Blog

Steve

The impact of accretion in hospitality

I met a friend for lunch over the weekend. The night before he’d flown in from Las Vegas, having booked a room at a nearby Hampton Inn. He used the Hilton Honors app to reserve and pay for room 404 in advance and awaited an electronic key to arrive to

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Steve

The Elusive 8th Simple Way to Raise Customer Service Quality

Back in 2013 I published my first book, Delight Your Customers. The subtitle of that book is 7 Simple Ways to Raise Your Customer Service from Ordinary to Extraordinary. I specified to my publisher that the subtitle should read “7 Simple Ways…” rather than “The 7 Simple Ways…” It was

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Steve

Service is a principle, not a campaign

This week is Customer Service Week (Oct. 7-11), one week out the year when customers and customer service quality are celebrated. As much as I enjoy and support recognizing customers and service quality, I can’t help but question the superficiality of hanging banners, donning t-shirts and buttons, and ordering pizzas

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Steve

Surprise and Delight is Not a Strategy

Businesses that employ techniques to “surprise and delight” customers in an attempt to distract them from noticing systemic flaws in value (for price paid) or product or service quality are misguided. To illustrate, there is a large plumbing and HVAC company in my area that has its technicians carry a

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Nuance is never obvious

Last week, I read perhaps the best article that has come across my screen in 2016 on the topic of customer service: The Secret Lives of Hotel Doormen by Noam Scheiber. For me, it clarified the distinction between ordinary and extraordinary customer service. While reading the article—although it doesn’t appear

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How to win customers in 2016

With the New Year upon us, I was asked by a blogger to comment on trends that will influence customer experience in 2016. My reaction was to reply with insights into the rapid growth of consumers’ mobile connectivity across socioeconomic categories and the impact this trend is having on the

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You’re not entitled to a 10

Earlier this week, I hired a local handyman service to knock out my “honey-do” list so that I was assured a weekend of uninterrupted football watching. The handyman, Eric, was prompt, even calling to let me know he was running ahead of schedule if that worked for me, which it

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Balancing service quality and volume

This is the fifth post in a series that will explore a set of questions I received from participants during a recent webinar on the topic of customer service. Question: How do you balance providing “above and beyond” customer service with being efficient with the volume of inquiries you receive?

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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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