An email list can be at the heart of an organization’s customer communication strategy. If managed effectively, email communication can foster deeper and more profitable relationships with customers and potential customers. BlueHornet surveyed 1,000 U.S. consumers about their thoughts on email marketing. There are many insights to glean from the study, and below are five […]

The business intelligence company Jaspersoft did a very interesting Big Data study, surveying 1,600 of its community members. Jaspersoft included  many of its findings in a nice infographic, which we share below. As you will note, companies are embracing Big Data more than ever and becoming more comfortable with its place in organizational priorities. Here […]

I just wrote a new post for Salesforce called 5 Tips for Decreasing Customer Wait Time That Really Work where I explore ways to minimize the negative effects of wait and hold times on the customer experience. The post contains some really interesting data that illustrates the financial interest that companies should have in reducing […]

Guest Poster: Daniel Tay Daniel Tay is a Content Strategist at Zopim, Editor-in-Chief of We Are Spaces, and sometimes freelance writer / editor. His byline can be found all over the web, but his home is at danieltay.me. Have you ever seen a long queue in front of a restaurant and instantly concluded that the […]

As managers and owners, we have to take care that the systems we put in place to manage and ensure great customer experiences do not create robotic procedures that can be counter to the very experiences we are trying to create. In the post Customer Service Training: Principles Trump Procedures, I told the story of […]

In Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Habit 7 centers around the idea of  “sharpening the saw.” This concept is illustrated in an anecdote where a lumberjack is toiling away, trying to fell a tree with a dull saw. A man approaches him in the forest, and upon noticing his struggle, suggests […]

In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey put forth the idea of viewing tasks through the lens of importance and urgency. The idea, proposed in the section entitled Habit 3 Put First Things First, is that one should align one’s actions with “First Things” to achieve effectiveness. Covey presented the following matrix, […]

We speak a lot in customer experience and customer service about dropping the ball. About… Our failure to provide adequate service. Our failure to communicate. Our failure to meet or exceed customer expectations. However, sometimes it’s not us; it’s them. Some customers simply live on another planet. Even when they are nice, their rather tenuous […]

A lot goes into being a customer service professional (CSP) — forethought and intuition, planning and adaptability — and effective CSPs make sure that they are using their abilities completely in the service of customers. We thought it would be fun to take a look at the anatomy of a customer service professional. The infographic […]