Shep Hyken's Blog, page 165

5 Top Customer Service Articles For the Week of July 17, 2017

Each week I read a number of customer service and experience articles from various online resources. Here are my top five picks from last week. I have added my comment about each article and would like to hear what you think too.

How Enterprise Chatbots Platforms Will Change Customer Service by Murray Newlands

(Business2Community) The key to good customer care is making your customer’s experience with your brand seamless, easy, and great. However, because customers are more informed than ever, they expect more. They want to be able to inquire, complain, and compliment whenever possible, and unfortunately, this means customer services need to be available around the clock.

My Comment: Chatbots are a hot topic these days. I’ve been writing about chatbots for the past year or so in my Forbes articles. Some are amazing, while others make you feel like you’re talking to a… robot. That’s because you are. But, if you encounter a good system, or decide to implement one in your company, this article shares a few ways chatbots can positively impact your customer service.

6 successful customer experience strategies – tips from the experts b y Jessie Day

(Simply Business) We’re up for Best Customer Centric Organisation, and whilst we wait to see what happens, here are our top six tips for creating the best customer experience possible, regardless of company size or budget restrictions. Seriously – an effective customer experience strategy can cost next to nothing to implement.

My Comment: Simply business has been nominated to receive a Best Customer Centric Organization award. When you read the simplistic ideas they use to drive a powerful CX, then you can understand why they are being considered. Here are six ideas that, regardless of company size or budget, can help you drive a better CX experience. And, I love their claim: “An effective customer experience strategy can cost next to nothing to implement.”

The Many Choices When Measuring Service by Paul Selby

(CustomerThink) How do you measure customer service in your organization? Like anything, there’s several popular methods. Some of the most popular are customer satisfaction (or CSAT), Net Promoter Score (or NPS), and customer effort (occasionally abbreviated to CE but not often).

My Comment: Have you ever wondered which method you should use to measure your customer service? NPS, CSAT or Customer Effort? This short article explains the difference between the three and can help you make a choice.

3 Ways Companies Can Simplify Customer Service and Make People Happier by Mary Shacklett

(TechRepublic) Nothing frustrates a customer more than repeating their issue over and over again. Here’s how to simplify online and phone customer service so your company can avoid that situation.

My Comment: TechRepublic brings us an article that hits on three technical ways we can create a better customer experience. Of course, number one is about AI. I’m most intrigued with number two, which is about detecting customer friction, something companies should pay more attention to. It finishes with a reminder to make sure your automated systems are really automated (as in working properly).

Office of American Innovation Targets Federal Customer Service by Frank Konkel 

(Nextgov) The White House Office of American Innovation has its crosshairs set on improving federal customer service, a major challenge because of the government’s “near monopoly” in providing poor service delivery.

My Comment: Let’s close out this week’s Top Five roundup with an article from the government about how the White House Office of Innovation is focusing on how to get government agencies to treat citizens (as in customers) as well as private enterprise treats their customers. It is a lofty and honorable goal. And, to use their words, this is “a major challenge because of government’s ‘near monopoly’ in providing poor service delivery.”

Shep Hyken is a customer service expert, professional speaker and New York Times bestselling business author. For information contact or www.hyken.com . For information on The Customer Focus™ customer service training programs go to www.thecustomerfocus.com . Follow on Twitter: @Hyken

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Guest Blog: Fake Reviews Destroy Customer Experience and Confidence

This week we feature an article by Mike Allton about negative and fake reviews. Ask your customers to post online reviews. This shows that you have confidence that you will take care of your customers by delivering a great customer service experience and taking care of any problems that may arise – in such a way that will earn you a glowing online review. – Shep Hyken

Have you ever received a negative review?

As Shep has pointed out numerous times, negative reviews happen to everyone. “A negative review, like any complaint, is an opportunity to show how good you are.”

What do you do, though, if the review is fake? What if it’s not from an unhappy customer, but rather, from a competitor?

It’s a major problem and getting worse. In fact…

If you buy or sell products that are related to online business, odds are that you have been fooled or impacted, respectively.  

What are Fake Reviews?

