On 60 Minutes this past Sunday, Maine Senator Angus King called Maine “a big small town.” When interviewer Jon Wertheim asks what he meant, King responds, “If you’re from Maine and you stop on the New Jersey Turnpike for gas, and the car next to you has a Maine plate on it– I guarantee within […]
Category: Cultivating Positive Relationships
In a world filled with distrust and discord, building and maintaining brand trust will be more important than ever in 2021’s customer service equation. Companies offering and delivering on trust promises will see increased customer loyalty and longevity along with beneficial effects of positive reviews and word-of-mouth. Companies coming up short in the trust arena […]
While 2020 has been a challenging year, customer service changes bolstered by pandemic consequences actually have strengthened positive outcomes. Remote work environments, increased empathy and initiatives implemented to weather the storm have contributed to making and keeping customers happy more consistently. As success stories have spread through social media, mainstream media, word-of-mouth and reviews, companies […]
Customer entitlement didn’t happen in a vacuum. Technology and marketing both have fueled it into a white hot blaze. An article by Claudia Conlon in MKTGinsight (voice of the Direct Marketing Club of New York) looks at today’s landscape. Conlon writes: “We’ve entered into a ‘give an inch, expect [a] mile’ era of marketing, where nearly […]
Last week, we cited a customer entitlement article written by Jade Wu, PhD on quickanddirtytips.com. She notes, “Entitled people expect special treatment and lots of admiration. They don’t like to play fair, even though all of this makes their relationships with others worse.” She then details five ways to best address the entitlement mentality, tips […]
Customer entitlement didn’t spring fully formed out of nowhere. While it’s always been an issue, the politics of the last four years have spotlighted it in unwavering, infuriating detail. Entitled customers make it much harder for customer service reps to do their job—because the bottom line in most cases is bowing to customer wishes, even […]
Where does customer service cross over into undeserved customer entitlement? A recent T-Mobile ad campaign got me thinking about this important distinction, with the “I want it all…and I want it now” theme. While competent, dedicated and sincere customer service needs to continue growing in this country, the opposite is true of our entitlement mentality, […]
As COVID continues to dominate our lives, customer crankiness is growing substantially. That makes the job of customer service specialists even more challenging. Consumers are not in a forgiving mood, as a recent article in MartechSeries.com (via PRNewswire) notes: “As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, more than 80% of consumers in the US expect customer support […]
Through all of the advice and philosophizing out there, sometimes great customer service boils down to what Jack Palance told Billy Crystal in the movie City Slickers. Excerpted, Palance asks, “Do you know what the secret of life is?…One thing. Just one thing…[Crystal asks] But, what is the ‘one thing?’…[Palance replies] That’s what you have […]
Gotta hand it to Costco once again. Their growth continues healthily through the pandemic, largely because of their unwavering dedication to customer service (and their strong employee support doesn’t hurt either). And, this is despite ranking lower than some competitors in the convenience category, cited by a recent ZDNet.com report as a chief consumer buying […]
