Customer experience expert, Shep Hyken is the author of “Amaze Every Customer Every Time.”

When you build credibility, trust and confidence with your customers, you build sales. Make great service central to your sales strategy.

Friction Can Kill the Customer Experience
by Shep Hyken

Friction has several meanings according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary: the act of rubbing one thing against another; the force that causes a moving object to slow down when it is touching another object; and the disagreement or tension between people or groups of people. If you think about friction in relation to customer service, (more…)

Author, Speaker, and Humorist, Jane Jenkins Herlong

I like to say, “A stranger is a friend, or a customer, you have not met yet.” My friend Jane Jenkins Herlong is a humorist, speaker, and author.  You may have enjoyed her comedy and songs on Sirius XM Radio and Pandora. I share this story from her book, Bare Feet to High Heels – You Don’t Have to be a Beauty Queen to be a Beautiful Person. Jane reminds us to treat others, even those we have not met yet, with courtesy.

Hey, Sweet Thang!
by Jane Jenkins Herlong

Every time I hear the words, “sweet thing,” I think of my pal, Red. One hot July day in the little town of Gaffney at the South Carolina Peach Festival, I met Big Red.
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At a time when every customer counts we must never forget how our customers see us. One single negative contact can ruin your reputation in the eyes of not only that one customer — but everyone he or she knows as well. After all, word of mouth works both for or against you.

You need to make sure everybody in your organization knows he or she is an important part of it. Each department depends and dovetails into the other to produce quality in service or product. Everyone makes a difference: the sales force, the service technicians, the clerical staff, the PR department all work together toward the same goal — keeping the customers satisfied.

A perfect example of how everyone makes a difference is when I was in a Nashville hotel attending a board of directors meeting for the National Speakers Association. After the meeting, several of us went to the coffee shop to continue our deliberations. Each of us asked for exceptions or additions to the menu items; we wanted separate checks; and to make things even more confusing, being speakers, we talked to each other the whole time the waitress patiently took our orders. (more…)

Today’s consumers can sometimes look like a threatening mob. They’re often unhappy, make vague or irrational demands, and can rush in unexpected directions that strongly affect our livelihoods. They may suddenly take their business elsewhere or bombard us with time-consuming, expensive complaints. Even both.

“These people are manipulating the marketplace through pressure, protest, and politics,” says futurist Faith Popcorn who coined the term “vigilante consumers.”

Why have our customers become so volatile and unpredictable? The answer is simple. In the old days, conventional marketing divided prospective consumers into two categories, the classes and the masses. If you’re selling $100,000 cars you appeal to the classes, and if you you’re selling Hyundais, you appeal to the masses. (more…)