The European Parliamentary Research Service definition…

“a positive, neutral or negative review that is not an actual consumer’s honest and impartial opinion or that does not reflect a consumer’s genuine experience of a product, service or business.”

It’s biased, fabricated and intended to fool you if you’re searching for a review of a product.

Fake, negative reviews are not just immoral, they’re illegal. They constitute Misleading Advertising. If orchestrated by a central organization to deceive consumers, it is often called  “Astroturfing,” pursued in New York and elsewhere in the U.S, (techopedia).

Fake reviews are commonly written for commercial purpose in review aggregators such as Amazon, Yelp, app stores, etc. Since faith in reviews is critical to consumer confidence, companies constantly battle fakes, with reasonable results.

However, standalone fake review web pages, written by affiliates, have no such vigilant protection. Google returns worse than “Panda reject” quality while the regulatory authorities seem more interested in the large aggregators than this out-of-control affiliate situation.

These practices are most prevalent in those online niches that are particularly prone to human emotion (e.g. illness, debt, diet).

Fake Vs. Real

The above niches are bellwethers of illicit marketing techniques that spread to other industries. The rest of this article examines the “cutting edge industry of scams,” Making Money Online (MMO).

A high-value, experience-based review with an impartial and valuable recommendation, which also identifies an affiliate relationship and income, is not a fake review. Sadly, this is becoming the exception.

Affiliates write glowingly positive reviews of products they’ve never tried. They write negative reviews of products (“Product A”) in order to recommend a competitive product for which they are affiliates, Product B (“Bait and Switch” (“B&S”)).

Google ranks many fake reviews highly, despite the generally low quality of the content and results that are counter-productive to search intent. The credibility of Google rankings adds to the reader’s vulnerability, who already believes it to be an actual review.

Morality hits rock bottom when the quality of Product A is superior to B. The affiliate not only betrays the consumer for B’s commission, the loss to the customer exceeds the cost of product – opportunity cost of time, as well as the sense of disappointment instead of the promised benefit.

Loss of Confidence

According to various surveys, 70-85% of shoppers use reviews before purchasing. The percent increases for high-priced items. Most shoppers actively seek negative reviews, making B&S effective.

When falsely recommended products underperform, few remember the actual affiliate site. However, the MMO-related niches are widely regarded as infested. Purchasers become cynical.

Some companies develop reputations for training affiliates in what amounts to B&S.  Wealthy Affiliate is widely castigated (1, 2) on this basis. As victims of this company, the authors examined their “Affiliate Bootcamp” training materials and draw the same opinion.

What To Do About Fake Reviews?

If your business is the target of negative fake reviews, invite your existing customers to write their own reviews! As Joey Coleman suggests, you should prompt customers as soon as they “achieve success.” An overwhelming number of genuine positive reviews for potential customers to read, both on and off your website, is effective.

The most powerful response is to refute fake reviews with rigorous fact. Can your product be measured – larger oranges, superior-sounding speakers? Document and create unassailable proof to refute the negative recommendations.

SiteSell designed a rigorous study of its product, Solo Build It! vs. Wealthy Affiliate. The overwhelming result (e.g., 33x more likely to achieve a high-traffic site) was a direct contradiction of fake review recommendations.

That makes the next step more effective. Leave a comment on the webpage, or send an email, that politely, without anger, refutes the errors stated in the review. Invite the reviewer and readers to try your product/service or contact you with further questions.

A follow-up communication, by email or registered mail lays the groundwork for a possible lawsuit. Contact the author and explain how their review is inaccurate and needs to be updated or removed. Include supporting documentation.

If necessary, take legal action against the affiliate or, in the case of astroturfing, against the company.

Fake reviews hurt customers and do damage to your business and entire industries. Report, refute and protect yourself.

Mike Allton is the CMO for SiteSell, as well as an award-winning blogger and author at The Social Media Hat. SiteSell’s flagship product is the only all-in-one business builder for solopreneur. It is the only product that produces verifiable proof of success. It can be found on Twitter and Facebook.

For more articles from Shep Hyken and his guest contributors go to customerserviceblog.com.

