it, what it looks like, and how it makes the customer feel. But along with knowing how to be empathetic, we also need to know how Read more

The Good, the Really Good, and the Ugly of Customer Service - 8/30/22


Here are three helpful customer service stories.  They may not be from your specific industry, but it’s always good to learn from others. The Good… Paula submitted a ticket to the I.T. vendor.  Below the signature line in the reply she received was the following:  Please share your comments or needs Read more

A Great 2-Minute E-mail - 8/23/22


I know.  You probably get e-mails all the time from customers griping about some aspect of your organization or their experience.  You’ve got too much to do and too little time to do it.  I could not begin to tell you how many times I’ve been told by staff Read more

When They Want to Talk to Your Boss - 8/16/22


“I want to talk to your supervisor.” That’s their opening salvo.  Before you can hardly finish your greeting, the customer is asking for your boss.  This is done by a customer who has tried to get an issue resolved, and it hasn’t worked, so they want to go to somebody Read more

When Passive Voice is a Good Thing - 8/9/22


It’s all your fault, Mr. Customer! We may want to shout it from the rooftops, but other than venting and absolving ourselves of guilt, this wouldn’t help much in the grand scheme of things. We have a customer sitting in front of us or on the phone, and maybe they are Read more

They’re Stressed, So You Can… - 8/2/22


Wow!  That customer looks stressed!  Maybe it’s their body language or their expressions; they could be fidgety or talking really fast. In the past, when we offered guidance in these situations, we focused on how to navigate the conversation step-by-step - what points to cover and what points to avoid. But Read more

•••••

The Higher Ed Student Retention Strategy – The Upfront Approach

Posted on March 22, 2012 in Business Advice, Education Please leave a comment

If more students stay for four years, then more will graduate. Hmmm. It’s so simple…it’s brilliant!!

But there’s one problem – how do you get students to stay?

In the article Better student retention will help graduation rate, it’s noted how Oklahoma University’s President, David Boren, is trying to increase its graduation rate by increasing year-to-year retention of students – particularly from the Freshman to Sophomore year when the greatest loss occurs.

While this is a smart strategy, the meat of any strategy is based on understanding the true root causes of student loss. So here are four items to determine if you want to get at the causes of student loss and the strategies for retention:

  • Determine if you’re accepting the right students for your college/university. Review characteristics (financial, demographic and otherwise) of past students who have graduated and note differences from those who did not graduate. Make sure you’re accepting those with profiles that tend toward graduation.
  • Determine students’ technical/educational preparedness for success. Understand the cognitive/educational/learning skills vital for success so that a plan can be developed upfront to address any barriers to success.
  • Determine students’ personal/social preparedness for success. Learn about the social “baseline” of incoming students to ensure that – where a plan or resources are needed – students are helped to assimilate into the college culture.
  • Determine students’ expectations of the experience. Ask what they expect, manage unrealistic expectations upfront, and create plans that enable students to have the best chance of getting those expectations met.

Gauge each student’s likelihood for success, so that their time and yours are well-spent on their collegiate journey.

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


Don’t Let the CRM Tail Wag the Dog

Posted on February 8, 2012 in Business Advice, World of Customer Service Please leave a comment

Lacking a strategy on how to retain customers, many businesses look at their cool new CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system and go down the wrong path.

You mean we can setup the system to e-mail the customers? Great! Our retention plan is to blast our customers with e-mail marketing messages!!

You mean we can pull in fields from the sales module and use those with our current customers? Great! Let’s figure out what fields those are so we can make sure we get that information…so that we can have that information…so that we can look at that information…and we can manage our customer relationships!

You mean there are standard surveys and dashboards that we can use? Great! We’ll use those survey questions and those dashboards to manage our customer relationships!

Now what’s wrong with all these scenarios? Hopefully you’ve guessed it. The company is devising a Touch Point Plan based on a computer system’s feature. The company is determining what intelligence to acquire based only on what the system gives them. The company is surveying and managing through standard reports from a system.

The system is creating, executing, and managing the strategy. The tail is wagging the dog.

Instead, companies should determine their own retention and growth plans with existing customers, and determine how to leverage the CRM system to help when needed. Companies should determine what intelligence to gather, how to gather, and – actually as the starting point – what they’re going to do with that intelligence. Companies should determine how they want to analyze it; then get the system to do what it needs to do for them.

Systems are generally built generically – for broad application.

Your business is built SPECIFICALLY – for your customers. Lead your systems; don’t let them lead you.

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

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

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


2 of 3 Customers Switched Providers – Did Yours?

Posted on February 1, 2012 in Business Advice, World of Customer Service Please leave a comment

A recent Accenture consulting research study noted that 2 out of 3 consumers worldwide “switched providers in at least one industry in the past year due to poor customer service.” In addition, “Forty-four percent of consumers said their expectations today are higher than they were just a year ago.”

Boiling these two key points down to a quick conclusion, you could say that today’s customers expect more, and they are highly likely to leave if you don’t meet those expectations.

So what do you know about TODAY’S customers? Don’t just think in terms of surveys you conducted on customers 2 years ago or market research conducted 4 years ago or focus groups you did 18 months ago. What do you know about the customers you have TODAY?

Older information from past customers about previous experiences in a different time can lead to faulty decisions for tomorrow.

Any organization that wants to continue to learn, to improve, to grow, to succeed has to – at the same time – continually communicate with and learn about their customers. What do they expect out of their experience? Why are they a customer? Why would they leave? What competitors are they considering or already patronizing? What makes them loyal to you, or what WOULD make them loyal to you?

Ensure you have an ongoing customer research strategy that provides you with the fresh intelligence you need to retain and grow with TODAY’S customer.

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/

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


« Previous   1 2 ... 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 ... 27 28   Next »