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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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Inquiring Educational Minds Want to Know

Posted on January 12, 2010 in Business Advice, Education Please leave a comment

The National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) conducts annual surveys of college and university students which address personal development, support from their faculty, and other factors driving student satisfaction.

The institutions are graded on such attributes as how supportive they are of student success, the promptness of feedback on student performance, rates of transfers in, etc.

So why is this information important? Isn’t this just another customer satisfaction survey? Sure it is, but this illustrates why such surveys are important. Students make their own decisions about staying or going, they offer word-of-mouth to friends and family about the institutions they attend, they decide whether to continue into graduate school there or to go elsewhere based in large part on their opinions of the institution.

Am I learning? Am I growing? Am I in a supportive environment? Am I being challenged to improve?

Any college or university can create the classes, the culture, and the campus they want. But at some point they have to assess if it’s the classes, the culture, and the campus that the STUDENTS want. At some point, they have to view the student as a customer, with needs and wants, preferences and priorities.

Surveys such as these create that opportunity for the student to be viewed as that important asset to the long-term success of the organization.

Now it’s just a matter on institutions acting on the information.

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


Retention – They’re Finally Getting It

Posted on December 8, 2009 in Business Advice, Education Please leave a comment

If you would have spoken with 10 administrators 10 years ago in the world of higher education – from community colleges to universities – you could have easily spoken for 2 hours about their priorities without student retention ever being discussed.

My, how times have changed.

It seems that more and more often, retention is discussed whenever goal-setting for enrollment is the topic.  Retention rates are part of the performance dashboards.  Retention strategies are developed with some similar planning focus to marketing strategies.

And why is there all of this focus on retention?  Because these institutional leaders – just like smart businesspeople – understand that retention means dollars.  Retention means less effort in recruitment.  Retention means less hassle in dealing with student complaints and turnover.  Retention means less change to address.  Retention means a faster path to success.

Not all educational institutions get it, however, when it comes to retention.  An organization that truly gets it understands that successful retention strategies require a great deal of research with current students on retention drivers, likelihood to stay, preferences, and satisfaction levels.  Research is required on former students to determine the true loss reasons for controllable exits.  Strategies need to have a component to look at the relationship-building structures and processes which need to be put into place to develop relationships with students and to quickly identify students at-risk of leaving.

Strategies need to be created to address internal cultural issues and priorities that currently run counter to the goal of retention.  And measurement strategies need to be adopted to ensure that issues and solutions are identified early enough to be addressed.

An education-based retention strategy needs to have the concerted effort and focus that balances internal culture with external relationship building, where all the key impact drivers of retention are measured.

Do you have a truly comprehensive retention strategy?

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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