Read Shep’s latest Forbes Article: Walgreens: At The Corner Of Technology And A Better Customer Experience (CX)

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Sometimes Customers Don’t Know the Right Questions to Ask

My brother, Rusty Hyken, was on a trip to Utah with his wife and two dogs. It’s a leisurely three-day drive for them. He made their hotel reservations, and for each hotel they planned to stop at on the way to Utah he asked, “Is your hotel dog-friendly?” All of them said, “Yes.” But to his surprise, while checking into one of the hotels he was told there would be a $120 charge for the dogs to stay in his room. This was a surprise as he called and specifically asked about dogs, and the hotel never mentioned the fee for the dogs.

So, I did some checking. Apparently, there are many dog-friendly hotels, and most do not charge fees. The Starwood Hotels and Kimpton Hotels are just two of the many hotels that don’t charge for pets and are proud of their pet-friendly policy. Kimpton will actually provide fish in your room if you crave the companionship of a pet. (Really!)

Now, I totally understand the fee for a dog. Not all dogs are “hotel trained,” which could lead to an accident on the carpet, which takes more time and costs more money to clean. Yet, some hotels will recognize this effort and cost as a small price to pay for a positive reputation among pet lovers.

All of this leads to the point of the article. My brother didn’t ask the right question. He asked if the hotel was dog-friendly. He didn’t ask if there was a charge. In fairness to him, he’s stayed at many hotels with his dogs, and this was the first to charge a fee.

When he checked in, the conversation with the hotel clerk was contentious. My brother didn’t want to pay the fee. The hotel clerk asked my brother, “I know you asked if we were a dog-friendly hotel, but did you ask if we charged for dogs?”

Are you kidding me! That’s exactly what my brother thought, too. So, he asked to speak to the manager.

The manager came out and had a nice conversation with my brother. He also asked, “Did you ask if there was an additional charge for the dog?” When my brother started to get upset, the manager informed him that he was not asking to make a case for charging him the fee. The manager wanted to know the conversation so he could teach his team to handle future pet-friendly inquiries a different way.

Many of you who read my work or watch my videos know about my concept to Ask the Extra Question. Sometimes a customer says one thing but means something else. So, asking an extra question – or two or three – can help you understand what a customer really wants. For example, when a customer says, “I need this quickly,” ask the extra question, “How quickly do you need it?” Your concept of quickly may be different than your customer’s expectation.

Yet, the situation with my brother was different. The answer the hotel reservationist gave him on the phone was the exact answer to his question. However, he didn’t ask the right question. And, that is the point of this lesson. My brother, as a guest, could have – if he knew to – asked an extra or different question. However, maybe the reservationist should have asked the extra question for him.

Truly customer-focused people ask their customers at least one extra question to ensure they understand their customers. They also ask questions on behalf of their customers, because their customers don’t always know what questions to ask.

Shep Hyken is a customer service expert, keynote speaker and New York Times bestselling business author. For information contact or www.hyken.com. For information on The Customer Focus™ customer service training programs go to www.thecustomerfocus.com. Follow on Twitter: @Hyken

(Copyright © MMXVII, Shep Hyken)

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Amazing Business Radio: Carol Lee Andersen

Carol Lee Andersen on How to Gain and Use Employee and Customer Feedback

Are your employees fulfilled, appreciated, and understood?

Shep interviews Carol Lee Andersen, the President of Questback North America, about the importance of listening to not just your customers, but also to your employees. And, she shares the advantages and occasional difficulties of doing so.

First Up:

Shep starts off by introducing Tiny Pulse, a company that has created a simple software program to gain an ongoing “pulse” of your employees with quick, short, and simple surveys for employees. This frames the discussion for the entire episode on customer and employee feedback. He discusses a key fact about collecting feedback – you need to use it, or you will leave employees and customers dissatisfied.

