Tag Archives: customer service

  • 20
    Dec 17
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Customer Service breakthroughs

Customer Service Breakthroughs Are Limited By Fear

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Often we are told to confront our fears, try something new, something different and to break bad habits or worn out traditions. Could it be true that customer service breakthroughs are limited by fear?

In a service driven economy, the most important cultural value for your organization may be customer service. Many organizations say that they are excellent at this, no need to really change or improve, we’ve got this.

The reality is that the organization never decides about good or bad. They never decide about effectiveness or satisfaction, the customer does.

Best Work

The best organizations do the best work because they care. Not because they say that they care, but because they show that they care. It isn’t really a token, a free item, some coupons, or a survey. It is what the customer feels.

Creating exceptional customer service programs comes with a price. Often organizations know what needs to be done but they are afraid to absorb the cost. There is fear that the cost will not yield the return on investment.

Organizations consider that they could:

  • Wash the customer’s car after servicing it, but that costs.
  • Gift-wrap special purchases, but that costs.
  • Turn up the heat, or turn on the air conditioner, but that costs.

Good Service Costs

The fear in any of these scenarios is that once you start you have to continue. Often there is consideration in doing it for the exception, which seems like a good return on investment.

That is our best customer. Wash her car before she picks it up.

It is the holiday season; ask customers if they want gift-wrapping.

The temperatures are going to be really high today maybe we should run the air conditioner but only during the dinner hour.

Customer Service Breakthroughs

Organizations feel that they care, but when they only care sometimes, the customer often doesn’t share in that feeling. For the organization when it is a one and done, it feels okay, but replicating it over and over again feels like too much risk.

What your organization does next to create a culture of caring will not have much to do with what it knows how to do.

It will have everything to do with what it fears.

– DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSPTM), and corporate trainer that specializes in helping businesses and individuals accelerate their leadership, their team, and their success. He is a five-time author and some of his work includes, #CustServ The Customer Service Culture, and Forgotten Respect, Navigating A Multigenerational Workforce. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

Dennis Gilbert on Google+

  • 18
    Dec 17
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care about your customer

Care About Your Customer Or Else

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Many of our customer service successes or problems are the result of caring, or not. It seems simple to most. Which is precisely why so many take customer service behaviors for granted. Do you care about your customer?

I’m missing a shirt from my dry cleaning drop off.

Sorry, we accidentally gave it to another customer. He will bring it back soon.

Do you mean soon, as in an hour, or soon as in days?

We don’t know, soon. He usually comes in on Saturday.

I needed that shirt for a trip. I’m headed out of town.

Sorry.

Lack of Caring

Why do fast food drive through lines leave the bag open when there is warm food inside? Why does the garage move your car seat or mirrors and then leave them in that position?

The root cause of any or all of the problems is the same. They don’t care about how it makes it you feel or how it affects what happens next for you.

Sometimes it is about chance. The customer called saying he had a shirt that was not his. The thought is, oh darn; bring it back when you can please. More thinking, the customer has nine other clean shirts, this one doesn’t matter. Hope he doesn’t come in before the shirt gets back.

Sometimes it is about protection. The bag is likely open because the last thing they do is look inside, being sure they haven’t made an error. The thought is, keep the bag open so we can spot check and the customer can too.

Sometimes it is about convenience. The seat and mirrors were obnoxious in that position they are better now. The thought, how can someone drive with those positions, I can’t.

Care About Your Customer

Rules, policies, procedures, or even ignorance to the outcomes are often to blame for a lack of caring. Not caring feels wrong in a world that measures the service experience by advancing the needle on the gauge related to how good the customer feels.

What is worse than the customer not feeling good? The customer will tell others how it made them feel.

When you decide to make a difference, you will stop saying that you care about your customer and start showing them.

– DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSPTM), and corporate trainer that specializes in helping businesses and individuals accelerate their leadership, their team, and their success. He is a five-time author and some of his work includes, #CustServ The Customer Service Culture, and Forgotten Respect, Navigating A Multigenerational Workforce. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

Dennis Gilbert on Google+

  • 15
    Dec 17
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Customer service impact

Customer Service Impact And Cultural Change

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Many organizations strive to make a bigger impact with sales and the customer experience by driving cultural change. Is your organization getting the most from its efforts? What are you doing to improve customer service impact?

In the conference room, boardroom, or a pop-up meeting near the water cooler organizational leaders often consider how they’ll create the next rush of revenue. Often the design is based on only a few. What if there was a different approach?

