Customer Service

Is there any one thing that people commonly complain about with your business? What’s the thing that you think to yourself, “People are always complaining about that”? If you hear people complaining about something—and not just once or twice, but over and over again—then you absolutely have to do something about it! Get rid of…

It’s easy to train people on the basics of delivering good customer service. But sometimes the best opportunities arise where an employee can do something not because it’s expected, because it’s what they’ve been trained to do, but rather because it’s intuitively the right thing to do. Doing something because you want to do it,…

I’ve heard all kinds of ideas of little perks that you can offer employees to show that you care about them. Some are small, some are actually huge! But a very simple thing you can look at to get a glimpse of how your company treats its employees is to look at the coffee machine.…

My friend James Dodkins has a great quote: “If you want to put your customers first, you need to put your employees first, first.” It’s a great way of expressing the simple truth that how you treat your employees goes a long way towards how your employees will treat your customers. I love the idea…

I’m a big believer in the “One Thing Question.” When you’re surveying customers, I love to ask the follow-up question, “Is there one thing you can think of that would make doing business with us better?” If you have a lot of customers suggesting the same thing—especially customers who already give you high ratings—you should…

Is there a single moment in your life that you can look back on and see that it helped define who you are today? For me, it’s the Snow Plow moment. It all goes back to when I was just 16 years old, plowing driveways during snowstorms. But I think we can all identify the…

Have you ever tried to report a problem and gotten the response, “Don’t blame me, I just work here!”? Maybe it wasn’t those exact words, but you can recognize the sentiment behind them. If you or anyone on your team ever gives that response, it’s a big mistake. There will always be problems—it’s how they’re…

You’ve likely heard the saying, “The more you give, the more you get.” Giving is an act of kindness. But is it truly an act of kindness if you know that you’ll get something back, even if you don’t know exactly what it is? I would say yes, especially if the act of giving has…

Will you go the extra mile to amaze your customers? Personalization is all about making the customer feel like their experience is unique to them. And I had a recent experience that demonstrated that…in spades! It was such an amazing experience that I had to seek out the person responsible to give them my personal…

More and more companies are blending digital and human experiences in their customer service efforts. The problem is that neither solution is ideal 100% of the time. Sometimes the digital experience goes awry, and just doesn’t have the answers to the precise questions that are being asked. Sometimes a live person isn’t as good an…