Posts by Shep Hyken
Make Customer Service Best Practices Your Standard Practice
I am no stranger to travel … airports, hotels and the like are all in a day’s work. On a recent occasion, I was flying into Las Vegas to present a customer service speech. The client had arranged ground transportation, so I expected to find a driver holding a sign with my name on it…
Read This Article
Are You Really Customer-Focused?
Many companies that claim to offer good customer service in reality are grounded in an operations mentality with rules and policies that allow for little flexibility, preventing them from rising above anything more than average or satisfactory. The companies that really understand customer service have a different focus. Their hiring and training is focused on…
Read This Article
10 Steps to Create a Customer-Focused Culture
I’ve talked and written a lot about how to create a customer-centric culture. I believe the basic premise is to start on the inside, with the employees. If you want to read more about it, there is a wealth of information in the articles on CustomerServiceBlog.com. For the short version to get you started, here…
Read This Article
5 Steps to Managing Complaints on Social Media
Social media is a customer service tool that has great potential beyond what most companies are currently using. Outlets such as Facebook and Twitter offer the opportunity for companies to enhance the customer service experience by posting value-added content. Often, however, their only involvement is to monitor what customers are saying about them on social…
Read This Article
Customer Service Tech: The Future of Customer Service is Now
Customer service used to be just about how nice someone was when they interacted with you – or a phone number that you called when they weren’t so nice. But traditional customer service has expanded into so much more. The “customer service experience” encompasses every interaction, or touch point, that a customer has with your…
Read This Article
Customer Service Goal: We Don’t Want You to Come Back
Do you ever get the feeling that some business’s customer service goal is to keep the customer from coming back? Sometimes, it is an employee’s lousy attitude that makes you feel unwelcome and unwanted. Or perhaps it is some other type of poor service, but the end result is that the customer has no desire…
Read This Article
Above and Beyond Customer Service
How would you like your customers to describe your customer service? One of the highest compliments you can receive is when customers say, “They have the best customer service. They go above and beyond.” I’ve heard this phrase repeatedly in the last week as four completely unrelated people have told me about their “above and…
Read This Article
Solve Customer Problems, Even When They’re Not Your Fault
It was 4 pm on a Sunday and I had just arrived in Las Vegas. I was on the sixth day of a nine-day, multi-city speaking tour and was scheduled to speak at a black-tie event at 6 pm that day. Unfortunately, although I had arrived in the city on time, my tuxedo did not.…
Read This Article
The 6 D’s of a Customer-Centric Culture
Want to create a customer-centric culture? That’s a lot of words that begin with C. However, we’re going to focus on words that start with D in this article. No, not the kind that you get in school – that’s not a very good grade! And when I went to school, “D” was slang terminology…
Read This Article
Exploit Your Employees’ Unique Talents
I continue to be impressed by the Kimpton Hotel Chain. The staff was nothing short of amazing during my recent stay at their Alexis Hotel in Seattle. For this article, I imagined myself as a “mystery shopper” and engaged with several employees to find out more about their culture. I talked to the front desk…
Read This Article