Based On The Few

Organizations put forward a lot of effort on the hiring process. Certainly, this is important and valuable. The lifetime value of the right kind of talent in your organization is hard to measure. Mostly because it is likely a much bigger number than you can quickly realize.

Inside there is often a push for attracting or advancing the right talent to the C Suite.

There is a focus on sales and marketing teams that are properly aligned. Perhaps there are bonuses or commissions in place to drive engagement. In operations, it is often about quality control and perfecting the build and delivery of products and services.

Much of this design is focused on the few. The few who are leading the teams, the few who may be the next picked for advancement, and those who fit the image of organizational success. This focus is important but the activity that this culture builds is based only on those few.

Front Line Reach

What if the approach was different, what if instead of focusing on the top twenty percent of the organization you focused on the growth and development of the other eighty percent? How would sales revenues, profit margins, and customer satisfaction improve?

Imagine instead of leaders connecting with leaders, the entire front line was more connected with customers?

Sure, the influence of leader-to-leader is important, but what if instead of focusing on the goals, revenue, and growth presented by the twenty percent, you made a difference with the eighty percent.

Imagine if the eighty percent improved their emotional intelligence, honed their customer service skills, and the value was placed on front line customer facing engagement? Would this change the numbers?

Customer Service Impact

Certainly, this is not pointing the finger at the eighty percent with a proclamation that they are the only ones who need change. It is a proclamation that the focus for customer service impact will be more powerful from the front line, not grooming the next manager.

When the focus is on the management team, fewer people are touched. If you’re going to make your organization great, leaders will matter, but it is the eighty percent who are closer to the front line who will show the customers what your organization is all about.

Running The Marathon

Consider this, thirty thousand people run in the Boston Marathon each year. Certainly the few at the front are honored and important. Their accomplishments are great. The report of their success will touch many lives.

If they were the only ones running in the event, it would not be nearly as impactful. It’s the reach of the other twenty nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety participants who will ultimately touch more people and more lives in a more personal way.

It’s not about the ten, it is about the thirty thousand.

You can have ten people doing great things, but measuring the true impact of thirty thousand. That is almost hard to imagine.

– DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSPTM), and corporate trainer that specializes in helping businesses and individuals accelerate their leadership, their team, and their success. He is a five-time author and some of his work includes, #CustServ The Customer Service Culture, and Forgotten Respect, Navigating A Multigenerational Workforce. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

Dennis Gilbert on Google+

  • 12
    Dec 17
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Customer Service Balance

Customer Service Balance Is Reasonable

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Have you ever thought about what makes special things, special? What really creates a memorable customer experience? Having customer service balance may be what attracts the masses. Do you have it?

What is the difference between the racecar and one you buy off the dealership lot?

Why does the state of the art always come with bugs?

Making coffee at home is a fraction of the price at the gourmet shop, but the gourmet shop is always packed with people.

High Cost or Reliable

The fast racecar is expensive. It is custom built, requiring hours of special labor. It is fast, but it is designed to win the race, not go the most miles without maintenance.

The latest technology, most elaborate software, or techie gadget often isn’t perfected, but it is breaking new ground with features others don’t have. It is cool, but doesn’t always work and the learning curve is long.

Coffee from a home brewing device doesn’t allow you to easily visit a few friends, display your new shoes, or have others observe you in action with your mobile computing device.

Being the best has costs. Having the fastest car, the latest techno gadget, or sipping one dollar per every two ounces of coffee costs too. Those who produce the best and consume the best should realize that there is volatility to the market.

Volatile Market

The fastest car won’t last as long as the lower priced mass produced reliable one. Having the newest techno gadget is pretty cool, until those on the old platform are still surfing while you’re waiting for tech support or trying to figure out the new menu. The coffee shop is the place to be right now, it’s not the only place.

Having the best or creating a trend costs, but often being the most reliable, with a reasonable price will endure the volatile nature of the consumer.

Customer Service Balance

Customer service balance may be about the best solution. People paying a reasonable price don’t expect perfection.

What they do expect is to get what they pay for. Their purchase risk is smaller and long-term satisfaction is much higher.

Special, high end, and the fastest is cool, until it isn’t, which usually doesn’t take very long. This is exactly why it is only a trend.

Balance seems much more reasonable.

– DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSPTM), and corporate trainer that specializes in helping businesses and individuals accelerate their leadership, their team, and their success. He is a five-time author and some of his work includes, #CustServ The Customer Service Culture, and Forgotten Respect, Navigating A Multigenerational Workforce. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

Dennis Gilbert on Google+

  • 05
    Dec 17
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Actionable Customer Service

Actionable Customer Service and Missed Opportunities

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There is a great thing about customer service. Nearly everyone believes that he or she knows how to do it well. Customer service isn’t rocket science, but it does have a lot to do with our actions. Actionable customer service may be one of the most important things about your knowledge.

Yesterday I attended a C Suite Thought Summit in New York City. Jeffrey Hayzlett and his team hosted the event and they always do a fantastic job.

What are some of the greatest things about any business event? Sure, it is the speakers, panel discussions, and sometimes the food, but the best thing is the networking opportunities. Networking opportunities abound at these events and often people don’t take advantage of them.

Missed Opportunities

At the event as I chatted with someone I just met, she mentioned some of her interests and why she was attending. I definitely knew a person there that she should meet and I suggested she go introduce herself.

She said, “I should just go right up and give my pitch?”

It was a question, not a statement. The answer of course is obvious. It was obvious to her and obvious to me.

It certainly was not that she didn’t know what to do. She was hesitant to act.

Service Economy

We are in the midst of an expansive service economy. This isn’t really new, it has been shifting for decades. Only now, it is expanding at a pace perhaps unlike anything that has happened before.

Service is what creates value for organizations. It is an opportunity and one that shouldn’t be missed.

One problem is that many see it happening right before their eyes but they don’t always act. They probably know what to do, or at least have a good idea to work with, but often they don’t act.

Actionable Customer Service

For everyone, whether it is the moment you are in the middle of a sales transaction, or the moment a new opportunity pops up right in front of you. Only one thing stands in your way.

It often isn’t a lack of knowledge. It is a lack of action.

-DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSPTM), and corporate trainer that specializes in helping businesses and individuals accelerate their leadership, their team, and their success. He is a five-time author and some of his work includes, #CustServ The Customer Service Culture, and Forgotten Respect, Navigating A Multigenerational Workforce. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

Dennis Gilbert on Google+

  • 27
    Nov 17
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cheap customer service

What Happens When You Have Cheap Customer Service?

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Your organizational culture will develop from habits, traditions, and symbols. What value are you placing on customer service? Do you have a culture of cheap customer service?

Being Cheaper

Recently I ordered something from eBay. The shipper shipped the product in the actual product box, not the typical brown box that most shippers would use, probably because it was cheaper.

About a month ago, I wrote a note to a vendors contact page, in return I received an automated message. In the long run no one ever returned my inquiry. This feels like they may be using their resources for something else, something that feels more important. Perhaps, they are just too cheap.

Businesses often don’t answer the telephone, return calls, or respond to email messages because it is cheaper to do less. The culture avoids expense, employees are a tool, and their customer service is an afterthought. They do this mostly because it is cheaper.

The big box stores, the superstore on the web, and your local (Dollar General) dollar store don’t have the best price because they are cheap. They often have the best price and good service because they have appropriately scaled. In other cases, their brand sets expectations lower. In either case, this is strategy, not a feeling of necessity.

Sweatshop Mentality

Businesses that try to underprice their competition in the hope that they’ll build momentum have a strategy too. The problem may be that they lack scale and when they lack scale, they are going to use resources to either gain scale or accept less profit.

Accepting less profit sometimes means paying the workforce less, so they then become a sweatshop. The sweatshop model not only lacks customer service but it also typically lacks talent.

A lack of talent is often a condition associated with cheap customer service. Not just because they don’t pay well, but also because it is part of their culture to just not pay. The underlying principle is money out, never equates to money in.

Cheap Vendors

A culture that insists on the concept of, the lowest price wins, probably also seeks the cheapest vendor. Cheap vendors are probably also using the strategy of low price builds volume. Therefore, the cheapest vendor is cutting every corner living just on the edge, somewhere between failure and survival.

What happens next? The vendor provides bad quality or poor service. Now the business who hired them must reject the work or else they face with delivering an inferior product or service. Often they choose to deliver inferior quality because it is cheaper.

What happens when you have cheap customer service? Some may survive, living just on that edge. Others may be bought by an organization that is improving by building scale.

Cheap Customer Service

Cheap customer service isn’t really a strategy. It develops from a strategy and becomes part of your culture.

There is an alternative. Don’t become a culture of cheap.

I think the alternative is much better.

– DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSPTM), and corporate trainer that specializes in helping businesses and individuals accelerate their leadership, their team, and their success. He is a five-time author and some of his work includes, #CustServ The Customer Service Culture, and Forgotten Respect, Navigating A Multigenerational Workforce. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

Dennis Gilbert on Google+

  • 22
    Nov 17
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business reputation appreciative strategies

What Is Important For Your Business Reputation?

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Businesses spend billions of dollars each year on marketing and advertising. Much of this effort is to build their brand. What is important for your business reputation?

Today we have a service economy unlike any other time in modern history. Media and connections often form our first impressions. What matters most?

Shape Reputation

Most businesses believe that they shape and control their reputation. They believe they do it from clever and impactful marketing and advertising campaigns, and ultimately what their product or service delivers. All of this is important, but it isn’t the whole picture.

Clients, customers, and your market will always enter the scene with bias from past experiences or what they saw in their social feed. In a sense, most businesses, like books, are often judged by their cover.

This is true for individuals, as well as businesses. It is true for sales and marketing professionals, the front line, and the C Suite.

What Happens First

First impressions are powerful, and many experts talk about the moments you have, measuring them in the number of seconds.

Ultimately, your reputation may be influenced in not only those first few seconds, but also what you become known for.

The person with the muscle car speeding through the parking lot is a motor head. A person in professional business attire is a corporate executive, not a well-respected (brick layer) mason. The college math professor giving a presentation about social media is not a professor, but a social media expert.

The 5-star restaurant that caters the upscale wedding runs the risk of becoming known as a caterer, not the best dinner spot in town.

True for individuals, true for businesses, we should know by now that perception is reality.

Your Business Reputation

You can try to buy your brand and your reputation through a marketing budget, but conflicting with every dollar spent is what lies under the surface.

The business who says they have exceptional customer service but doesn’t deliver will eventually be found out.

Perhaps the best way to build your business reputation is to become it. It isn’t an image you buy. Authenticity matters more than dollars spent.

What you do first may be what you become known for, all the while remembering that bias, stereotypes, and media influence will help your target market decide.

– DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSPTM), and corporate trainer that specializes in helping businesses and individuals accelerate their leadership, their team, and their success. He is a five-time author and some of his work includes, #CustServ The Customer Service Culture, and Forgotten Respect, Navigating A Multigenerational Workforce. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

Dennis Gilbert on Google+

  • 16
    Nov 17
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caring costs

Caring Costs but Saves Money in the Long Run

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Possibly the most fundamental principle that is so often violated in the workplace and especially in customer service is caring. Caring costs but it certainly can save money in the long run.

Workplace Caring

At our job, someone leaves the printer without paper, or prints and leaves the tray filled with unwanted output. The office microwave has spills, the paper towel dispenser is empty, and all of your shared documents have moved to a different folder.

It seems doesn’t matter [sarcasm] because time is money and everyone is running late or behind, or perhaps, they just don’t care. We’ll leave it for the next person to clean up or take care of, after all, they have more time.

Customer Service

We see it, feel it, and hear about it all the time. The unclean restroom, food that should be warm, but is cold, or even the displays that clutter the isles of our local food store making it difficult for shopping carts to pass.

Caring may feel like it is expensive. It takes time, resources, and often money to make a difference.

Too often, the focus is on the short term, not realizing the negative repercussions in the long run.

Caring Costs

One of the best benefits of caring is word of mouth, today this is world of mouth. The C Suite fears the negative social media posts, but insists that organizational performance is relative to the front line.

Caring starts internally, it begins within the culture of the organization. It is hard to show external caring when internally the measurement of profit or sales trumps any philosophical position the organization claims to be taking.

Saves Money

Yes, in fact, caring costs, but it may also more than pay for itself. Caring builds relationships, creates loyalty, and increases lifetime customer value. Considering just those three things, it seems to me that in the long run this saves money.

Is caring important? Caring is so important that I devoted a chapter to it in my recent book.

Care more. It puts the human back in the equation—priceless.

– DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSPTM), and corporate trainer that specializes in helping businesses and individuals accelerate their leadership, their team, and their success. He is a five-time author and some of his work includes, #CustServ The Customer Service Culture, and Forgotten Respect, Navigating A Multigenerational Workforce. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

Dennis Gilbert on Google+

  • 14
    Nov 17
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Vague Customer Service

Vague Customer Service Guidelines

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Milestones and goals are always important. Many people stress how critical metrics and measurements are for the performance management process. How are you managing customer service? Do you have vague customer service guidelines?

