When it comes to serving customers, most companies are concerned more with posture than performance. Posture is based on what companies say they do, their public image. Performance is based on what companies actually do, their results. Would you rather do business with a company that projects exceptional customer service
Many companies do an effective job of training their employees and holding them accountable to certain job functions. For instance, in the checkout line at my local supermarket I’m routinely asked, “Did you find everything you were looking for?” And, when picking up my order at my favorite take-and-bake pizza
I’m currently reading the book Smart Pricing by Jagmohan Raju and Z. John Zhang. Anything published by Wharton School Publishing has been thoroughly researched and applied in the real world of work—beyond the ivory tower of theory and abstraction often associated with academia. In the book’s introduction, the authors present
Why do executives tend to support instituting fees that they know will annoy customers and yet oppose investments in training and other processes that will improve the customer experience? Here’s a guess: Companies can begin assessing fees immediately and then add up the revenue generated at the end of the
I met a colleague at ink! Coffee in Denver last week. I appreciate great coffee as I’ve blogged about before and was really looking forward to trying ink!’s. My first impression was positive as the barista welcomed me and briefly shared ink! Coffee’s philosophy regarding product quality and freshness. After
Is there an organization that comes to mind when I ask you to consider a predictably poor customer service provider? By this I mean a company or entity you dread returning to because you’ve been consistently disappointed with previous customer service experiences. When I pose this question to audiences, I
Last Thursday night, we took a night off from cooking and brought our kids to Chili’s for dinner. As soon as we entered the restaurant, my seven year old, Cooper, noticed that the Carolina Panthers vs. Baltimore Ravens preseason football game was being televised in the bar area. As the
Have you ever noticed the tendency of frontline employees to become defensive—even surly—when you bring a problem or misunderstanding to their attention? Unless your business has chronic, unresolved issues (in which case, you may want to update your résumé), problems and misunderstandings are exceptions. By definition, exceptions do not conform
If you studied management anywhere along your journey, then you may recall the seminal Harvard Business Review article by Sterling Livingston titled Pygmalion in Management. Essentially, the article dealt with the self-fulfilling prophecy (or Pygmalion effect from Greek mythology) in management—a supervisor’s expectation of a subordinate’s performance that directly or
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