When a Problem Spirals Out of Control

One of the chief advantages of offering a superior customer experience is that you have far fewer customer service problems to combat. That said, there’s no way to entirely eliminate them because mistakes can and do happen, and some problems are completely external to your business. We must therefore admit…
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Courting and Keeping Your Customers

New customer acquisition is usually the most expensive component of a business’s relationship with its clientele. Broadly, it includes everything from the salaries paid to marketers and salespeople to the advertising. Consequently, acquisition is far costlier than retention, as the Harvard Business Review reports: “Depending on which study you believe,…
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The Downgrade Apocalypse

Customer reward programs have been around a long time: in fact, the earliest example may well be Betty Crocker, which, in 1929, introduced the idea of using box-tops as coupons to encourage repeat purchases. Since then, just about every major company—and a great deal of small ones to boot—have made…
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Going Above and Beyond the Right Way

In previous blog posts, we’ve cautioned about the dangers of offering an above-and-beyond level of customer service. While that attitude can certainly delight your customers, the level of effort required becomes unsustainable; worse still, those customers may eventually take those efforts for granted. But there are situations when going above…
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New Kids on the Block

The new kids on the block aren’t the Millennials anymore: it’s the Zoomers. Born after 1996, many of this generation’s members are in their early-to-mid-twenties now, and are expected to constitute 27-percent of the workforce within the next couple of years. As Gen-Z continues to join the modern workplace, business…
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Act Like You Own the Place

When you think of people who act like they own the place, you might imagine overly self-important people, the ones who think they’re better than everyone else. But in the business world, there’s another way of looking at this phrase: act like your own the place means to truly care…
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Why You Should Become a Mystery Shopper

Have you heard about the gig economy? In recent years, more and more people have begun taking independent-contract work, offering on-demand services as a way to earn extra money in their spare time. Companies like Uber, GrubHub, Instacart, and many more have cropped up in the last fifteen years, and…
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Unleashing an Exceptional Customer Experience with Teamwork

Most businessowners understand the advantage of an exceptional customer experience—the crescendo of customer service, value, and convenience. And while knowing this is an important first step, finding your way to the apex of the customer-experience mountain requires action. The good news is that achieving the first part—the customer service—is a…
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A Customer-First Culture

The pressures of big-box stores, mega-chains, and online warehouses continues to squeeze small businesses everywhere. Add to this the complications of supply-chain disruption, a shrinking labor pool, and rising costs, and it’s no wonder the future is so uncertain. Navigating these challenges requires a dedication to providing a great customer…
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