Is Consensus Sinking Your Organization?

How open are you and your organization to completely new ideas? How welcoming are you to diversity, controversy and well-intended provocation? If there are questions you cannot raise, issues you dare not discuss or items banned from your agenda, make the space and time to relook and reconsider.

Put Some Stuffing in the Staff Suggestion Box

Liven up your staff suggestion program with new criteria and prizes every month. Respond to suggestions within one week. Don't make people wait too long for a response from 'The Committee'. Be candid. If the answer is no, say so. If the answer is yes, give an implementation date. Act upon the best suggestions you receive. Nothing demonstrates your commitment more than staff suggestions recognized, rewarded and immediately put to work.

Lack of Integration = Customer Frustration

This telephone company desperately needs one point of contact to educate and serve customers in a user-friendly way. This single point of contact should be connected and empowered (internally and externally) to make all necessary arrangements for sales, installation, commissioning, selection of new equipment, scheduling of appointments, questions about billing ... even customer training after installation, if required.

To Be Distinctive, Be Different

Make a list of all the 'usual ways' your organization offers good customer service. Now think of totally different ways you could surprise, intrigue or delight. What bothers your customers? How can you fix it? What do they do before or after your service? How can you integrate it? What do they bring, carry or take away? How can you replace it?

Negative Feedback

In the business world sometimes you would need to provide negative feedback. It is not very pleasant. In this article I will discuss negative feedbacks in more details.

The Playful Policy Review

Point Frontline staff are taught to follow policies and procedures. Often they are hesitant to `break the rules'. Yet some rules should be broken, or changed, or at least seriously bent from time to time. Are your staff bound by rules they cannot change? If those rules are outdated or problematic, will they tell you?

Track Each Complaint Until Your Customer Comes Back

When you respond to a customer complaint, what do you hope will happen next? In many cases, the answer is ‘nothing’. But when you reply and the result is...

How to be a Better Customer

When you give better service, your customers will appreciate you more. But when you give lousy service, your customers can be a pain in the neck. The flip side is also true. If you are an...

Stretching Your Sense of Service

If you provide internal service, do you reach across functional lines, or stay stuck inside your departmental 'silo'? Is your communication with colleagues and partners positive, proactive and persistent?

Four Questions to Boost Collaboration

Tighten bonds now with your customers, suppliers, managers, employees, colleagues, friends and family. These four simple questions will get a dialog going, and keep your relationships growing...

Cross-Town Collaboration

Old boundaries can become open borders for creative cooperation. If working together produces more convenience or value for the customer, then pursue the new partnership with vigor...

How to Pay a Powerful Compliment

Sincere compliments motivate, encourage and inspire. The next time you praise a deserving person or organization, create a compliment with positive power...

Disneyland Makes Real Magic

Business is not a cold process of swapping services, money and goods. It’s a living, thriving appreciation of the dynamic connection between us...

Are Your Frequent Customers Freeloaders, Scoundrels or Cheats

Many companies reward their customers with a system for accumulating points with each purchase. These points are redeemable for free products or services in the future.

Moment of Truth or Moment of Impact

Moments of truth are all those times when customers experience and evaluate your service. Work hard, do a good job, and customers will come back for more.