With all the talk about jobs, the economy and the need for a good education, some people have stepped back to ask, is college worth the cost? They make their case by citing numerous billionaires (see infographic below) who have done just fine without a college degree. Looking at it through this lens, the evidence is compelling. These are living examples of people who have had plenty of success without the benefit of a college degree. Sure it makes sense some people will be wildly successful no matter what level of formal education they have. Malcolm Gladwell calls them outliers. [...]
It’s a trick question. The right answer has nothing to do with how awesome your customers are. It has everything to do with how much you do to help them be awesome. Oh, and I don’t mean just awesome either. Here, “awesome” is a proxy for successful, happy, please, excited, thrilled or whatever experience outcome they are looking for. You can use whatever adjective you want. I use the word “awesome” because it fits with a graphic that tells a smart story about how to keep customers coming back. It’s by Tom Fishburne who calls himself a “marketoonist”. Tom’s a bright guy who [...]
Tonight we had a delicious dinner at Famous Dave’s in Burnsville. I’ll be honest, what brought us there was the offer of a free dinner. (It was in honor of Debbie’s birthday.) What surprised us was the amazing customer service we experienced. As we walked in we were greeted by Jacob. He made instant eye contact with us and delivered a big smile as he welcomed us into Famous Dave’s. The rest of the evening was a pleasant mix of BBQ pulled pork, mashed potatoes and fun conversation with Jacob. We learned a little of the history of Famous Dave’s. [...]
What is the future of customer service? Customer service is vital to the survival of any business, as it is your chance to listen to your customers and either address problems or enhance positives. This is a big part of the job of any business leader, and learning about this can start with a top education from the Gannon Online MBA Degree Program Related to this is an upcoming event hosted by Dell, next Monday (June 25, 2012) where we will talk about the importance and the future of customer service. The event is called a “Think Tank” and is [...]
In this video, Ross Shafer talks about an amazing customer experience he had at a well known hotel brand. The story is both funny and inspiring. But there’s something in the story that stands out and, in my opinion, tarnished the brand’s image. In the video it’s just a funny aside but in the real world it can make a big difference to companies and customers. About midway through the video, Ross is sharing with us how he talked to several people at the hotel about this wonderful employee. And each time he gave his glowing feedback to someone, they asked [...]
A few days ago I wrote about our experiences at a local Perkins Restaurant and how they continually earn our loyalty as customers. Within 24 hours of this article being published, someone from Perkins corporate offices had contacted me and asked for the specific location I referred to in the article. He wanted to recognize the people at that store. Hats off to Perkins for monitoring the web and for acting quickly on positive news. It’s one thing to notice when people are talking about your brand. It’s another to take fast action in response. But then they did more. [...]
This Wednesday (June 20) the city of Stateline, NV will host a customer service seminar conducted by Laura Moriarty of Tahoe Training Partners. She will talk about customer service basics in this seminar called “The Customer Connection”. This customer service training session will be held from 8:00 to 11:00 am at the Lake Tahoe Visitors Authority building. Topics covered by this workshop: (Photo credit: Jonathan Gray.)
For the past 6 years (maybe more) a group of us have gotten together every Saturday morning for breakfast. In this time we have eaten at just about every breakfast place in our area. We often tried different restaurants for variety but also for service. Eventually we settled on one place (Perkins) and we have made that our permanent Saturday breakfast headquarters for the last several years. Until last week. Last week several of us thought it would be fun to try a new place for our weekly breakfast club. Actually, it was literally a new restaurant, having just opened. Some of [...]
Much has been said about the value and importance of customer loyalty. Intuitively we know it’s (usually) better to keep our customers coming back than to see them go to our competition. It’s one thing to understand this as a general business principle. It’s another thing entirely to see how customer loyalty can impact your bottom line. Sometimes seeing the difference in dollars and cents can have a bigger impact on what we do to keep our customers coming back. This makes it harder to ignore the value of customer retention. To help with this, I have created a tool that tells [...]
