Blog

Engaged customers are no mirage

Last week, I delivered the opening conference keynote address for an insurance association at The Mirage Resort & Casino in Las Vegas. The topic was customer service and one of the behaviors I highlighted was to express genuine interest in your customers by, among other things, engaging them with questions.

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Pale ale for sale?

Earlier this year I stayed in a New York City hotel where I was scheduled to deliver a presentation on customer service. Shortly before my talk, I met the hotel’s beverage director who asked if I had any feedback for him pertaining to the hotel’s food and beverage outlets. I

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An inconvenient message

The other day at Kohl’s department store, I observed three separate customers pull into and then immediately back out of one of two parking spaces located near the store entrance. While both spaces were available, they had been reserved to accommodate the store’s Super Stars of the Month. In each

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Posture versus performance

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

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Energy flows where attention goes

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

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Want to increase profits? It’s simple: Charge more.

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

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Delighted customers will pay more

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

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Coffee. Above all else. (Including customer service.)

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

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Predictably poor customer service

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

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The Revelation Conversation

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