customer service
Death to all websites.
So you create a simple message, and make sure that all of the information that everybody want is easily found. There is a call to action, and easy contact methods. This is the best website you can make. And it still sucks. It just sucks the least that it could.
As a prospective customer I want [...]
Free Customer Service report
Customer Experience Matters reports on this report on Customer experience (available free – just by registering) from Forrester research – I found the spread of rankings in different indutries interesting. How is it that some industries have a more significant range than others – I will be trying to work out if that is just [...]
Latest great post on co-creation from ConfusedofCalcutta
On ConfusedofCalcutta I recently came across this great article http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2008/11/15/whoa-reining-in-the-faster-horses/ that alone empahises the importance of what JP Rangaswami has to say, but more importantly the importance of what customers have to say.
As always walking-the-talk is the next most obvious thing to do…
If you are not yet familiar with Confused of Calcutta, you can find [...]
Customer Service Blogs
I went out looking to extend the blogroll on customer service and and found…
http://www.serviceuntitled.com/
http://flooringtheconsumer.blogspot.com/
http://customersrock.net/
http://tips-customer-service.blogspot.com/
http://customerservicevoodoo.wordpress.com/
http://www.allbusiness.com/sales/customer-service/10783-1.html
http://clearaction.biz/blog/
http://custserv.gbwatch.com/
http://www.customersarealways.com/
http://www.qaqna.com/
http://www.returncustomer.com/
http://customerevangelists.typepad.com/
http://shephyken.blogspot.com/
http://customerservicereader.typepad.com/
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/
http://consumerist.com/
http://customeru.wordpress.com/
http://lovethemup.com/
http://makeitgreat.typepad.com/
http://podcast.amanet.org/edgewise/category/customer-service/
http://www.thecustomercarenetwork.com/
http://www.customerthink.com/
http://www.mycustomer.com/customer_service_and_experience/
http://www.simplenomics.com/
http://www.yourcustomersmatter.com/
http://www.evilgeniusmarketing.com/ice/
http://www.callcenterscript.com/
http://www.customerservicemanager.com/customer-service-articles.htm
http://www.bazaarblog.com/
http://arc.typepad.com/customercrossroads/
http://experiencematters.wordpress.com/
http://www.freedyourmind.com/
http://nextup.wordpress.com/
http://thecustomerinstitute.blogspot.com/
http://contextrules.typepad.com/transformer/
http://maximumcustomerexperience.com/
http://www.goodexperience.com/
http://betuitive.blogs.com/beconnected/
http://netpromoter.typepad.com/
http://customerworld.typepad.com/swami_weblog/
http://cem.blogware.com/blog
http://www.slideshare.net/search/slideshow?q=customer+satisfaction&submit=post
http://www.600days.com
How many minutes did you spend today thinking about customer service?
I mean dedicated minutes of thinking time.
In response to specific requests from customers?
More generally about how to improve things for customers?
Or in small improvements to products and services, that customers will really notice?
How about when writing a brief or design to describe it from the customer experience, and really think about how the customer feels?
Getting [...]
Bad news is better than no news
A couple of recent airport escapades had me siting around with no information. From my point of view what happened in the first one was:
0545 – check in luggage for 0645 flight
0645 – in line with over half of the travellers ticketed and on the stairs to the gate
0715 – everybody already ticketed gets un-ticketed [...]
Remembering our principles
Our 600 days countdown to establishing a new standard for Customer Service (and causing good while we are at it) began in September, but we actually started our ‘mission’ to improve customer service through technology much earlier. At the beginning of his year we wrote two white papers called ‘Customer Service 2.0: Collaborative Self-Service through [...]
Customers are more important than internal customers
I have hear it suggested that:
internal customers are as important as external customers.
customer service lessons about customers can be related to internal customers
good internal customer service means that overall customer service will improve
meeting internal SLAs means that customers will be satisfied
many other variants of internal customers=external customers
And I disagree for the simple reason that it [...]
Grouping customer service activity
This week three of us spent some time at the UK Institute of Customer Service Annual User Conference where I learned to articulate better a few groupings of activity that improve customer service.
The grouping activities were:
Monitor Customer Service
Surprisingly few people do this. Peter Drucker told us “What get’s measured gets managed”, so it logically follows [...]
Free prize inside – great book (praise 4 years late)
I thought I had read most things written by Seth Godin. (I pre-ordered Meatball Sundae and Tribes). I had totally missed Free Prize Inside, and had it recommended recently. I grabbed a copy and digested it in a day or so. And then I bought a 20 copies for my colleagues.
Following the Purple Cow theme [...]
A list of things that make good customer service
Some of these extend into the realm of marketing, operations, and sales, but are all part of providing a good customer service. In no particular order:
Understanding/deciding who the customer is
Offering something of real value
Giving personal attention to each customer
Doing what you say you will
Being honest
Opening up communications and systems
Creating community
What other things make good customer [...]
What is good customer service?
In order to build the best customer service in the world we first of all have to make sure that we know what good customer service is. This might be a case of defining the obvious – in a White Paper I was involved in we defined it as:
giving each customer what they want, when [...]
Starting at the new beginning
The target for the next 600 days is that we will establish a new standard for Customer Service, and be able to donate in excess of $1m per month to good causes before the end of that period. This detail is not fully thought through – like every journey worth making we cannot know all [...]