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

When You Can't Say "Yes"...There is Opportunity for Success

Customers are the backbone of every business. Yet, there are times when you simply cannot give them what they want, because a customer may not always be fully aware of a company’s financial status, product development ability, or the majority of a company’s feedback. So, what do you do when you have a demanding customer whose needs you cannot meet? Start by getting into the mindset of what the customer is really looking to accomplish:

• Does the customer, maybe love your service and could possibly want to be more involved, but his/her way of showing it is to offer suggestions?
• Is the customer possibly an influential person in your industry, and is maybe looking to do more business with you?
• Is the customer truly a big fan of your service, and just wants to show you that he/she cares?
• Are there alternatives you can explore with the customer? Read more »

How to Tell Anyone Anything - Be Curious, Not Furious

Once in a great while I have the ability to read people’s minds. Since you are reading this blog, I’ll bet that you are a good supervisor of customer contact professionals. I will also bet that you wake up every morning believing that you are a nice person.

And I will bet one other thing: when someone on your team does something you wish they wouldn’t, whether it is coming in late too often or snapping at a difficult customer, you get frustrated and it shows. And then when nothing changes, you wonder what to say to them.

That is where this blog comes in. I would like to change your perspective from what to *say* to what to *ask*. Because when you start asking good questions and taking a learning posture, even in really difficult employee situations, you suddenly gain the power to create real performance change. Compare these two situations and see what I mean: Read more »

In a thriving free enterprise system such as ours, which provides consumers with a wide range of goods and services from which to choose, the most successful businesses are those that display a strong commitment to customer satisfaction. Today foreign competition as well as consumer demands are requiring greater corporate efficiency and productivity. If the United States is to remain a leader in the changing global economy, highest quality customer service must be a personal goal of every employee in business and industry.

A business built on customer service understands and anticipates the customer’s needs. It designs goods and services to meet those needs and builds products that perform to customer expectations. It then packages them carefully, labels them correctly, sells them at a fair price, delivers them as scheduled, and follows up, as necessary, to satisfy the customer. This kind of commitment to service leads to customer loyalty and to genuine improvements at the bottom line. Read more »

How to Tell Anyone Anything - Start in a Safe Place

Do you manage customer contact professionals for a living? You probably dream about a workplace where everyone looks forward to coming to work in the morning, gives their very best effort, and creates consistently great customer experiences.

Well, guess what – I believe you can create such a workplace. Even in a world where it seems like your agents constantly say the wrong things to customers, act disengaged, fight with each other, or sometimes even forget to shower as often as they could. And best of all, you don’t need to surgically implant different personalities in everyone. You just need to change the way you coach them.

In this four-part blog series, we are going to look at a style of coaching that has little to do with what most managers do – namely, catching people doing things wrong and correcting them. This new strength-based approach to coaching has more to do with techniques from hostage negotiation, crisis counseling, and psychotherapy than it does with traditional management. And I have personally used this approach to create near-perfect customer satisfaction ratings, near-zero turnover, and high morale on my own support teams, as well as those of hundreds of training attendees. Read more »

The fun and unique Zappos office environment

Discover how customer phenom Zappos.com grew their gross merchandise sales from $1.6M in 2000 to over $1 billion in 2008 by focusing relentlessly on customer service.

Rob Siefker of the Zappos Customer Loyalty Team discusses the Zappos commitment to WOWing their customers through service, how they retain repeat customers, and what they do internally to inspire the Zappos culture & core values. Read more »