Featured Interview:

Shep begins the show by asking Carol Lee about Questback’s history. Carol Lee explains that the company got started with a quest for gaining feedback. They discuss the importance of customer and employee feedback, and stress the importance of not only collecting the feedback but also taking action – you must do something with it. Otherwise, your employees and customers will suffer what Carol Lee calls feedback fatigue, which is when customers or employees fill out too many surveys and don’t see anything come out of it. She goes on to explain that when you collect feedback from employees and actually use it, employees feel valued; they feel they are being listened to, and that in turn creates trust. Otherwise, if an employee feels their concerns are falling on deaf ears, then the employee can feel unfulfilled, unconvinced, and even disengaged. They conclude the show with Carol Lee’s final thoughts which are; think before you act, use the appropriate tools, get some advice from the right people, and be thoughtful in your process.

Top Takeaways:

Engage Your Employees – Create dialog with your employees. Even if the feedback is unsolicited, if your employees want to provide you with feedback – take it! Employees can frequently pick up on potential issues before they become a big problem.
Avoid Feedback Fatigue – If you collect data you must do something with it. Collecting feedback and not doing anything with it is worse than not collecting at all. If you collect it and take action on the feedback, then employees and customers feel they are being listened to, and that creates trust.
Think Before You Act – Feedback has to be deployed strategically to succeed. It is not enough to have highly engaged employees, you want highly engaged employees that are working towards the same goal.

About:

Carol Lee Andersen is president of Questback North America and voted as one of the Top 150 Most Powerful Women in New Zealand. She leads a diverse team in crafting and delivering a feedback platform that helps enterprises make better decisions, mitigate risk and avoid costly failures through redefining relationships with the most important people: customers and employees.

Shep Hyken  is a  customer service and experience expert , best-selling author and your host of Amazing Business Radio.

“It is not enough to collect feedback, you have to take action on it. Collecting feedback and not doing anything with it, is worse than not collecting at all.” – Carol Lee Andersen

 

      

This episode of Amazing Business Radio with Shep Hyken answers the following questions … and more:

How do you get employee feedback?
How do I get customer feedback?
Do I need to have employee feedback?
How do I increase employee satisfaction?
How do I increase employee retention?
How do I decrease employee fatigue?
What do I do with employee feedback?
How do I increase employee engagement?

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5 Top Customer Service Articles For the Week of July 10, 2017

Each week I read a number of customer service and experience articles from various online resources. Here are my top five picks from last week. I have added my comment about each article and would like to hear what you think too.

6 Ways to Turn Customer Service Into a Revenue Machine by Jay Baer

(Gladly) The truth is that companies aren’t inherently bad at customer service, but rather businesses haven’t chosen to be great at customer service because the economic upside of doing so hasn’t been readily evident. But now, it most certainly is.

My Comment: Let’s start this week’s “Top Five Roundup” not with an article, but a short e-book by my friend, Jay Baer. He collaborated with Gladly to create “6 Ways to Turn Customer Service Into a Revenue Machine.” Now, that is an intriguing title, and Jay doesn’t disappoint. You’ll have to give your email address to get the download of the book, but trust me, it’s worth it.

12 Tips to Delivering the Best Customer Service by John Cozad

(Deputy) The best brands are built on customer service as it creates customer evangelists for life and provides you with the greatest advantage over competitors.

My Comment: This is more than just twelve tips. To me, a “tip” is a quick suggestion or idea. This is an extensive article – a deeper dive – on techniques and tactics that will help you and your organization deliver amazing customer service.

This Company’s Epic Response to a Pissed Off Client is as American as it Gets by Tribunist Staff 

(Ttibunist) Liberty Bottleworks co-founder Ryan Clark has taken a stand against what he sees as the terribly flawed philosophy that “the customer is always right.”Anyone who has ever worked with customers knows that the adage is bogus. But few have the gumption to stand up to a customer the way Clark did.

My Comment: Social media customer care is a big opportunity for companies. One of the channels that customers are using to communicate their likes and dislikes are on review sites. Most people think of Yelp and TripAdvisor. Those serve specific markets. And then there are product reviews on retail sites like Amazon and Walmart.com. Virtually every industry has their version of a review site. Sometimes there are “fake” reviews – both good and bad. This article is a fascinating look into the benefits and pitfalls of fake news and fake reviews.

