Guidance for Customers
Category Archives: Customer Service
Developing – or Reconsidering – Your Service Strategy
In these unprecedented times, you may find yourself rethinking your organization’s strategy for serving your customers. Strategy is the bridge between your organization’s vision and mission and the specific decisions required to make them a reality. This video from the LinkedIn Learning course “Customer Service Leadership” provides a framework for developing – or reconsidering – your service strategy. Developing your …
What to Say to Angry Customers
With the current crisis, contact center representatives are grappling with heightened workloads and anxious customers. It takes practice to find ways to ensure your impact is as positive and helpful as possible. Remember that you’re doing important work. It’s hard work and it can sometimes be disheartening and downright draining. But your role in helping customers during the most difficult …
“Press 1 for Frustration” Article
This article from Heather Kelly at The Washington Post is a great behind-the-scenes look at the challenges of reaching customer service when call volumes are high and wait times are long. I was honored to be a resource for the article—and I’m thankful for the heroic work so many customer service professionals are doing. https://wapo.st/3cme3JX
How Long Are Customers Willing to Wait?
With much of the world on lockdown due to the current COVID-19 crisis, contact centers are grappling with both increased workloads and staffing challenges. One helpful framework — now and in more normal times — is to understand the factors that affect customer tolerance for queues. There are seven, and they influence how long customers will wait in queue, how …
Real-time Management: Level 2 and Beyond
These extraordinary times have impacted our lives in unimaginable ways. They have also impacted customer service in ways we might have never thought possible. For those struggling to manage unexpected volumes of customer contacts, the following real-time management discussion from the latest edition of Contact Center Management on Fast Forward may be helpful. Level 2 and Beyond In omnichannel environments with …
The Power of One: Every Agent Matters
In these extraordinary times when many of us have had to transition our customer service agents to work at home, it is more important than ever that all agents understand their individual contribution to servicing customers. And that they understand how much they are appreciated. This video shows the impact each person makes on service level, occupancy and average speed …
Building a Cohesive Virtual Team
Information and communications technologies have created organizations that span geography and time. Multi-site environments, cross-functional teams, and extended-hour or 24/7 operations are common contact center examples. If you are a manager or director, you may have the responsibility of getting results from those who work in different locations, who don’t report to you, or who don’t work the same hours. …
Removing Barriers to Employee Motivation and Engagement
Incentives, rewards, and other motivational tactics rarely work for long or have limited impact, but you can implement strategies that knock down barriers to great work and significantly improve your customer service. Learn more about demotivators and how to identify and address them in the video “Removing Barriers: Demotivators” from my LinkedIn Learning Course “Customer Service: Motivating Your Team.” Removing …
Customer Access Strategy as Playbook
Does a customer access strategy sound like something that would be nice to have? Actually, it’s vital. Just ask anyone who’s part of the University of California’s Retirement Administration Service Center (UC RASC). The University of California is the world’s leading public research university system, with ten campuses, five medical centers, three national labs and a network of researchers and …
