This week, October 3-9, marks National Customer Service Week (NCSW). NCSW was established by proclamation of President Bush (#41) in 1992. The beginning of the proclamation reads: In a thriving free enterprise system such as ours, which provides consumers with a wide range of goods and services from which to choose, the most successful businesses […]

One of the trickier parts of delivering an exceptional customer experience is when you cede control of the experience to subcontractors. Maintaining service standards with the company’s team is challenging enough; maintaining those same levels of service through a subcontractor can border on the impossible. The experience we had when vacationing on the island of […]

In customer service, pride is a double-edged sword. Pride in your organization can cause team members to go the extra mile. However, pride of the don’t-disprespect-me variety can cause team members to respond unfavorably to upset customers. When the personal reaction to an unhappy customer trumps the professional reaction, pride has won, and your organization […]

Customer service is one of those topics where it is easy to speak in broad generalities. Sayings such as the customer is always right and service begins with a smile easily convey basic, unqualified principles that mask the fact that what defines excellent customer service will always be incredibly individual in nature. However, while superior […]

I have been trying to find a good definition of customer loyalty in this wide world of the Internet, and I have come to the conclusion that 1) no one has figured out how to define customer loyalty or 2) I am really bad at finding information on the Internet. Do some searches yourself; you’ll […]

Guest Poster: Kaarina Dillabough It is my pleasure to introduce Kaarina Dillabough, former Olympic coach and current make-your-life-and-business-better coach, as our first guest poster. Kaarina is the perfect person to launch the Customer Service Stories series, because she has an engaging way of telling a story while still being able to analyze the systems and […]

Last Saturday, I wrote that this blog would be changing tack and focusing on the customer service experience. One of the most exciting aspects of this conversion is the launch of the Customer Service Stories series. The idea behind Customer Service Stories is to discuss the principles of superior customer service through the lens of […]

Customer referral programs are nothing new. As consumers, we have been inundated with offers for referral perks by everyone from our dentists to our auto mechanics. The reason is simple: customer referral programs work. Customer referral programs (CRPs) come in as many variations as there are businesses to create them. While a CRP is not […]

During a recent vacation, we were fortunate enough to stay at the Hotel Indigo in Asheville, NC where we received a great lesson in top-notch customer service and the art of surprise. A Birthday in the Mountains We were in Asheville to celebrate a milestone birthday of my wife’s (which milestone, I am sworn to […]