Best 6 Tips for Turning Customers Into Salespeople by Larry Alton

(Small Business Trends) Your customers are some of your greatest assets. Not only do they directly drive revenue in terms of repeat purchases, but they can also indirectly drive revenue in the form of selling your brand to other people. Do you know what it looks like to turn your customers into an extension of your sales team?

My Comment: Some of the best marketing you can have is Word-of-Mouth from your happy customers. What if your customers became an extension of your sales department. That’s why customer service and CX are really marketing. Here are six tips on how to turn your happy customers into customer evangelists (unpaid salespeople).

How to Deal with Angry Customers [Infographic] by Reuben Yonatan

(GetCRM) What was your last customer service experience like? Did you leave feeling frustrated or were you pleasantly surprised by how helpful and understanding the customer service representative was?

My Comment: An angry customer handled well, can eventually become one of your best customers. This article/infographic shares ten ideas on how to handle angry customers as well as a short list of what not to say (along with what to say) to these unhappy people. These ideas are the basics for turning someone with a rant into a fan.

Shep Hyken is a customer service expert, professional speaker and New York Times bestselling business author. For information contact or www.hyken.com . For information on The Customer Focus™ customer service training programs go to www.thecustomerfocus.com . Follow on Twitter: @Hyken

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Guest Blog: Optimizing for Lifetime Value Over Transactional Customers

This week we feature an article by Josh Brown who writes about why you should focus on relational customers, how you should go about doing it, and the data you can use to enhance your initiatives and be sure your efforts are paying off. It’s important to know the value of a customer. Here is a simple guideline: Manage the interactions you have with your customers with the lifetime value in mind, with each and every interaction. – Shep Hyken

Recently, Shep Hyken sat down with Lifesize’s Chief Customer Success and Happiness Officer, Amy Downs, and discussed the importance of becoming absolutely obsessed with enhancing your customer’s experience.

Today, I’d like to talk about which customers you should obsess over.

Now, don’t get me wrong: All of your customers are important. And you should definitely do your best to provide each and every one of them with the best experience possible when they engage with your brand.

But, let’s face it:

Not every customer is going to become a loyal, raving-mad fanatic of your brand.

While some customers actively seek to build relationships with the companies they do business with, others simply want to make a transaction and go on their merry way.

So, rather than wasting tons of money, time, and energy trying to change the mindset of these transactional customers, you’re better off focusing on cultivating long-term relationships with the relational customers who do want to get more out of their experience with your company.

In this article, I’ll talk about why you should focus on relational customers, how you should go about doing it, and the data you can use to enhance your initiatives and be sure your efforts are paying off.

The Importance of Optimizing for Lifetime Value From Relational Customers

Quick question:

Which is better for your business: Having 1,000 customers who purchase from you one time in their life, or 200 customers who purchase from you five times a year, every year of their life?

In this all-too-perfect example, both sets of customers will provide the same amount of value within a single year. After that, the smaller, more loyal customer base will continue to provide value year after year – while the value from the one-off customers will have disappeared completely.

Now, those 200 hypothetical customers aren’t just going to keep doing business with you because it’s in their nature. Yes, they actively want to build a relationship with a brand that provides value to them – but you need to actually do so to keep them happy.

The most effective way to do this is to make every experience these customers have with your brand as personal and engaging as possible.

Which marketing campaign do you think would be more effective: one where you send a coupon to 10,000 random people (who may or may not be in need of your services), or one where you send a personalized offer to 500 individual consumers who have shown interest in your product?

Casting a wide net doesn’t work. First of all, most of the people who receive blanket offers ignore them. Second of all, of those that do make a purchase because of the coupon, most of them will almost certainly be one-off transactional customers. Lastly, you have no way of knowing which of your new customers are most likely to become loyal followers of your brand.

Collecting Customer Data to Personalize Your Marketing Campaigns

When researching your customers, you should aim to know as much as you can about who they are as a consumer. Your goal should be to determine:

What they want to accomplish by engaging with your brand
How they intend to use your product or service to accomplish these tasks
Which media channels they are most likely to be reached through

This data will help you create personalized campaigns that touch on specific pain points your prospective customers are currently facing – in turn making it more likely that your brand will catch their eye.

