Welcome to the Monthly Mash, a mashup of tools, tales and tips on customer service and the customer experience from around the blogosphere.
It seems in some businesses, every day is April Fool’s day.
For too many businesses, the expectations they set are never even close to fulfilled. The marketing department creates a fantasy that is not met by the reality experienced by consumers. In some cases, the unmet promises are so brazen that they actually constitute a form of bait and switch.
It is hard enough to please customers when businesses actually do what they say they are going to do; when businesses do not deliver on the core promises they are making to customers, the result is much worse than an April Fool’s joke.
How do you avoid this in your own business. Simply ask yourself…
April Fool’s jokes are great for friends and close colleagues, but in customer service, they just don’t work.
A collection of the best posts about customer service and the customer experience I read this past month.
Sometimes the most popular post from the previous month; sometimes just the one I liked best.
We received a lot of quality feedback on our post How to Handle Customer Threats. The post seemed to strike a nerve with readers, and a number shared their own techniques and experiences. Customer threats will happen, and the more we can prepare our teams, the more equipped they will be to handle these high stress situations.
By Adam Toporek. Adam Toporek is an internationally recognized customer service expert, keynote speaker, and workshop leader. He is the author of Be Your Customer's Hero: Real-World Tips & Techniques for the Service Front Lines (2015), as well as the founder of the popular Customers That Stick® blog and co-host of the Crack the Customer Code podcast.