Henry David Thoreau observed: “For every thousand hacking at the leaves of evil, there is one striking at the root.” I thought about how this quote applies to many companies’ social media strategy. These companies are breathlessly “hacking at the leaves” of customer acquisition with their social media strategies rather
Last weekend I emailed the following complaint to the customer service department at The Wall Street Journal: Our Wall Street Journal delivery person has a gutter mind. Let me explain. Ever since we moved to our new address in January, with annoying frequency our morning paper is tossed in the
This is the second post in a series that will explore a set of questions I received from participants during a webinar on the topic of customer service. (I say “explore” rather than “answer” because I’ve discovered over the years that there is rarely a single right answer to these
This morning I stopped by my local King Soopers to pick up a few groceries. One of the items on my list was a pound of sliced turkey from the deli counter. Sometimes I pass on deli meat if there’s a wait but today I was in luck as there
This post is the first in a series over the next 10 weeks that will identify 10 different obstacles that have emerged from my analysis of customer satisfaction data. Maybe you will have encountered one or more of these obstacles in your own business? The first obstacle is apathy. Apathy
The other day, I trailed a King Soopers employee as she returned about a half-dozen shopping carts from the parking lot to the store. She pushed the row of carts into another row of carts inside the store and then, with a dreary facial expression and a heavy sigh, returned
Last January I was one of those people who bought a new wall-mounted flat screen television set just in time to watch the Super Bowl on 52 inches of high definition eye candy. I only have about 500 words, so I’ll spare you most of the gory details of my
Typically, when you think of airline connections, you think of events that occur between departure and arrival at your final destination. But there’s another type of connection that’s equally important to the long-term success of an airline: personal connections. I recently read a Wall Street Journal article about the customer
Though business has its own set of complexities, customer service isn’t one of them. Exceptional customer service is simply a choice. Employees develop their own definitions of customer service and decide for themselves how they view customers: as honored guests who contribute to the success of the enterprise or as
The Revelation Conversation is Here!
