Posts by Shep Hyken
How Well Do You Treat Your Internal Customers?
If your company’s goal is to deliver an excellent customer experience, you must first embrace the concept of internal customer service. What is happening on the inside of the organization will define the type of customer experience that is presented to the outside. The company culture must form a firm foundation for customer service. Here’s…
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Focus on the Customer, Not the Money
Striving to take your business to the next level of success? Perhaps it’s time to refocus. Stop worrying so much about the sale, and just take care of the customer. Whether the customer is buying right now or not, if you deliver the best service you can, eventually the sale will come. This is not a…
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Use Social Media to Reach Customers in New Ways
Social media is a great customer service tool that is rarely used to its full potential. While companies may monitor sites such as Facebook and Twitter to know what customers are saying about them, they don’t often take full advantage of those sites to deliver value-added content. Let’s start by taking a look at what companies are doing…
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5 Customer Service Tactics to Increase Sales
To be truly effective, customer service must permeate the culture of a company. It is everyone’s job. As such, this article, although it focuses on sales tactics, actually falls under the heading of customer service. It is more about the way you engage your customers and how you make them feel comfortable about doing business with you…
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If Customers Can Own Our Brand, They Can Also Own Our Business
Is a customer loyalty program really a loyalty program? Does the typical customer enrolled in the program feel some sort of connection beyond the rewards, points or discounts they receive? We want the customer to have that connection. We want the customer to feel a sense of ownership in the relationship they have with us. That’s…
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A Bad Customer Service Example Set by a Manager
Learning experiences are everywhere, and in customer service, you can learn from the bad experiences as well as the good. I had a bad experience the other night, while having dinner at a favorite restaurant. Even if you are not in the restaurant business, don’t stop reading—bad service can strike anywhere. Just consider the lessons here and…
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Customer Congruency: What Are We Promising Our Customers?
Customer Congruency: When what we promise and what the customer receives are thought to be the same. Lately I’ve been blurring the line between customer service and marketing—and customer service and branding. This article continues on that track. As a business, we try to get our customers to perceive us a certain way. In the end, the…
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Creating a 140-Character Brand Promise
Pizza Hut, in a recent search for a new social media manager, used a creative approach to put potential candidates to the test. Its advertisement noted that candidates would have 140 seconds to sell themselves in an interview. It seems like a short time—and it is—but in this digital age a social media manager needs…
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Is Your Customer Loyal to You or Your Price?
What would happen if you were just a little higher priced than your competitor? How would your customers react? Would your loyal customers continue to do business with you, in spite of your higher price? Unless your strategy is to always be the lowest price, one would hope the answer to the last question is, “Yes!” These…
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Why You Should Give Customer Service Guidelines, Not Rules
Two words that can drive me crazy are “company policy.” Policies are often used as unbendable rules that are not conducive to customer service and creating a customer-focused company atmosphere. Let me share a story with you to illustrate the point. It is filled with lessons about customer service, and I’m willing to bet that…
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