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Build Goodwill with Co-workers and Customers - 11/10/26


All relationships are different.  We want to have good relationships with co-workers, after all – those are the people we spend the most time with each week.  We want to have good relationships with customers since they’re the ones that provide the revenue and inflows that allow us to Read more

How to Avoid “Groundhog Day” - 11/3/26


It’s Groundhog Day, where you’re living the same day over and over and over again. You have heard basically the same complaint from 4 different customers in the past week.  The bill is incorrect or confusing, and you’re having to spend a ton of time explaining things to the customer. You’ve Read more

Beware of Scary Telephone Customer Service - 10/27/26


As we near the Halloween holiday in the United States, it seems appropriate to discuss examples of scary customer service, particularly on the telephone.  Here are a few common issues that frustrate and annoy customers.  These are experiences to avoid delivering, and alternatives to adopt: The customer calls, describes their Read more

The Art of the Successful Script - 10/20/26


You’re the customer.  You go to the store, and they ask if you have a loyalty card.  You call the doctor’s office, and they ask for your birth date.   You walk up to the counter, and they ask if you found everything you were looking for. These are all valid Read more

The Key Building Block for Your Customer Relationship - 10/13/26


An automotive manufacturer gets supplies for their vehicles from all over the world.  They have arrangements, service level agreements, expectations for timing and quality of all the parts.  And when they gather all these supplies, they assemble the cars.  They test the cars.  Then they take pictures of those Read more

Be Flexible to Fill the Gaps - 10/6/26


The non-profit has the expected challenges.  There are only 3 people in the organization, yet, they have the same responsibilities of a larger company.  They have to do finance, sales, marketing; they deliver their services to the community, and they need to keep a pulse on what’s going on Read more

Is This Good Customer Service? - 9/29/26


A friend of mine reached out to me recently as she waited for the electrical technician to show up at her house to do some minor repairs.  She had never worked with this company before, but they sent a text about the tech who was soon to arrive. The message Read more

Ownership when Fixing Others’ Errors - 9/22/26


We were conducting training with a client recently, and one of the participants, Jackie, is in a role in his organization where he goes out to the customer site to investigate issues, address customer complaints, and fix problems.  While he’s at the site, he often gets an earful from Read more

Why “No” is So Important - 9/15/26


The employee told the caller: “I don’t think that is possible.” The customer eventually hung up, and redialed to ask a different employee the same question. The employee responded to the customer: “That’s probably not the best way to do it.”  Then, the customer kept asking question after question, arguing Read more

It’s Not “You,” It’s “I” - 9/8/26


During a business writing course that I took years ago, the instructor had us write an e-mail.  I can’t recall if it was written to a co-worker or customer, but after writing this e-mail, she had us count every “I” and “You.”  We talked about how we need to Read more

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Student Success Starts with Knowing Them

Posted on April 23, 2014 in Business Advice, Education Please leave a comment

Blog 4-23-14Phillips Community College in Arkansas won an award recently for Student Success – increasing its graduation and 4-year college transfer performance.

With the plethora of best practices and concepts, programs and pathways, you might think that the Student Success was driven by these proven strategies…but you’d be incorrect.

According to the article PCCUA recognized for student success, the starting point was understanding the student. Who are they? What is their background? What’s the lens through which they see college life and experience PCCUA? Apparently, many students come from generational poverty, and the faculty and staff do not.

This basic fact gets at a core problem with many organizations in the education industry and other industries as well these days. There are leaders, faculty, or staff that know a product, they know a topic, they know a program. But delivering that knowledge effectively often requires that they know the person to whom they deliver. We can’t assume that all students receive and process information in the same way, that they all want the same learning environment and examples.

Sometimes to best impart knowledge, we have to – first – know the student.

Survey your students. Ask them questions. Learn about their past. Then learn what most effectively guides them to a future of possibilities.

Student Success starts with knowing them.

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Patient Satisfaction…from a Child’s Mouth to Our Ears

Posted on February 11, 2014 in Business Advice, Healthcare Please leave a comment

Blog 2-11-14In the Forbes article This 15-Year-Old Absolutely Nails What ‘Patient Centered’ Is – And Isn’t, the author addresses patient satisfaction (or a lack thereof) in today’s hospitals. He shows the video of a 15 year old patient who discusses her complaints about her current inpatient stay and her suggestions to make it a better experience.

She talks about the need for sleep, the need to be a part of discussions about her care, and the desire to feel cared about as a person. A key quote is “I am a patient – and I need to be heard!”

Whether we’re working with our healthcare clients or those clients in other industries, this desire of customers to be heard can be overwhelming at times. The desire is often so strong because too many organizations are too deaf to the voice of the customer. Too many organizations strategize on what customers want instead of asking the customer. Too many leaders are focused on the product, service, or technical aspect of what they do that they lose sight of the people for whom they provide those services.

Too many hospitals preach customer care but haven’t taken the cultural approach to trying to embed the customer service mindset into every fabric of the organization – from hiring to training to processes to the facility to leadership modeling and internal communications.

They react to the complaints, they review the quarterly patient satisfaction survey results, but they don’t work to create a culture that encourages the ongoing engagement of the customer.

When you think of how to deliver a great customer experience, start with creating a culture of individuals and teams whose collective heart is focused on caring for its customers, and conveying that care for its customers.

Patient Satisfaction…from a Child’s Mouth to Our Ears.

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10 Key Customer Retention Evaluation Questions

Posted on January 9, 2014 in Business Advice, World of Customer Service Please leave a comment

Many times when we address key customer retention strategies and customer retention success stories, the crux of what we’re saying is that you have to get to know the customer on more of a personal level. You need to build a relationship and not relegate yourself to viewing a customer as a prospect and selling to them as if you don’t even know them.

But this blog post is different. This time, I want you to envision yourself in a meeting at your business, and the meeting is all about customer retention and growth. Before you can develop a strategy, you have to ask yourself some key questions about your current state:

  1. Do you know why existing customers initially bought?
  2. Do you know why they would not return?
  3. Do you know who your customers view as your competitors?
  4. Do you know what differentiates you from your competitors in your customer’s mind?
  5. Do you know the differences in demographics, purchasing patterns, participation rates of clients who return every year v. those that don’t return?
  6. Do you know what internal operational factors impact those customer retention drivers?
  7. Do you know how you’re performing in those internal operational areas?
  8. Do you stay in contact (proactively) with customers, even when they’re not in your store, on your website, or contacting you directly?
  9. If so, are your proactive communications about you or personalized about them?
  10. In other words, do your proactive communications seek to learn more about them and educate them, or are they primarily pushing your products and services?

Before you embark on the next big strategy, do a self-scan. Find out what you know…or need to know first.

Ask yourself and those in your organization these 10 Key Customer Retention Evaluation Questions.

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