First and Last Impressions

Emotion plays a significant role in the relationship between a business and its customers, coloring every moment from when they walk through the door to when they use leave again. Happiness and satisfaction, frustration and disappointment: nothing impacts customer-retention rates more than these feelings. And good interactions lead to more…
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Transforming Problems Into Opportunities

You hope all of your customer interactions go smoothly and with little trouble. You’ve wisely trained your employees, tested them, and retrained them again and again to develop a consistent customer experience, one that is unimpeded by needless bureaucracy, surprises, or other nuisances. And you use customer feedback tools, including…
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Customer Service Starts with Company Culture

While we should hope that every business wants to deliver a top-shelf customer experience, complete with great products, convenience, and a well-trained staff, far too many fall short of these lofty standards. Worse still, there are many companies that seem to have accepted their shortcomings as being necessary, especially in…
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Solve Frustration with Communication

With staff shortages and supply-chain interruptions, every industry is marred by mounting delays: car dealerships, book publishers, healthcare, retail, restaurants, and more. We’ve all experienced it one way or another, from empty shelves at our grocers to longer waits at understaffed restaurants. Economically speaking, long-term staff shortages and supply-chain issues…
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The Antidote for Inflation

Whether the United States is now in a recession has been the subject of much political posturing and debate. Regardless of how any of us feels about labels or technical definitions, the U.S. economy has shrunk two consecutive quarters amid soaring inflation and higher interest rates. A silver lining is…
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Keeping Your Language Professional

It should go without saying that workplace language is different from interpersonal language—or, at least it should be. Most business owners don’t want their employees to make their coworkers or customers feel uncomfortable. Who wants to work at or shop in a place like that? So, in the interest of…
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Good Intentions

The rationale behind why businesses should offer a superior customer experience is fairly practical. Great customer service begets stronger customer loyalty, increased sales, and greater revenue. Moreover, most of us believe that we should treat others the way we would want to be treated, i.e., with respect—in the hope that…
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Community Service as a Team-Building Strategy

If you type “team-building” into your favorite search engine, you’ll discover dozens of activities that are meant to help your employees bond with one another and work more cohesively. Some of these activities range from playing trivia games to telling campfire stories. While these exercises probably work well for certain…
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