Business Coaching

Whoops Is Your Marketing Or Customer Service Broken?

Do you sometimes find yourself thinking that businesses you buy from are marketing their business and your life tougher than it needs to be because their marketing or customer service is broken?

Here's a terrific video from Seth Godin giving examples of how businesses are designed to be broken and act, just plain stupid.

Customer Service Moments Of Misery & Magic

Here is a ten minute video from one of my favourite business speakers, Tony Alessandra, the creator of the Platinum Rule as he rages about customer service from a national airline and explains his idea about Moments of Misery.

Customers Fight Back With Social Media

My mentor Mitch Axelrod has a saying - the world has changed from caveat emptor to caveat venditor - so if you are not a grade A student of Latin, that means the world has changed from "let the buyer beware" to "let the seller beware".

I can't find the exact statistics but it was something like - the average number of people told by someone who had a great experience is 8 and the average number of people told about bad service is 15.

But developments in social media have made it worse...much, much worse.

Excellent Customer Service Is Even More Important In Tough Times

My Business Coaching Blog came a long way in 2008 but one of my regrets is that I did not focus enough on on bringing you articles about creating excellent customer service.

All my ideas for increasing your sales to and through your existing customers rely on you delivering the excellent customer service your customers can depend on and confidently build into their own business strategies.

And when it comes to customer service, one customer service guru stands out and that is Ron Kaufman.

Customer Service: It's Not My Job

I have just wasted time dropping my car off to be serviced due to the classic problem of "it's not my job".

When I arrived, I was third in the queue for the service desk and both people in front of me had lengthy queries. All I needed to do was to drop my keys off and sign a pre-printed service form.

Customer Focus: How Customer Focused Are You?

The key message of my approach to building a business and increasing profit is to dedicate your business to serving your customers in the best possible way by having a true customer focus.

"We are customer focused and committed to customer satisfaction" are easy words to say but how often does it turn into a glib cliché where the business says one thing but does another.

Good Intentions Bad Results

I am re-reading the excellent "Moments of Truth" by Jan Carlzon at the moment for a review on my Business Books blog. The book tells the story of how Jan Carlzon turned around Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) with customer focus and employee empowerment strategies. Even after twenty years, it is still an enlightened read.

The idea I want to focus on today is the issue of seeing your business as a complete system where actions in one part can have ramifications elsewhere. I have written before about this from a stockholding perspective in the Beer Game.

Customer Loyalty Concepts With Frederick Reichheld

Today I am bring you something special - an free PDF which introduces you to the customer loyalty concepts of Frederick Reichheld.

Frederick Reichheld is probably recognised as the world's leading authority on customer loyalty and the beneficial effects of improving loyalty and customer retention following his best selling book "The Loyalty Effect" (see Amazon.com (affiliate link) - 22 five star reviews out of 27).

I'll have to read the book again before I review it but the Customer Loyalty Concepts PDF I have for you is a transcript of an address Frederick Reichheld gave to the Institute of Direct Marketing on customer loyalty.

Telephone Skills For Great Customer Service

Is a telephone call a regular first point of contact between a prospective customer and your company and if so, are the telephone skills of your staff consistently good enough to leave a great first impression? Business strategy and marketing consultant Jeff Nutbeem provides thirteen tips on how to improve telephone skills for great customer service.

Many will no doubt know these, but here are one or two I've picked up and have used when training my own telesales teams over the years, but they are pretty much universal in my opinion.

1. When answering make sure you give a second's pause between clicking the button to answer and speaking to let the caller adjust to the fact that the call has been answered

Raving Fans Ken Blanchard Review

Raving Fans by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles

Book Review - 4 Stars

The critical message of this book is that satisfied customers are not good enough...you need Raving Fans.

The book "Raving Fans: A Revolutionary Approach to Customer Service" by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles carries on the One Minute Manager traditional of books.