Guest Service

Ensure your organization's values are connected to the work employees do every day, especially work tied to customers. If you cannot connect values to work, you may need to rethink your organization's values.

My friend Norman Beck sends me interesting articles and newsworthy information regularly. This one is worth talking about here. A grocery store chain had a sign in front of its entrance that read:   Free Delivery – $99 a Year!  I had to smile – even laugh out loud – thinking of how many people would roll their

Today thousands of surveys are being sent out, completed, tabulated, analyzed, and being put into presentations and on dashboards. Recommendations are being made. Executives are making decisions. Products are being green lighted or cancelled. Franchise agreements are being reviewed. People are being hired or fired. 

Lives are being affected.

The problem with this, is that many times the data being collected is not just questionable, it’s just bad.

The title of this article may sound like a lesson in sales, but it’s much bigger than that. It’s about the entire customer experience. If a promise to provide value in the CX is built into a company’s mission and values statements, it potentially becomes part of the culture.  Imagine if your organization were

Someone asked me a question: Sometimes I’m so frustrated when I call a company’s customer service number. I try to be nice, but that doesn’t always work. What do you think if I yell at them? Here is my answer: A couple of old expressions come to mind. First, “The squeaky wheel gets the oil,” which means if

A poor talent acquisition experience could hurt business. More than half of workers responding to a survey said they’re less likely to be a consumer of a brand after a bad job application or interview process,

If a customer has a problem, issue or question, speedy customer service could be the difference between the customer coming back or not.

Brands are quickly finding out that the customer service strategies that worked with other generations don’t work with Gen Z. By and large, Gen Z’s preferences are so unique that they require novel tactics. Businesses that can both learn what those preferences are as well as make pivots will earn Gen Z loyalty. Those that don’t acknowledge or accept Gen Z’s needs will have trouble gaining traction with this cadre of buyers.

Having a loyal customer base is a dream come true for any business. A loyal customer not only sticks with you through thick and thin but also helps you attract new leads and paves the way for you to grow your business.

The responsibility for customer service success or failure usually lies in the hands of leadership, not the front-line workers. 

Few things bother me more than unscrupulous business practices. As a Customer Experience Analyst with decades in the CX industry, I thought I’d seen it all. But a recent experience with Fox Rent a Car showed me a new way to game a customer survey — resulting in ONLY the data they want to see and discarding the rest.

Recently, I wrote two articles for my weekly Forbes column that paid homage to Abraham Maslow, the American psychologist who created what is referred to as Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. The articles were so well received that I wanted to share shorter versions here with our Shepard Letter subscribers.  Over the

“Curiosity killed the cat.” According to Wikipedia, this saying first appeared in a 1598 play, Every Man in His Humour, by English playwright Ben Johnson. The following year, Shakespeare used a similar quote in Much Ado About Nothing. The intent behind this saying is “to warn of the dangers of unnecessary

Whoever said “the customer is always right” didn’t hear this about this story. Fox News just posted an update to a 2021 story about a man arrested for pointing an AK-47 at an employee at a pizza shop in Knoxville, Tennessee.   The short version of the story is this. A customer walked into a Little Caesars

One of the more enjoyable activities in my life is playing hockey. When I’m in town – not out speaking at conferences – I lace up the skates several times a week to play in a friendly hockey game. In close games, when my team is up by one or two goals, I remember my school days when our coaches encouraged us to

As customers, we appreciate it when someone we’re doing business with exceeds expectations. How many employees do what it takes?

In keeping with this trend, here is a somewhat “tongue and cheek” version of the one thing that every customer experience leader should stop doing right now.

It is important to know the difference between what customers want and to know how to know what customers want.

Personalization in customer service makes customers feel like you recognize them with something as simple as using their name.

Optimizing customer experience is table stakes these days, as we all know. Doing so consistently, and in a way that balance organizational strategy with competitive pressures, and customer expectations in a consistently improving way can be a challenge, however. Enter customer journey operations, which should be a critical component of any enterprise organization’s customer experience strategy.