Outstanding Customer Service – A Call Out to Leadership

Focus Young Woman Working in a Call Center

Outstanding Customer Service – A Call Out to Leadership

Think about it. How hard can it be to provide outstanding customer service to your customers? It isn’t hard at all…WHEN you make it a priority.

The foundation of good service begins with the Leadership of the company. Company leadership is responsible for ensuring the company culture is customer focused. If “good-enough” products or service is the philosophy of Leadership, the entire company will adopt a ‘good enough’ attitude that customers will see and deliver exceptional customer service.

Regardless of the type of customer service, outstanding customer service requires strong leadership to create a culture of customer-centricity, empower employees to make decisions, and continuously improve the customer experience.

Customer service experience refers to the overall interaction a customer has with a company when seeking assistance or information about a product or service. Some good customer service tips include listening actively, responding promptly and empathetically, offering personalized solutions, and following up to ensure satisfaction. Delivering great customer service involves providing fast, reliable, and friendly service that exceeds customer expectations. It can lead to increased customer loyalty and repeat business.

4 Types of Outstanding Customer Service

Reactive customer service: This type of service is provided in response to a customer inquiry or complaint. The goal is to resolve the issue as quickly and satisfactorily as possible.
Proactive customer service: This type of service involves anticipating and addressing customer needs before they become problems. It often involves personalized recommendations, product demonstrations, or regular check-ins.
Self-service customer service: This type of service allows customers to find solutions to their problems independently through online resources such as FAQs, knowledge bases, or forums.
Omnichannel customer service: This type of service provides consistent support across multiple channels, including phone, email, chat, social media, and in-person interactions.

Customer loyalty refers to the tendency of satisfied customers to continue doing business with a company over time. This can be achieved through excellent customer service, product quality, and value. Poor customer service can result in dissatisfied customers, negative reviews, and lost business. It is essential to address customer complaints promptly and offer meaningful solutions.

Customer service teams are groups of employees who specialize in providing customer support agent and assistance. They often work in call centers or online chat platforms. Satisfied customers are customers who are happy with the products or services they have received and feel that their needs have been met. Customer service examples include resolving a technical issue, answering a billing question, or providing product recommendations.

Loyal customers are customers who regularly use a company’s products or services and are less likely to switch to a competitor. They may also refer new customers to the company. Customer journey refers to the series of interactions a customer has with a company, from initial awareness to post-purchase support. It is important to understand the customer journey to identify areas for improvement and provide a seamless customer experience.

Quality of excellent customer service and quality of products makes for proud employees. Proud employees are enthusiastic. Proud and Enthusiastic employees lead to truly exceptional customer service. Give your employees a reason to be proud. Give your employees a reason to provide great customer service personalized and attentive service.

It really isn’t that hard, but it is up to you, the Leadership.

In Conclusion

Outstanding customer service is crucial for businesses to attract and retain customers. It is not just a task for customer service teams but requires strong leadership from the top to create a culture of customer-centricity, empower employees to make decisions, and continuously improve the customer feedback experience. Different types of customer service, including reactive, proactive, self-service, and omnichannel, can help businesses meet customers’ needs and expectations.

June 30, 2010August 19, 2022

Quitters Never Win?

This Blog is by Kathie Allen, CPCC, ACC – Guest Writer

Recently I was coaching a client who was overwhelmed with work and wholeheartedly believed that “quitters never win.” I asked her/him, “What are some valid reasons why someone would quit any of the work s/he is doing?” “Well,” s/he said, “if you aren’t any good at what you do, then I guess that’s a reason. And, if what you are doing doesn’t fit who you are anymore, then that would be a good reason to give it up. And, if someone else is better at it than I am and I don’t enjoy my work anymore, then I could resign.” When s/he heard her/his words, s/he spoke her/his truth immediately: “I’m afraid that if I let go, someone will judge me for that action. Mostly I will judge myself for quitting!”

What about you? What are you holding on to that no longer fits? What are you doing that you aren’t very skilled at or isn’t your passion but you’re doing it because you think you have to?

Clarify for yourself the things you do well, the things you are passionate about, and the places where you make a difference and feel alive when you engage in them. Then set out to do them. Leave the things you don’t do well to someone who can. Don’t rob them of the chance to contribute to what they do well.

What do you really want to quit? I challenge you to do so as soon as possible! Your stress will be reduced, and you will begin to live from a place of passion and peace as you pursue work that is a great fit.

For more resources, see the Library topic Personal and Professional Coaching.

