Customer Service: Is It Instinctive?
“A customer is someone with whom you have dealings.” – Congruence Training This definition of a customer, which we coined in November 1996 when we started our customer centric journey, is important. Because if you’re human, you’re a customer to many brands and people every day. Chances are you also have multiple customers whether or […]
Do You Say What You Mean?
The big problem with verbal communication is that we don’t do it very well at all. In other words, often we don’t say what we mean which leaves the listener to interpret what we meant from what they heard. So we’ve all had to become good interpreters. It’s all the more puzzling because in English […]
Should Customer Experience Be Predictable?
You and your partner are out to dinner at a fine restaurant. The leather-bound 16-page menu arrives with multiple options for hors d’oeuvres, mains and dessert. The wine list is overwhelming. The discussion is dominated for some time by the complexities of choice available until, with some hesitation, decisions are made. The conversation meanders until, […]
Customer Service: Why You Shouldn’t Go The Extra Mile
You don’t need to be a regular churchgoer to often hear one of life’s most sensible maxims: “Do unto others as you would be done by” It is this maxim alone, more than any other that epitomizes the principle of customer service – simply provide the level of service that you yourself would be happy […]
Shifting Customer Expectations
Communication: When I attended boarding school in the early 70’s I’d painstakingly write a weekly letter to my parents, typically 3 pages long with my news. I’d fold it carefully, place it in an envelope, put a stamp on it and make sure it reached the mail bag in time for the weekly mail collection. […]
The Value of Acknowledgement
A mother asks her teenager to please lay the table. She receives no response. Twenty minutes later it still hasn’t been done. Now what? Was the request heard? Was the teenager busy or just preoccupied? Is he still intending to do it? Mom, herself once a teenager – she reminds herself, ends up setting the […]