Over the last eight weeks I have done Legendary Service customer service training with more than 500 people who all want to improve both internal and external customer service in their organizations. Because I’m a big believer in the concept that no one of us is as smart as all of us, I ask participants…
One of the perks of my job is that I get to travel to many fabulous places in this country and abroad. In my travels, I have experienced all types of customer service. On a recent business trip to Iowa, I was told by the woman at the hotel front desk that the pizza at…
All companies will tell you that customer service is one of their top priorities. But what does great customer service look like in your organization? If employees don’t know, they are each left to their own interpretation. That leads to an uneven experience for customers. A good way to address this situation is to provide…
Summer’s almost here! A time to relax, enjoy outdoor meals, get new summer clothes, take vacations, make new friends, and create memories with those you love. But can summer also teach us something about creating memories with our clients? Yes! It can help us remember that when emotion is attached to a memory it becomes…
Here’s a quick quiz. What job position has 106,000 openings on LinkedIn, has been around about three years, and is focused on such areas as product adoption, onboarding, churn reduction, and customer advocacy? If you guessed customer success manager, you’re right. Customer success is a new approach to customer service that is proactive instead of…
Any single person in your company can make a positive or negative impression on a customer. And today, thanks to social media, that one impression can be multiplied, exponentially, within hours. “Think of Yelp or TripAdvisor,” says Kathy Cuff, coauthor of Legendary Service: The Key Is to Care. “You can go online and read hundreds…
As a Situational Leadership II (SLII) instructor, I teach hundreds of leaders each year how to adapt their leadership style to the needs of their direct reports. Beginners on a new task get a Directing Style; moderately skilled employees get a Coaching or Supporting Style; and highly skilled employees get a Delegating Style. The SLII…
In our new book, Legendary Service: The Key is to Care, Ken Blanchard, Vicki Halsey and I use a parable format to teach some very important—and often surprising—elements of creating a customer focused culture within a company. Even though we use a fictional story to get the point across, all of the examples and lessons…
Have you ever had employees in your organization argue over customers? I was recently working with a client in Toronto where one of the company’s salespeople was emphatic that a certain customer “belonged” to him, not to the organization. The organization, on the other hand, tried to get the employee to see that while he…
We all heard the story of the data breach at Target Stores during the holiday shopping season. I’m sure many of you, like me, used a credit or debit card at Target during that time. So simply stated, people with unclear intentions now have our name, credit card number, security code, email address, and phone…