Posts Tagged ‘customer service’

A few days ago I got a phone call as I was eating dinner: (more…)

In the United States, Post Office employees have a bad reputation. They’re notoriously unfriendly, cold, hostile and unhelpful. It’s hard to avoid feeling frustrated when you have to deal with arrogant staff – be it an employee of the Post Office, an abusive police officer, or a flight attendant who’s running his own little power trip on the passengers.

But then I ask myself – wouldn’t you also become angry, frustrated and bitter if you had a crappy job at a crappy organization? The work environment and the context you create within your company plays a major role in your staff’s happiness and professional satisfaction, which in turn is crucial to make your customers happy.

The Post Office doesn’t have a good context that would allow its employees and agents to thrive and be happy. And the atmosphere of bitterness spreads to the customers who don’t receive friendly customer service. If only you could be nice to people, they would put up with long waiting lines, complicated rules, and even expensive service! If the clerk apologizes for the wait and take the time to provide good customer service, that would make all the difference.

It’s so important to create a great company context where the members of your organization can strive and be happy. (more…)

When you go to a restaurant, what makes you enjoy the food is not just how good the food is. It’s the whole experience. What makes you come back again and recommend the place to others depends on much more than the quality of the food.

Tasty food and good wine will surely help. But the food is not enough to create great customer experience and to build a successful restaurant. The design of the place, the decoration, the tables and chairs, the music, the wait (or lack thereof), and in general all the elements that create a special atmosphere will have a significant impact.

Most of all, the restaurant’s staff will affect the success of the business more than any other factor. But for whatever reason this is the one thing so many restaurants don’t pay enough attention to. And that’s too bad. Often staff hiring and training is done too quickly in the restaurant industry.

The food tastes that much better when the staff is friendly, knowledgeable, and personal. What you want from your waiters is to be passionate and proud about the food they serve.

The same goes for most products and services. It’s not enough to have the best product in the world – you have to provide a great experience for your customers. Awesome customer service, flexible return/refund policy, and easy shopping experience is as important as the product itself. (more…)

For many people, providing customer support is a real pain. Answering customer’s questions or helping out with all kinds of issues customers are having with your product can be tedious. As you have more customers, you’ll have more support requests to handle – and some customers can be very harsh. That’s the reality of the support job.

Of course you can greatly reduce dealing with difficult customers by choosing the right clients and targeting to the right market pool. But really your approach to customer service can make all the difference in your daily work and you may even end up enjoying responding to those support requests! (more…)

A little while ago, we almost announced the launch of Template Action, a unique web startup delivering custom CMS website templates and Flash CMS website templates. To promote this exiting new venture, we decided to launch a pilot banner campaign on the BuySellAds network, which is a great way to reach web design professionals as it specializes in the web design field. (more…)

You can’t listen to your customers. That’s the secret to fostering customer satisfaction.

Customers will always ask for “more”. More features, more options, more mockups, more more more. Listening to these requests will not create satisfaction because more features means more complexity, more options means more clutter, and more mockups means more waste and confusion. I don’t mean that you shouldn’t keep the communication channels open between you and your customers. I mean to ignore these requests ‘as is’ and focus on understanding your customers needs and behavior in order to create a better product, a better design, and provide a better service. Your customers will thank you for it and you’ll foster satisfaction. (more…)

Too many entrepreneurs and start-up developers are focused on creating “the next big thing”. Too many are trying to get a big pay check from some venture capital firm, or are hoping to get purchased for a huge amount by Google (a la Youtube).

Basically too many businessmen are playing the lottery and not enough are working towards developing good sustainable businesses, growing good ideas and providing value to customers while turning a profit.  There is nothing intrinsically wrong in playing the lottery but I don’t think this is a very constructive approach, both on an individual level and on a market level. (more…)