brand

Build Your Brand by Showing Not Telling

February 26, 2010

There’s a lot of talk about branding. How to brand your business so you can attract the right customers (and a lot of them) is an important topic. But many people get it all wrong. Too many people think branding is all about telling. They create ads and brochures and websites and a million other [...]

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Toyota has a customer service problem

February 1, 2010

A lot of people think Toyota has a quality problem these days. But I would say their biggest problem is a customer service one. Let’s look at the basics. Customer service is all about giving customers the right experience. Do this and they’ll remain loyal. Fail at this and they’ll leave you faster than you [...]

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Do what your marketing says you will

December 8, 2009

Here is your Daily Dose of Amazing Service: Do what your marketing says you will And here are some additional thoughts on this topic… A few weeks ago I traded in my old iPod for the new Touch 3G.  To keep it clean and like new, I bought a case for it from a company [...]

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You are the company

November 30, 2009

Here is your Daily Dose of Amazing Service: You are the company And here are some additional thoughts on this topic… No matter what your role is, when you help a customer, in their eyes you are the company. What you do and how you do it becomes your company’s image, to the customers you [...]

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Make sure your service HELPS your customers

November 18, 2009

The last time I got an email from my library it was about an overdue book. The email arrived a couple days AFTER the book was overdue. It also explained how I owed a fine for not returning the book by its due date. Every month, about 3 days BEFORE my payment is due, my [...]

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It’s not about the donuts

November 3, 2009

One of the biggest mistakes business people make is thinking they know what their customers want, but not really knowing. This is easy to do. And it happens more often than we like to admit.

A few years ago, Krispy Kreme stormed the the Minneapolis-St. Paul area like a blizzard in February. Their little donut factories

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Do the right thing right away

October 12, 2009

Here is your Daily Dose of Amazing Service: Do the right thing right away And here are some additional thoughts on this topic… Recently I read an article about a traveler who had  a bad customer experience at the hands of Alamo Car Rental.  The customer was significantly overcharged and the company refused to fix [...]

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3 ways to improve your online customer feedback

October 2, 2009

“If you make customers unhappy in the real world, they might each tell six friends. If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends.”

-Jeff Bezos, Founder of Amazon.com

The days of ducking down and hoping nobody will notice when things go awry are over. These days, if customers get a bad

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You are your company’s brand

September 28, 2009

Here is your Daily Dose of Amazing Service: You are your company’s brand And here are some additional thoughts on this topic… People do business with companies for a variety of reasons. One reason is the company’s brand or reputation. This is more than a logo or slogan. It’s what people think of a company [...]

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Extras can keep your customers coming back

September 16, 2009

Here is your Daily Dose of Amazing Service: Find ways to do something extra for your customers And here are some additional thoughts on this topic… One of the easiest and fastest ways to make a customer smile is to do something extra. Because it’s unexpected, it’s a pleasant surprise. It’s something they’ll remember and [...]

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What if your city was famous for customer service?

September 3, 2009

  Cities and towns often develop reputations for different things. Beaches, golf courses, fishing, art, cold weather. You name it and a locale is probably associated with it. But I’ve yet to hear about a community famous for their customer service. I’ve never experience or been told about a town where the service is so [...]

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Adobe does the right thing, apologizes for customer service problems

September 1, 2009

Too many companies brag about how customer-friendly they are. But that’s often all we experience. So it’s refreshing to see a big, well-known company being genuine with their customers. Adobe, the well-known maker of many popular software applications, has been delivering lousy service lately. But rather than ignore it or hide behind empty press releases, [...]

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Customer loyalty requires honesty from the start

September 1, 2009

Many companies are focused on their customers. They LOVE their customers. Just ask them. They’ll tell you how wonderfully customer centric they are.  But there’s a problem. As they tell people how much they love their customers, they also spend a lot of money lying to them. Jim Logan writes an article at B2BRainmaker.com that [...]

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Customer Retention Tip: Tell your customers what to expect

August 20, 2009

You might call it a brand promise. You might call it your Customer Service Standards. Some companies call it a brand message or promise. I call it your Customer Experience Promise. What you call it is not as important as what you do with it. Use it to tell your story. It tells people why [...]

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Here’s why Google dominates in customer service rankings

August 19, 2009

When we think of good or bad customer service we don’t always consider search engines. Maybe that’s because they are free services.  And we rarely have direct contact with an employee as we use a search engine. So we see them in a different context than, say, a coffee shop or an auto dealer. But [...]

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Make it easy for customers to leave

August 18, 2009

Here is your Daily Dose of Amazing Service: Make it easy for customers to leave And here are some additional thoughts on this topic… Too many companies make it easy to become a customer and hard to leave. Maybe they think people will change their minds if it’s hard to quit. The classic example is [...]

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What are you really doing for your customers?

August 4, 2009

We hear a lot about customer experience and going the extra mile for our customers. And these are good things. Every employee in every business should pay attention to these. But it’s not just the employees who are responsible for this. Management has to lead the charge. If you want more loyal customers, the kind [...]

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