Management, Human Resources, and Life in a Customer Focused World

It’s been a while since I’ve posted, but I read something that I felt was truly worth repeating.

The vast majority of customers we spoke with made the task pleasant and enjoyable.
This is a quote from Tom Vanderwell while he was doing surveys with people at a store’s checkout line.  It applies to every thing you [...]

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The QAQNA blog posted a link to the 10 worst presentation habits.  Initially, these were written by Carmine Gallo, an author on communication, who also wrote about 5 ways to ruin your next presentation.
If you present or use powerpoint for anything (training, business pitches, customer quality reviews, etc), please read both of these.  They’ll help [...]

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A while back,  a contact of mine from an “addiction treatment, publishing, education, research, and recovery support” contact center, asked me a question.  I didn’t have an answer for her since I’d never dealt with headset problems or complaints in the past, but she was able to eventually get the information she needed.
Her question was:
I am [...]

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Back at the end of January 2008, MSN published an article called “10 Ways to Get Fired From a Home-Based Position” by the CEO of VIPDesk. (I can’t find the link anymore).
Here’s a few that I want to stress.

Having customers hear your kids playing in the background

Working in a noisy area or with the TV [...]

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I’m sure all of us have either asked or been asked this question — or both. It is a default question, a very boring question in an interview that tends to be responded to in a very cookie cutter fashion. How to answer them in a standard way can be found here, here, [...]

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A little customer service goes a long way « Palmetto PR Divas
To the technician in the blog post above, it meant nothing. The person was simply an object to be worked on, as though he were in a factory and the child was nothing but a generic “widget”. There’s a difference — if you’re in [...]

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From the blog –Service Untitled » Make a quick attempt. – customer service and customer service experience blog
“If you have the customer’s phone number (from a voicemail or a callback request), put it into your system and see if anything comes up. If you have their email address, look it up. If you have their [...]

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Brad Worthley is a well known speaker, consultant and behavior change specialist. He publishes a monthly newsletter called “Exceed Customer Expectations!”. I find his insight and thoughts to be quite interesting sometimes. In April 2008 newsletter, he wrote:
When you get busy and the adrenaline is running, you may find yourself speaking to customers faster than [...]

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There is a topic that is always a challenge at a so called “customer service center”.  These call centers or service centers perceive themselves as answering customer questions and giving the customer information about their account.  They perceive themselves as separate from the revenue, separate from the sales, and separate from the success or failure [...]

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Yesterday, Service Untitled wrote a post called “How good are your grammer and spelling?“.  Yes, the errors in the title were on purpose, but it gets the point across.   Customer service emails need to be professional and accurate.  They need to be written better than “Hey. To answer yer question, take a look page three.”  [...]

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