To employers: Don’t assume employee loyalty is a given. It’s not a right. You have to work on a continuous basis to earn the trust and loyalty of employees. And there are other companies out there –doing it right– that are competing for your people. To employees: Don’t go into a job assuming the worst, […]
How To Find Perspective and the Right Focus for Your Business
It’s amazing how often something is obvious to one person and not another. Granted, in some cases it’s because nothing is actually that obvious, the issue at hand is murky and no one really knows what they’re doing. That happens more than we’d like to admit. But in a lot of cases there are reasons […]
Efficiency isn’t a Sellable Value Proposition
When ranking value propositions to pitch customers, efficiency should be at the bottom of the list. It doesn’t mean enough or have enough real value to inspire purchasing decisions. For starters, efficiency means different things to different people. Who will be more efficient? Is it the person using the software, or are the efficiencies realized […]
Good Business Bad Business
Not all business is created equal. Not all revenue is created equal either. Everything has a cost. Bad business and revenue can cost more than they’re worth to acquire. You need to have clear definitions of good business and bad business for your own company. The definitions can change over time (almost everything does evolve) […]
How To Implement a Proactive Customer Support Strategy
I’ve said before that great customer support has to be proactive. But what exactly does that mean? The goal of proactive support is to identify and resolve issues before they become problems. In some cases you can be so successful with proactive customer service that you can solve problems before customers even realize they exist. […]
Creating Customer Touchpoints
When was the last time you played Red Rover? The game is quite simple. You create a chain of people who hold hands (roughly at arm’s length from each other) and the other team tries to break the chain of people. Breaking through the chain is usually quite easy. The connections just aren’t that strong. […]
Great Customer Service Drives Revenue and Profitability
Too many people look at customer service as a cost center, when it really should be a profit center. I recently read B-A-M!: Delivering Customer Service in a Self-Service World and it’s an important refresher and reminder of the importance of great customer service. Customer support is something I’ve obsessed over for many years. The […]
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