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Kathie Allen, CPCC, ACC – Professional Life and Leadership Coach. Kathie loves to work with people who believe in the greater good and those in search of deeper meaning for their lives. Contact Kathie: 218-326-9267 • insight@paulbunyan.net

June 30, 2010February 22, 2023

The Ethical Way to Balance Safety and Costs

Businesspeople having a conversation on ethics

As BP continues to be in the spotlight, with every business practice being scrutinized, we can learn some lessons on how ethical companies balance safety and costs.

Ethical Culture

There is nothing inherently “ethical” about balancing safety and costs. Few programs, even government projects, can reduce safety risks down to zero. The key factor is how does the company balance the risks and how are those decisions made known to key stakeholders, both inside and outside the company.

As reported in today’s Wall Street Journal:

Until the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf, Mr. Hayward (BP’s CEO) repeatedly said he was slaying two dragons at once: safety lapses that led to major accidents, including a deadly 2005 Texas refinery explosion; and bloated costs that left BP lagging rivals Royal Dutch Shell PLC and Exxon Mobil Corp.

In a review of internal documents, BP seems to have taken a reactive approach to managing safety issues. Only when confronted by government agencies did BP make commitments to take action:

The agency had inspected a refinery in Toledo, Ohio, which BP now jointly owns with Husky Energy, in 2006, uncovering problems with pressure-relief valves. It ordered BP to fix the valves. Two years later, inspectors found BP had carried out requested repairs, but only on the specific valves OSHA had cited. The agency found exactly the same deficiency elsewhere in the refinery. OSHA ordered more fixes and imposed a $3 million fine.

However, as we have seen from the fallout from the Gulf Oil Spill, the recent mine accidents in West Virginia, as well as FAA intervention on airline safety issues, relying on government identification of safety issues may no longer be a viable fall back position for companies that have greater knowledge of the issue than the government.

In February 2009, Allison Iversen, a coordinator at Alaska’s Petroleum Systems Integrity Office, sent BP a letter saying it had failed to inspect the stretch of pipeline for more than a decade before it broke. A scheduled 2003 inspection was never performed because the pipe was covered in snow and the company never returned to do it. The state also said it was “deeply concerned with the timeliness and depth of the incident investigation” conducted by BP. It took four months to provide a report that other oil companies typically submit in two weeks.

The result has been a spotty record of being proactive on safety issues:

“They claim to be very much focused on safety, I think sincerely,” says Jordan Barab, deputy assistant secretary at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. “But somehow their sincerity and their programs don’t always get translated well into the refinery floor.”

At the same time, BP has been focused on cost reductions:

Meanwhile, company officials continued hammering home the message on costs. Mr. Shaw, the Gulf of Mexico head, made the point at a meeting for top managers in Phoenix in April 2008. His aim, according to an internal BP communication, was to instill a “much stronger performance culture” in the organization, based on strictly managing costs and “this notion that every dollar does matter.” BP declined to make Mr. Shaw available for comment.

But there have been challenges in balancing a “performance culture” with maintaining adequate safety standards:

Obstacles soon emerged. A 2007 internal document setting out the safety policy spoke of an industry shortage of engineers and inspectors that could endanger plans to implement new standards for inspecting and maintaining critical equipment. An internal presentation in May 2009 cited a shortage of experienced offshore workers and said more training was required to “maintain safe, reliable and efficient operations.”

Some think the cost drive affected safety. Workers had “high incentive to find shortcuts and take risks,” says Ross Macfarlane, a former BP health and safety manager on rigs in Australia who was laid off in 2008. “You only ever got questioned about why you couldn’t spend less—never more.” BP vigorously denies putting savings ahead of safety.

Ethics and Safety

So how do companies effectively balance safety and costs?

The first step is to differentiate two critical types of safety expenses: the cost of identifying safety risks and the cost of mitigating them. Organizations cannot make an intelligent decision to bear the risk of a particular action if they are not getting adequate data on which to make such a decision.

In today’s world, with a global corporation’s daily actions affecting so many external stakeholders (e.g. the public), it is ethically unacceptable for a company to not have full knowledge of the risks it generates. Cutbacks in safety personnel, as well as creation of performance incentives that quash disclosure of safety issues, is questionable at best.

It is a separate matter to act on mitigation once a safety issues is fully acknowledged, even just internally within the company’s decision-making hierarchy.

From BP to Toyota, companies have to make decisions daily as to what level of safety they can economically bear. If a decision to take a certain level of risk is legal, within industry guidelines and best practices, and fully vetted internally among subject-matter experts, such a conclusion, even if it leads to a problem, will result in far less damage than if the company either never evaluates the risk, or intentionally quashes discussion on how to manage that risk.

