Your Source for Providing a Better Customer Service and Customer Support Experience

Parature and McGarahan and Associates delivered the results of the Service & Support Metrics survey today in a live webinar(*), providing details of what is really happening behind the scenes in today’s service centers, as well as humorous insights about challenging customer interactions.

What are you experiencing in your service and support centers?  Share your data on metrics related to running your support operations or funny stories from your challenging customer interactions.

If you missed the webinar, the recorded version is available at http://www.parature.com/webinar.aspx?ID=09-0003. Continue the webinar discussion here. 

In this blog installment, I want to look at how to change the way people react when you say “no.” And my solution is really simple: stop saying it!

Once in a while, I can read people’s minds, and I can read some of yours right now: “Rich is nuts. Sometimes customers push me to do things I am not able – or even allowed – to do. Sometimes they make outrageous demands. And sometimes they even say that something is my fault when it is really their fault. How can I stop saying no to them?”

Listen carefully: not only can you stop saying no most of the time, but both you and the other person will feel much better for it! The way to do it is by using a simple technique I call the can-can: Read more »

The next time you or someone in your household orders a pair of shoes from popular online retailer Zappos, take a close look at the package. You’re likely to find one of their core values printed right there on the box. Uncommon, yes. But Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh takes a pretty uncommon approach to everything, including customer service.

His approach has landed Zappos.com on BusinessWeek’s Top 25 Customer Service Champs, among other “best” lists for innovation and company culture. Even a segment on their extraordinary approach to customer service on TV’s Nightline, as well as the cover of Inc. Magazine’s May 2009 issue. In 2008, the company’s gross merchandise sales exceeded $1 billion. Zappos stocks millions of products from over 1,000 clothing and shoe brands, and that appears to be just the beginning. Tony shared the story behind this successful online service leader and how they grew their gross merchandise sales from $1.6M in 2000 to over $1 billion in 2008 by focusing relentlessly on customer service.

Their tagline is “Powered by Service” and they’re committed to providing the best online shopping experience possible, period. “Expedited delivery. Fast, friendly, expert customer service.” The way they see it, Zappos is a service company that just happens to sell shoes, clothing, “and other stuff”. Read more »

I want to take the opportunity to thank everyone for attending ParaFest ‘09 (www.parafest.com) – our customers, partners, sponsors and our team here at Parature.  ParaFest ‘09, held at the Red Rock Resort in sunny Las Vegas was the largest and most successful users’ conference in our company’s history.  Here are some highlights:

• We had nearly 200 people at the conference
• More sessions led by customers than ever before
• Terrific keynotes from Shep Hyken (Moments of Magic™) and Tony Hsieh (Zappos CEO)
• Announced our new products in Spring ‘09, including our much anticipated new Chat product for CSRs-to-End User/CSRs-to-CSRs and Parature Feedback that enables you to measure your customer pulse and sentiments in real-time
• Announcement of our 2009 Legend Maker Award Winners
• Hands-On Live training for all of our customers

Read more »

Shep Hyken believes in magic. In fact, if you’ve ever heard him speak (like at last month’s ParaFest) he even does a few magic tricks himself. (Anyone who was there know how he pulled off the numbers trick?) Shep spends a lot of time with companies helping them build loyal relationships with their customers, and writes a lot about how to create what he calls “moments of magic”.  To Shep, moments of magic are the really great experiences that keep customers coming back for more. Moments of magic are not “just okay” or “satisfactory” experiences. They’re the moments that make customers want to do business with you over your competitors.

Shep talked about ten ways to create moments of magic. (By the way, if you want to hear a classic story about how ‘Frank the cab driver’ delivered his own brand of moments of magic for his passenger Shep, check this out.  http://hyken.com/Movie.html) In the meantime, here are just a few of Shep’s methods for creating moments of magic for customers. While some at first glance may sound basic, they’re not always so easily practiced across a busy customer service call center. Read more »

If your job consisted of handing out $100 bills to people, would it be easier to talk to customers? Perhaps. But it probably doesn’t. So today, let’s look at some ways you can deliver bad news to people, in a way that will keep things polite and civil on both sides.

First, however, this is not one of these “five bullet point” articles with nice but obvious tips. This is a very powerful technique that works extremely well, based on techniques from crisis intervention. (Incidentally, I am a former crisis counselor.) But be aware that it takes practice. Whenever I teach this approach to people in live training, as I have to about 6,000 people and counting, almost everyone nods their head in agreement – and then when we do live role-playing, they freeze like deer in the headlights and revert to what they have been saying for the last 20 years. That’s OK, and completely normal.

But when people do learn it, the effect is very powerful – and when a whole team starts responding this way, a process that often takes weeks of coaching, the results are truly magical to watch. Deconstruct how the very best service leaders handle difficult situations with you, and you will probably find an approach similar to this. So here goes …
Read more »