When you attend a meeting, get involved in a committee, or volunteer to help steer the direction of a project you may insist on some goals. The funny thing about most of these endeavors is that they are built on one underlying, often-subconscious premise, keeping everything vague.

Customer Service Culture

Your organizational culture is developed from many things, including: brand, symbols, language, methods, and processes. Most of all, it is carried out by people, and is often intended to be role modeled from the behaviors of organizational leaders.

Is customer service part of your culture? Customer service shouldn’t be viewed as a department, in today’s economy customer service is about culture. Most leaders will quickly grab on to this idea, but as role models, they may leave some gaps.

Not Specific Means Vague

Positive language is often spread throughout the organization by role models, but it is often vague.

Here are a few examples:

  • Improve satisfaction.
  • Increase lifetime value.
  • Enhance the customer experience.

Anything that is vague is hard to measure.

What about the committee or project management team, how do they contribute?

Vague Customer Service

The committee will most likely leave some gaps when the leadership is vague about guidelines. Vague customer service guidelines leaves wiggle room. Wiggle room means the measurement will be subjective.

It is hard to do anything wrong in an environment with vague guidelines or goals. They’re vague, so just wiggle, but that also makes it hard to move forward.

Unfortunately, being vague is often the self-deceptive and unrealized output from the meeting, committee, or project team. What is worse, often the language is handed down and passed around. It is role modeled.

In most cases, it is not intentional. Everyone has good intentions, but vague allows everyone the opportunity to wiggle.

Wiggling isn’t winning. Vague customer service guidelines aren’t helping anyone, especially the customer.

– DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSPTM), and corporate trainer that specializes in helping businesses and individuals accelerate their leadership, their team, and their success. He is a five-time author and some of his work includes, #CustServ The Customer Service Culture, and Forgotten Respect, Navigating A Multigenerational Workforce. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

Dennis Gilbert on Google+

  • 07
    Nov 17
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listening improves customer service

How Listening Improves Customer Service

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Many organizations who actually take the time to self-reflect suggest that one area they could improve is in their communication. Listening is one of the most fundamental and easily improved skills. Have you considered how listening improves customer service?

As a business consultant and organization development professional, I hear it all the time. I hear it mostly because I am listening, listening carefully and watch the non-verbal cues. Many businesses believe they are too good to change.

Their focus is either on the CEO’s area of expertise, often a technical skill, or on getting more sales. Neither of these are a problem, until; their focus becomes their blind spot.

Blind Spots

I’ve heard CEO’s of small businesses ($15k – $65k annual revenue) repeatedly suggest that they are too big to fail. Some of them flat out say it. Others are saying it when you listen through the words.

If you’re following along closely, you might wonder why I’m even in the room? Think about that for a moment. Honestly, I’m typically there because someone on the team has suggested to bring me in and the top brass tolerates it because they hope it will silence the team.

Now, I’m not bashing my clients, not at all. I’m honestly trying to help. However, too big to fail sometimes equates to too big to listen. This is most likely why the second string in the C Suite has recommended we work together. The first string tolerates it, again hoping to calm the restless.

Besides, they would never want to be accused of not supporting the team. The team needs this, but perhaps they do not, at least that may be the thought.

Customer Service Connection

The customer service connection should be starting to become clear. We’re in a service oriented economy. That isn’t really new, it has been shifting for decades, and many believe that it is accelerating.

In a service economy, the most valuable core principles should be closely aligned with [customer] service. This is important internally and externally. It is important for sales, brand promise, and understanding lifetime value.

Where are most organizations focused? They are focused on the external, closing the sale, increasing profit, and forging new relationships. Certainly, of course they are, as they should be. However, their focus on external push often eliminates listening to the service requirements.

Listening Improves Customer Service

How does this happen? Too big to fail, equates to too big to listen, which makes their actions and behaviors consistent with too big to care.

Caring is one of the most violated principles in a service economy. They may care, but sometimes they care incorrectly. Caring about closing the sale is sometimes not the same as caring enough to listen.

Listening, that is where it all starts. Not hearing, but listening.

In case you’re wondering, there is a difference.

– DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSPTM), and corporate trainer that specializes in helping businesses and individuals accelerate their leadership, their team, and their success. He is a five-time author and some of his work includes, #CustServ The Customer Service Culture, and Forgotten Respect, Navigating A Multigenerational Workforce. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

Dennis Gilbert on Google+

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