The public accepts the inherent risk in deep water drilling as well as manufacturing safe automobiles. What is not acceptable is an organization that abrogates its responsibility to fully weigh those risks by short-cutting the internal intelligence gathering mechanisms that keep critical data from being openly discussed.

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David Gebler is the President of Skout Group, an advisory firm helping global companies manage ethics risks. Send your thoughts and feedback to dgebler@skoutgroup.com.

June 29, 2010August 19, 2022

Unleashing the Power of your Story-I

“When we know the facts about people, we know what they are. When we know their stories, we know who they are.” John Quincy Adams

Leadership, Systems, and Stories

One of the most powerful ways to understand your leadership, and the reasons you behave and lead as you do, is to understand your systemic story.

Out of my work over the past 25 years with individual executives, executive teams, and large organizational change projects–and from my work with David Kantor, one of the leading family systems therapists and systems consultants in the U.S.–I have developed a powerful leadership coaching process, Creating your Leadership Story. Story work helps leaders make major improvements in their performance in short periods of time. Clients report that, in 2-3 hours of coaching, they create significant positive changes that stay with them over the long haul.

Leaders who choose to do story work learn to see Events–how they respond to particularly difficult leadership challenges. They come to recognize their Patterns of behavior and implicit assumptions, both those that have helped them create desired results and those that have gotten in their way. And, they discover Structure–how Patterns are rooted in their systemic story, the story that reflects how they initially learned to operate in systems.

Many clients describe seeing the connection between their present day leadership and their deep story as transformational. They make a fundamental shift in how they view themselves in the world and as leaders. But the work does not stop there. They then create a new story that is aligned with the results they want to create and the kind of leader they want to be; they identify new behaviors and assumptions; and they practice their new approaches to produce quantum leaps in their leadership effectiveness.

This post is the first of a series in which I will discuss what I mean by “story”, why your deep story is central to how you lead, why seeing your deep story is a powerful way to make desired changes in your leadership, and how you can go about doing that. Also, I will review the broader context for our stories—the theory underlying story work; stories in the context of our life cycle; and our individual and cultural myths, where these mythic stories come from, why we tell them, and what we can learn about ourselves and our world by paying more attention to them.

Questions to Ponder

Have you ever been in the middle of a leadership situation and felt, “I’ve been here before”? The content of the situation may be new, but you still have an underlying “deja vu all over again” experience.

Have you ever experienced a tough, high-pressure situation that was important for you to deal with effectively, but you felt stuck? You may have experienced yourself trying the same things over and over again, each time trying a little harder, and each time feeling more stuck. As in the proverbial tar baby story, the harder you pushed, the more you got entangled.

Conversely, you have probably experienced leadership situations that came out wonderfully despite huge challenges; you were successful and felt great, you performed to the max, and your energy flowed naturally and organically. You may or may not have known why things went so well, but you knew that they did, and you knew you felt great.

Most often, these kinds of instances reflect your deep systemic story.

What is a Systemic Story?

Your systemic story is the story you have told yourself about your experience in systems, particularly the first system of which you were a part. It reflects how you learned to survive and operate in systems; for example, your deep story reflects how you learned to:

Relate to key players in your life
Be successful
Get noticed, or avoid getting noticed
Take risks, and protect yourself
Respond to authority, and exert your own authority
Give and receive love

At its core, your deep story is the internal narrative you have created about your experience of the human condition. As such, it is central to who you are as a human being and as a leader.

What you can do—a first step

If you want to learn to see your story and how it influences your present day leadership behavior, to learn how to keep the parts of your story that serve you well and change the parts that do not, start observing yourself. As a first step, “stand on your own shoulder”, or “on the balcony” and watch yourself doing what you do. Pay particular attention to how you handle the toughest leadership challenges. Notice your thoughts, your feelings, and your behavior. In our next post, you will start to learn what to do with the things you have observed. Eventually, you will learn how to unleash the power of your story and make your life as a leader more consistent with who you truly want to be and what you deeply yearn to accomplish.

To be continued…

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If you have questions and would like more information about story work, feel free to contact me:

Steven P. Ober EdD

Office: 508.882.1025 Mobile: 978.590.4219
Steve@ChrysalisCoaching.org

June 29, 2010August 19, 2022

Ask Them and They Will Come

Man in Brown Suit Jacket sitting on a couch

This blog was written by guest writer Andy Horsnell.

While working for a nonprofit capacity building service, I had occasion to put together an “Executive Director Boot Camp” that would help EDs identify and begin addressing issues that were critical for their on-the-job effectiveness. Early in the development of this project, I almost had myself convinced that I knew enough, given my twenty years in capacity building, to just roll it out to the market. Almost. Instead, I invested in interviews and focus groups with about two dozen executive directors to see what I could learn.

