A couple weeks back, I ordered two items on Amazon. When the delivery failed, I requested and immediately received a full refund. I re-ordered the items. Two days later, the “undeliverable” items showed up. I likely could have kept quiet and gotten everything free. Instead, I called and explained the situation. At first, the rep […]
Category: Customer Service
A key tenet of successful customer service is the level of emotional intelligence or ignorance that prevails. This pervades all facets of customer service, but one where much improvement is needed is the written word. Especially now, amid major stress, anger, and frustration, corporate America could do itself proud by communicating positively and supportively. Instead, […]
I got a reminder last week about the importance of “training” communications channels right along with reps to accurately inform and educate. The matter seemed to be simple: I wanted to donate an old flat-screen TV. After a couple hours calling around, based on website-based policies for such items, I learned that many communications either […]
Forbes Senior Contributor Micah Solomon addresses a great question about customer service standards falling as a company scales up operations. He notes: “Is such lowering of standards irreversible, the inevitable status quo as a company continues to scale? Decidedly not—if you relentlessly resharpen your focus and tenaciously stick to your guns once again in only […]
In today’s complex, fast-scaling work environments, competent and ongoing training is an absolute requirement to achieve customer service success. Without it, workforce attitudes and aptitudes suffer—with consequences impacting customers in frustrating ways. To provide complete and accurate information to would-be as well as present customers, companies must ensure that their customer service reps know the […]
Customer service representations that don’t hold up to actual performance are worse than no customer service at all. My Nextdoor post last week addresses my frustrating “Starry Snafu” experience: “As a backup to CenturyLink Internet/landline, which I’ve had nearly 5 years, I ordered Starry on a trial basis. When I put in the order, I […]
I can die a happy person if I never see another Golo or American Home Shield TV commercial come up on the screen. Make no mistake, I actually checked them both out initially. Golo offers a regimen to battle insulin resistance and American Home Shield covers home repairs. In fact, I initially found the American […]
Leading the over-communication charge is texting. Between spamming, scamming, and now slamming us with unwanted texts, email and robocalls now have some serious competition. Maybe I’ve been late to the party, as I’ve only started getting bombarded the last few weeks. For whatever reason, however, the intrusion has been substantially thwarted by a text blocking […]
One end of the pendulum to the other: From not communicating enough with customers to deluging them with confirmations, reminders, requests, survey questions, and directives via automated platforms and conversations. Clear, consistent communication is one thing. This is getting very noisy and annoying. While most customers can control the level of information provided to some […]
When a company courting you starts out with a bait-and-switch pitch to get your business, chances are excellent that their customer service leaves much to be desired as well. It’s the epitome of inaccurate and incomplete information. I recently came upon a new and somewhat compelling nutritional program article. Interested, I filled out a profile […]
