Last month I wrote about an article that suggests social media is driving growth in customer service jobs. While I haven’t decided if this is true, it does seem the customer service sector is seeing strong growth. Based on data from Indeed.com, there are 29% more customer service jobs available today than one month ago. Customer Service Jobs Available March 1, 2010: 572,909 April 1, 2010: 737,286 Increase of 28.7% That seems to be a big increase. Of course, this is not a scientific survey. I’m just using data from one source, Indeed.com. It could be they have added job [...]
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Customers have spoken and the New Jersey Turnpike Authority (NJTA) has listened. The NJTA claims to have very few customer complaints, 1 for every 540,000 transactions. But a public din arose recently when several dozen of these complaints were posted on the website of a local news organization. The outcome is, the NJTA has developed an action plan to improve customer service. Isn’t it wonderful what a little transparency will do for an organization? I applaud the NJTA for taking this bull by the horns and committing to improvement. Here are some of their specific plans with my comments and [...]
The Chicago Blackhawks are all about customer service. Okay, maybe that’s not entirely true. No doubt they’re more excited about winning hockey games and getting a slot in the NHL playoffs. But they are on record as saying customer service is important to them. So important, in fact, they have beefed up their efforts to engage their fans. The NHL website reports (today) that the Chicago Blackhawks franchise has launched: “The ‘Fan’s Voice’ program which is geared toward providing customers with the best possible overall fan experience at the United Center.” The news report says this is an elevated effort [...]
Last week AT&T showed why you should hire people who care. Their customer service employee literally saved her customer’s life. Now Winn-Dixie is schooling us in the fine art of going the extra mile for your customers. Recently, employees in their Stuart, FL store helped two of their customers avoid losing almost $3000 as victim of a con artist. As the couple was about to send $2796 to supposedly get their grandson out of jail, the Winn-Dixie employees got involved. “Clerks at the store heard the story and persuaded her to delay sending the money until the story could be [...]
Here’s a perfect example of why companies should hire smart people who care. Recently an AT&T customer was talking with their customer service service department. He started having symptoms of a heart attack and eventually passed out during the call. Rather than hang up (because the customer became non-responsive) the AT&T employee (Kelly Hart) knew something was wrong so she called 911. The customer ended up in the hospital with a stent in a major artery. When he got out he let AT&T know what a wonderful person they have working for them. In fact, he and Ms. Hart finally [...]
In the last 24 hours, the ‘net has been abuzz with Google’s admission that their SEO is not as good as it could be. Some see this as a sign that Google “ain’t all that”. Others see it as a reason to question the value of SEO. Regardless of what you make of Google’s SEO revelation, I see some lessons here for all of us. 1. Openness and honesty are cool. (And they make a difference.) By telling the world they’re not perfect Google becomes more genuine. And they’ll attract more people to them. No one likes an arrogant “know-it-all”. [...]
Signs of economic recovery are all around us. But we still hear employment is weak and lagging. So, in the midst of mixed messages, what do we believe? I’m no economist so I try to keep things simple. One thing I see is the growth in customer service related jobs seems to be increasing. Our friends at Indeed.com have a service where they display trends in their job listing data. It allows you to search on any keywords so I entered a few that are relevant to what we talk about here at AmazingServiceGuy.com. The first was “customer service representative”. [...]
With the exception of web self-service, all business sectors dropped in multi-channel customer service, according to a new study released by eGain today. But even web self-service didn’t fare too well: “All areas except web self-service declined in performance, with web self-service posting a slight increase for the overall market from 1.7 in 2009 to 1.9 in 2010, still “below average.” In fact, the overall market was below average, according to the report. (This study covered 175 large companies in the US and Canada. All are are $250 million in annual revenue.) The study looked at customer’s experience across multiple [...]
I remember when we were kids. We’d play all kinds of games. And when one kid pushed things too far (playing unfair) a parent might step in and enforce some basic rules on the group. This usually had a stabilizing effect on the game. But sometimes the kid who was acting out would escalate rather than cooperate. He might ruin it for everyone by picking up the game board and throwing it. Or he’d get up and leave, refusing to play anymore because he couldn’t do things HIS WAY. Though I’m older now, I see this happening again. But it’s [...]