I learned plenty. First, make it exclusively for executive directors; resist the temptation to open it up to other senior staff and board members. “We want to be free talk about our issues, without worrying about what our staff and board members might think.” Then they told me the issues what they wanted the session to address, and gave me specific input on the session format, timing, promotion and pricing. They said, “If you can pull this off as we’ve outlined, we’ll happily pay $400 for a two-day session.” This from a group of people who were known to complain about paying $20 for a lunch presentation by an expert on the latest ‘critical issue’.

We launched the program with the initial goal of thirty participants. The common wisdom around the office was, “We’ll be lucky to get twenty. I mean, how many EDs are there that will come up with $400?” Sixty-five, to be exact. And we could have taken another twenty, had we had the room to accommodate them.

In short, the program almost sold itself, because we had the audacity to give our paying customers what they actually wanted, instead of what we felt they needed. It’s a lesson I won’t forget quickly: don’t ever fool yourself into believing that you can think for your customers. It’s so much easier (and effective) to just ask them in the first place and, if you do, they’ll reward you for it.

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Andy Horsnell is an accomplished social entrepreneur with deep roots in nonprofit management, consulting and training. He is the guide to the Social Enterprise section of the Free Management Library.

June 29, 2010February 22, 2023

The Luxury Brand Effect: Should BMW Sell Ketchup?

Top Brands in Trouble

Luxury brands the world over are continuing to struggle. Coach, a luxury leader in the leather handbag market, has experienced quarterly profit slumps exceeding 30%; Saks’ same-store sales down in excess of 23%; BMW’s U.S. sales taking a 28% nosedive; Well, you get it.

And consulting firm Bain & Company predicts that the 10% or greater drop in the overall luxury market won’t recover until 2012. Time magazine give us insightful new ideas:

Diversify – The Promise of Pleasure

“What can these brands do to battle this malaise? Maybe BMW should try selling ketchup or mayonnaise. It’s not as ridiculous as it sounds: according to a study in the Journal of Consumer Psychology, recession-wracked shoppers are eager to embrace luxury brand names over a wide range of product categories, including those with little logical connection to the brand’s core item. The authors attribute this phenomenon to the “promise of pleasure” — a brand like, say, Cartier evokes strong, positive emotional responses in consumers, and those good feelings can be easily transferred to stuff like furniture, cheese and even, yes, ketchup.

Expand Luxury Brand Portfolios

“The message for luxury brand sellers is to expand their brand portfolios to small extravagances. The availability of Coach keychains or Gucci flip-flops allows consumers who are cutting back to re-experience the pleasure of consuming luxury without paying a fortune. During a downturn, it’s easier to pay $10 for a nice bottle of ketchup than $60,000 for a sedan (although the ketchup doesn’t handle as well).

Don’t Overdo Luxury Brand Extensions

“There’s a danger in overdoing it, though. Pierre Cardin is the poster child for bad brand extension, according to the Harvard Business Review. “By 1988, it had granted more than 800 licenses in 94 countries, generating a $1 billion annual revenue stream — and profits plummeted,” the authors wrote in a 2005 article called “How Not To Extend Your Luxury Brand.”

Thanks to Time Magazine for the original article.

Time.com in partnership with CNN; By Sean Gregory, Aug 05, 2009

For this article in its entirety, see Luxury Brand.

What diversification opportunities do smaller brands have in this economy?

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For more resources, see our Library topics Marketing and Social Networking.

. . ________ . .

ABOUT Lisa M. Chapman: With offices in Nashville Tennessee, but working virtually with international clients, Lisa M. Chapman serves her clients as a business and marketing coach, business planning consultant and social media consultant. As a Founder of iBrand Masters, a social media consulting firm, Lisa Chapman helps clients to establish and enhance their online brand, attract their target market, engage them in meaningful social media conversations, and convert online traffic into revenues. Email: Lisa @ LisaChapman.com

June 29, 2010August 19, 2022

Coaching Tip – The 5 Minute Weekly Review

As I work with my coaching clients, I realize that most people do not routinely reflect or evaluate their progress – unless it is performance review time. I created this simple feedback tool called The 5 Minute Weekly Review to provide a structure for insight, learning and improving performance.

The 5 Minute Weekly Review

What went well?
What went poorly?
What would you have done differently?
Next week – what will you do more of? Less of?

As you try out this tool, what would you include in your weekly review?

For more resources, see the Library topic Personal and Professional Coaching.

