The team and I are often asked how much should be spent on customer service training. To start, the amount you spend on training will depend on your business needs and budget, but there is a guideline, per employee, which I will share in response to this great question. I should declare up front [...]
Last week I spoke about the Top 10 Reasons Why You Should Measure Customer Service. This week I want to explain that there is an unhelpful and useful way of measuring customer service, and bear with me; it is a bit technical. Data is great, but what do you do with it and can you make decisions and [...]
A key success factor for improving customer service is to have measures in place. Besides it being good business to measure the areas you wish to manage well, there is a bunch of other reasons why measuring customer service is essential. I’ve taken inspiration from global and local businesses (of all shapes and sizes) [...]
You can tell a lot about a businesses service culture by the way employees treat each other internally: how people speak to one another, internal response times, and the levels of care and respect shown are reflections of how customers will be treated. As leaders, a smart and sustainable approach to better serving [...]
Do you remember the first time you learned to ride a bike? For me, it was the early eighties. Dad progressively helped me build confidence to ditch my training wheels and set me off on two wheels at the age of six. All was well until I needed to slow down and stop. [...]
It was 2017, the day after the Australian Open Men’s final. Roger Federer had taken the title yet again. It was an epic four-hour match and I was working behind the scenes serving the Federer team. The next morning - post-win - Federer was out on the court again. I learned that he was [...]
I recently read a blog by Seth Godin, Practical Elegance, where he suggests that customer service begins at the point of making a commitment to the experience long before something breaks or needs to be refunded. I liked Seth’s perspective as it is similar to the first habit, Choose to Serve, which we [...]
My partner and I are planning a staycation and making the most of our local area on the Mornington Peninsula over a four-day intentional break. We have agreed on two rules for the four days: No work (this includes laptops, gardening and housework). We are to only experience places we have never been to [...]
I am a hugger. I used to embrace most people I met with a hug. With social distancing in place, I find it hard to restrain myself. (Maybe those of you who don’t like hugs are secretly loving the change?) We don’t see as many handshakes in business meetings; we don’t [...]
As I sat to write this blog, I was interrupted three times. What normally takes me thirty minutes, took seventy-five. Here is why. According to an HBR article, you can’t multitask, so stop trying, it takes an average of 15 minutes to reorientate yourself to a primary task after a distraction, during which [...]