You can collect this data through a variety of means, from sending out customer surveys to conducting interviews (both with customers and future prospects alike).

It’s also important to keep track of how your previous marketing campaigns have affected your sales numbers and your customers’ propensity to become loyal. Consider data such as:

Customer Lifetime Value: Determines the projected revenue a customer will generate for your company throughout their lifetime.


Churn Rate: The percentage of your customer base that has ceased to do business with your company.
Net Promoter Score: Determines the likelihood of a single customer becoming a brand evangelist for your company.

By taking an honest look at how your previous campaigns have affected these and other customer-related scores and averages, you’ll equip yourself with the ability to tweak and fine-tune your future campaigns to better resonate with your target consumer base.

Conclusion

Just as there are transactional and relational customers, so, too, are there transactional and relational businesses.

There’s nothing necessarily wrong with focusing strictly on making a sale and moving on to the next customer.

But doing business in this way surely isn’t going to set you apart from your competition in any way.

On the other hand, by focusing on truly helping your customers overcome their pain points, you’ll make a clear-cut case that your company is the go-to in your industry. In turn, not only will you generate scores of loyal fans of your brand, but you’ll also make these happy customers more likely to spread the good word about your services.

Josh Brown is the Content & Community Manager at Fieldboom, the place to create beautiful forms and surveys in less than 5 minutes. 

For more articles from Shep Hyken and his guest contributors go to customerserviceblog.com.

Read Shep’s latest Forbes Article: If I Wanted My Question Answered In 15 Hours I Would Have Waited 15 Hours To Ask The Question

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Personalization – The Fifth P In Marketing

I will always remember my first marketing class in college when we learned about the 4 P’s – Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. Well, now there is a fifth P.

Before I go any further, as a customer service and experience expert, I believe that service and experience are all about marketing.

The first P is about Product. It is assumed that the product is going to do whatever it is supposed to do. After that, it’s about the experience. Is it good enough to get people to come back? Is it good enough to get people to talk about you to their friends and family? If the answer is yes and yes, then your customer service and customer experience are a marketing machine.

The nice thing about creating an amazing service experience is that done well, the second P, price, becomes less important. Sure, you need to be competitive, but when there is value in the product and the experience, you take the emphasis off a low price.

The third P, Place, is about location, be it in close geographical proximity, placement within a store, or by today’s standards, just a simple click away on a website. And the fourth P, Promotion, is obvious. But what if your customers were doing the promoting instead of you? Word-of-mouth is the strongest marketing there is. This leads us to a fifth P, which helps create an experience that makes people want to talk about you and your organization.

The fifth P stand for Personalization. Personalization is a popular word these days. Companies who can personalize their experiences win over customers. I recently attended the Internet Retailers Conference and Expo (IRCE) in Chicago and listened to a number of keynote and breakout presenters talk about how personalization is becoming one of the major differentiators. So, let’s talk about what this really means.

Traditional personalization came from remembering past customers, using their name, building rapport and other personal, human-to-human, interactions. A good customer relationship management program (CRM) could help in certain sales and support situations. And today we have amazing technology that plays a part in personalization. Artificial Intelligence puts different types of customers into “personas,” grouping customers by common interests and buying patterns, which allows the company to target customers with extremely relevant promotions. Websites “welcome back” customers, reminding customers what they looked at and bought the last time they visited the site. Better technology has allowed a static website to become interactive and personal – as if you were coming back to a favorite sales person at a favorite store.

Another powerful personalization strategy is to do something after the sale is made. It can be a follow-up call or a thank you note. Anything that adds value to the relationship or the last interaction.

So, here is a little homework. Sit down with your team and discuss the concept of personalization. Then ask: What can we do to deliver a more personalized experience for our customers?

Shep Hyken is a customer service expert, keynote speaker and New York Times bestselling business author. For information contact or www.hyken.com. For information on The Customer Focus™ customer service training programs go to www.thecustomerfocus.com. Follow on Twitter: @Hyken

(Copyright © MMXVII, Shep Hyken)

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Amazing Business Radio: Laura Baxter

Laura Baxter Shares Tips on How to Deal with Divas and Other Difficult Personalities

Would you like to know how to better handle difficult customer service situations?