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Pam Solberg-Tapper MHSA, PCC – I spark savvy business leaders to fire up their cutting edge, be extraordinary and do great things for their world. How can I help you? Contact me at CoachPam@cpinternet.com ~ Linkedin ~ 218-340-3330

June 29, 2010August 19, 2022

Information Security as Crisis Prevention (video)

This is the first short educational video I’ve created on YouTube. I apparently spoke a bit too quickly and one word was omitted at the beginning, but otherwise I hope you find it to be an interesting introduction to this crisis management subject!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVar3MZbpaU

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc. , an international crisis management consultancy, and author of Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training.]

June 29, 2010April 27, 2022

GRANT SEEKING BY THE BOOK (PART 2 OF 2)

coleagues-excited-after-getting-a-grant.

The grant making process is highly subjective. The vast majority of private foundations are family foundations that show up in the research resources, but that select their grantees on the basis of personal preferences. Most do not even accept proposals. Their grants are akin to individual donations, and the fact that they are grants at all is merely a function of the IRS Code. It simply is more advantageous to the donor to create a foundation than to make gifts directly.

Even government agencies are prone to subjectivity. While funding guidelines are statutory, specific priorities often are determined by what’s currently hot in the area covered by the grant program. In some scientific disciplines, only a handful of individuals across the country may be qualified to evaluate grant proposals in their discipline, and it’s typical that they know each other’s work.

What does this mean for the grant seeker? Once a non-profit agency has decided to devote resources to grant seeking, its staff needs to follow a realistic approach. That includes following the steps outlined in (Part 1 of Grant Seeking By The Book) my previous posting, but they must be tempered with a focus on forming relationships with the funders, and not merely submitting proposals identified by their research.

Networking is one of the most important items in the grant seeker’s resource kit. Every effort should be made to establish a personal relationship with the funder. That includes making contact with government program officers and seeking out foundation trustees, especially those located in the applicant’s community.

Many times it’s not possible to do that, but submitting a cold proposal without prior discussion should be considered a last resort resulting from a strategic decision to incur that opportunity cost.

In grant seeking, as in most things, success leads to additional success. Often, the best resources can be found among the funders who have already made grants to an organization. The professional grant seeker should not be bashful in networking among his/her current grantors to open new opportunities. They need to make the subjectivity of the grants process work for them, not against them.

We’re taking a break, not blogging over the long July 4 weekend. Be back on July 6 with Part 2 of “Another Reason Why I Object to Feasibility Studies.”

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Have a question about starting or expanding your grants program? Email me at Andrew@GrantServices.com..

June 28, 2010March 22, 2023

Welcome to the Library’s Blogs!

Development is hard pressed to interface with operations. Yet it is extremely important that this interface be workable because developments are not relevant until they find their way into operations. This is the “reason for being” of development; to have new systems and adaptive processes and structures integrated, in the long run, to foster organizational performance and adaptation.

What’s The Difference?

An operation is charted to preserve the status quo, the current thinking and methods. Operations assumes this status quo as a “given” and works within current procedures to improve them and “operationalize” them with a high degree of efficiency. In most operations the problem is clear and solutions are knowable. Fast response is an overriding value in executing a “fix” and getting the operation back on-line.

Development, on the other hand is a constructive conspiracy. It is the development function, who’s job it is to replace the current ways of doing things, with new tools and assumptions more in line with changing business and organizational conditions. Development is rife with ambiguity; it is a searching and learning process. The overriding value is gaining commitment to change.

Innovation and Development is fragile, complex and conceptual. Nothing kills it faster than premature exploitation- rushing to capitalize on it too soon. Development is not charted but it is navagatable, it is a learned activity in action where hunches are tested and theory is developed in the process of action. The context of development is uncertainty. Operations on the other hand, works to reduce uncertainty to a program, an operational term.

Learning It While Doing It

Operations are based in control. Developments emerge and are always subject to un- intended consequences in action as development is moved toward its purpose. One of the themes of these essays is that developments are realized through the process of development, it is in effect learned in the process of doing it.

Usually there is not a great deal of organizational understanding and support for doing this. An often operation does not see the need or understand the purpose of the development itself. For this reason, development needs protection at a certain stage. Protection and understanding go hand in hand. As the development is understood the protection can be loosened which is necessary to gain the institutional support for prioritizing the resources for more disciplined development.

Boundary management means the protection and support of a differentiated development culture and the managed change of this culture when appropriate. Boundary management is a continual effort of judgment and balance because technical organizations optimize performance and their activities are always influenced by demands and feedback from a variety of sources in the global environment. Establishing and managing boundaries is both necessary and problematic.

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For more resources, see the Library topics Consulting and Organizational Development.

Jim Smith has over 40 years of organization development experience in a wide range of organizations. He can be reached at ChangeAgents@gmail.com