The most successful leaders don’t rely solely on data to tell them what’s happening. They take steps to put themselves in their customers’ shoes. They want to deeply understand the business—its products, employees, and competitors—and experience it as their customers do. I agree. Get out there and see what’s happening firsthand. Make it a habit. Learn as much as you …
As a leader you have to be able to motivate your team members. In fact you probably need to be able to motivate others well beyond those who formally report to you. You may be asking yourself, how on earth can I get people to do things they may not want to do? But that’s not motivation. That’s coercion. Motivation …
Customer advocacy is a hot topic in marketing and customer experience circles—and especially so following the economic upheavals of 2020 and 2021. Many of today’s most forward-thinking leaders—Elon Musk, Richard Branson, and Emily Weiss, to name a few—see it as the only true and sustainable way to win customers and market share over the long term. I define customer advocacy …
Feedback from customers and employees is like oxygen. Your organization must have it to survive and thrive. Whether you’re a print shop with three employees, a government agency with 3,000, or a multinational company with 300,000, you need a strategy to fully leverage feedback. Voice of the customer, or VOC, is the term often used to describe this process. In …
“75% of customer experience initiatives fail!” That’s a sensational headline. And one, even with a modest search of cases and literature, you’ll see often (in fact, estimates go as high as 93 percent). My question is, if your focus on customer experience fails, what’s the alternative? Not focusing on customer experience? That just doesn’t make sense. Really, your organization has …
Recently, I gave a presentation at the Tugboat Institute Gathering of Teams. The talk focused on common missed opportunities in customer service as well as steps that leaders and teams can take to make a difference for their customers. It concluded with several questions that teams can ask to help shape service that is best for their customers and their …
Apple, the trillion-dollar tech giant, is also a giant in customer service. When my iPhone battery life began to diminish, I found myself on Apple’s online support pages, where I was quickly offered four options: bring the product into a store, send it in for repair (which I could schedule online), start a chat, or set up a call. With …
It could be that you have just a few people in a small department or company, handling interactions with customers. On the other hand, you might have thousands of agents working across multiple sites. In either case, or any point in between, you need a Customer Access Strategy. Just think about the inter-related decisions related to rolling out a new …
You’ve likely seen the signs posted in retail and restaurants: “Please be patient with our team.” You’ve probably heard similar delay announcements when contacting organizations: “Due to unusually heavy demand… “ Supply and production issues are, as Carrington York put it in a recent LinkedIn News story, “flipping the U.S. economy on its head.” And customer service operations are in …
An important part of customer service leadership is understanding what customers want, and ensuring your delivery and experiences meet their expectations. But what do customers expect? How are those expectations changing? This video from my LinkedIn Learning course “Customer Service Leadership” explores customer expectations and how you can shape services that truly meet the needs of your customers. Understanding customer …
