When a customer asks you a question, do you double-check your assumptions about their intended outcome? So often we take customer inquiries at face value, or simply assume we know what is meant. No matter what your job, you have customers, and clarifying your customers’ intended outcome is smart business. Examining Customer’s Intended Outcomes An [...] Read More…
Category Archive Customer Service
The Art of Listening, for Customer Experience Improvement 10 / 5 / 09
Curiosity is the key to great listening skills that improve customer experience. When you’re truly curious about your customer’s opinions, expectations and requests, you’ll find the customer to be more pleasant, interesting and fulfilling to you as well. Get Over Me-Focused Listening! It’s easy to tell yourself you’re listening when in reality you’re focused on yourself. Whenever [...] Read More…
Inventing Great Customer Experiences 7 / 10 / 09
Every person in an organization is needed for customer experience innovation. That’s because customer expectations and competitive offerings are always on the rise. Your processes, policies, skills, and motivations have a lot to do with keeping customers coming back — and even more to do with customers deciding not to come back. Think of [...] Read More…
Building a Customer-Centric Culture 6 / 10 / 09
CLICK HERE FOR INTERNET RADIO VERSION What Does it Mean to be Customer-centric? To have the customer’s best interests as the focus of your attention — not to be pre-occupied in your own interests at the customer’s expense. To do this, you need to: (1) Really know the customer in order to anticipate their best interests. (2) Differentiate [...] Read More…
4 Tips for Dealing With Difficult Customers 3 / 20 / 09
CLICK HERE FOR PODCAST VERSION (5:07) Are some customers just difficult people? Is there such a thing as a difficult person, anyway? Not really. The accurate viewpoint is it’s a difficult situation or a difficult interaction — not a difficult person per se. Why do difficult situations or interactions occur? Quite [...] Read More…
Customer Complaints: Sour or Sweet? 3 / 13 / 09
CLICK HERE FOR PODCAST VERSION (3:28) Negative customer feedback is a lot like biting into a lemon — the bitterness is hard to love — unless you give the lemon a good squeeze and some sugar, and transform it into refreshing and healthy lemonade. You’re only as strong as your weakest link, so those lemons [...] Read More…
Customer Service: ‘Wow’ versus ‘Ow’ 2 / 27 / 09
CLICK HERE FOR PODCAST VERSION (3:32) What’s the difference between ‘wow’ and ‘ow’ (as in ‘ouch’) service? Willingness to check for understanding. It’s doing the whole job, with the customer sensing your overriding wish for his or her well-being. When you check for understanding, the customer’s woes dissolve, they appreciate your wisdom, and [...] Read More…
Customer Experience: Actions Speak Louder Than Words! 2 / 18 / 09
CLICK HERE FOR PODCAST VERSION (3:42) Actions speak louder than words when it comes to most things in life. Michael Phelps, Britney Spears, Barry Bonds, Martha Stewart and plenty of others learned that the hard way. Customers feel the same. They hear plenty of promises in ads, on signs, and from sales and service people. Yet [...] Read More…