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Building Bridges Cultivating Positive Relationships Customer Service Kudon'ts Kudos Opinion

Tale of two companies: Nova Home Loans displays emotional intelligence in contrast to loan servicer emotional ignorance

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, […]

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Business Development Customer Service Opinion

Top-notch training keys customer service success

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 […]

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Customer Service General Marketing Opinion

Text spamming, scamming, slamming proliferate

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 […]

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Cultivating Positive Relationships Customer Service Opinion

Telling you what you want to hear, not what you need to know

Pandemic-soothing commentary coming from the Trump White House established new, awful standards for telling people what they wanted to hear versus what they needed to know. Factual outcomes dashed hopes, ruined lives, and rendered a horrible disservice to those supposedly being served—the American people. In an effort to mollify customers or move on quickly to […]

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Business Development Customer Service Healthcare Opinion

Here’s to Ann Jesse, firebrand entrepreneur and customer service champion

My longtime friend, Ann Jesse, just died. Ann didn’t just practice stellar customer service, she created it. When diagnosed with Hepatitis C in the nineties, she started a national Hep C support organization to provide the help and answers she hadn’t been able to find anywhere else. The Hep C Connection grew to one of […]

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Business Development Cultivating Positive Relationships Empowerment Techniques Tips

Seek clients emulating your personal preferences

In addition to courting customer service stars, client prospects that emulate your personal preferences also can be good way to pursue new opportunities. Companies scoring high on both fronts will be more likely to sync up with you in a business relationship. There are many ways to assess preference and style compatibility. One obvious and […]

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Building Bridges Customer Service Empowerment Techniques

Be a customer service force of 1

While customer service departments and representatives generally are doing a better job of addressing consumer satisfaction in a timely and complete manner, it’s not always sufficient to rely on others to move the process forward. In some cases, the impacted customer needs to go further and farther to pierce the normal routes and get needed […]

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Building Bridges Cultivating Positive Relationships Customer Service

Maine senator offers valuable 2021 customer service insights

On 60 Minutes recently, 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 30 seconds […]

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Building Bridges Business Development Cultivating Positive Relationships Customer Service

Trust will drive consumer loyalty in 2021

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 […]

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Building Bridges Cultivating Positive Relationships Customer Service

We’ve taken to calling them ‘Karens,’ but they abound across both genders and beyond

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, […]