Dear Fellow Business Owner / Manager, Let’s face it — your service sucks. Bad. Now, I’ll be the first to admit my service sucks on occasion too. But in my defense, my sins are unintentional. I am trying to do the right thing, and I either dropped the ball or hired the wrong ball carrier. […]

Chances are you have an account with a big bank. No, really. There is almost a 1 in 2 chance that you have an account with a Top 10 bank and a 1 in 3 chance that you have an account with one of the Top 3 largest banks. So, there’s a pretty good chance […]

On Thursday, January 5th, CNBC aired a documentary entitled Customer (Dis)Service. I had hoped to blog about the documentary as it ran, but alas, the hotel I was staying in did not carry CNBC. Fortunately, inbound marketing consultant Ken Mueller gave me a real-time play by play of the show. He also did a brief […]

Any list of examples of customer service skills is bound to be incomplete. Customer service and customer experience management incorporate operational, technological, and interpersonal skills that are as diverse as they are numerous. However, identifying and developing core customer service skills — in hiring, in promotion, in restructuring — can be an incredible source of […]

Instead of a roundup looking back at the past year, I thought I would take a look forward in this final day of 2011. This blog will be changing a good bit in the coming year, and I wanted to talk briefly about the new direction. [UPDATE: As the redesign has already occurred and this […]

The original title of this post was Is Bad Customer Service the Norm? It is a catchy title — better than my current one — however, there is only one problem with it: It isn’t true. My original inspiration for the piece came from a January blog post by Harley Manning over at Forrester summarizing the […]

What is Customer Lifetime Value and Why Is It Important? Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) attempts to determine the economic value a customer brings over their “lifetime” with the business.  At the heart of understanding CLV lies the recognition that a customer does not represent a single transaction but a relationship that is far more valuable […]

The spirit of Thanksgiving is embodied in the name of the day. Somewhere among the football games, the super-caloric gorging, and the tryptophan-induced dozing, we all hopefully pause to reflect and to give thanks for the things we cherish in our lives. For most, this means reflections on family and friends, on health and happiness. […]

On occasion, we like to take a break from our regular content to highlight a worthy cause outside of our normal discussions of business and customer service. This Nonprofit Spotlight is dedicated to the Blue Key Campaign (link no longer active), which is a “U.S. based initiative (link no longer active) to channel the energy […]