Shep interviews Laura Baxter, author of Dealing with Divas and Other Difficult Personalities: A Mindful Approach to Improving Relationships in Your Business or Organization!

 


First Up:

Shep begins the show by discussing difficult customers. He briefly goes over his Five Step Process to dealing with customer complaints, and explains how some customers are more demanding or sometimes more unreasonable than others. Sometimes, we need to understand our customers’ personalities to resolve their complaint. That’s what customer service is all about – understanding who your customer is and trying to adapt to their personality.

Featured Interview:

Shep begins the interview with asking Laura for her definition of “Diva.” Laura provides a bit of history about the word Diva, as well as her own definition. She then continues to explain how a Diva doesn’t have to be female. A Diva can be a man, customer, co-worker, or anyone you have issues with.

Laura then discusses her new book, introduces the acronym D.I.V.A., and shares how to overcome difficult customers. They discuss the importance of how a Diva or difficult customer interaction must not negatively affect the rest of your encounters. You need to find your triggers and be able to reprogram yourself to react more calmly in tough situations. The key is to adapt to the difficult personality. Stop, look, and listen to discover the needs of the difficult customer so you can better assess how to take care of the Diva/difficult personality, and connect with them.

Giveaways: 

Click here to view the PDF Laura discussed during the episode.
If you purchase the book click here to get access to the Webinar on Dealing with Divas and other Difficult Personalities: A Mindful Approach to Improving Relationships in Your Business or Organization.

Top Takeaways:

DIVA stands for:

D – Define the situation
I – Finding your Inner strength
V – Valuing yourself and the other person (understand them)
A – Associating with the Diva


Stop, Look, and Listen before dealing with the difficult customer.

Stop – Pause for a moment and make sure you are centered and calm in this moment.
Look – Watch what they are doing. Watch how they are, and what signals can you get from their behavior that show their needs? Perhaps even hidden needs.
Listen – Listen to the words they say and how they say it and mirror back what they are saying to you.


The Four Most Powerful Mental States – Try to master being in these states and you will be successful.

Love
Gratitude
Forgiveness
Play

About: Laura Baxter is an American opera singer, author, and performance coach. She has studied the effects of the voice and body on non-verbal communication and leadership for over 25 years, and she brings this experience together to help her clients perform and communicate better. She is the coauthor of several German books and sole author of her new book, “Dealing with Divas and other Difficult Personalities: A Mindful approach to Improving Relationships in Your Business or Organization.”

Shep Hyken  is a  customer service and experience expert , best-selling author and your host of Amazing Business Radio.

“What triggers emotional reactions to people? It may be something someone says. Whatever it may be, you need to recognize these triggers and reprogram yourself to react calmly.” – Laura Baxter

 

      

This episode of Amazing Business Radio with Shep Hyken answers the following questions … and more:

What is a Diva?
How do I become more successful?
How do I improve relationships?
How can I communicate better with difficult or demanding customers?
How do I deal with a difficult customer?

 

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5 Top Customer Service Articles For the Week of July 3, 2017

Each week I read a number of customer service and experience articles from various online resources. Here are my top five picks from last week. I have added my comment about each article and would like to hear what you think too.

The World According to Sharp by Jack Neff

(Ad Age) In the years since Byron Sharp published ‘How Brands Grow,’ his unorthodox theories have taken root with major marketers and begun changing how they buy media. Among the new rules: Loyalty is a crock and broad reach can be more productive than surgical targeting.

My Comment: Let’s start this week’s Top Five list with an article about customer loyalty from a contrarian’s viewpoint. Do we spend too much time focused on taking care of our most loyal customer? According to this article, we may want to rethink our customer loyalty strategy.

Do Loyalty Programs Lock-In Loyalty? by Richard Shapiro

(TCFTR) Do loyalty programs really work?  Possibly, but they only generate long-term results when coupled with a human-to-human component.

My Comment: Continuing on the concept of customer loyalty, Richard Shapiro shares some insights into what it takes to make a loyalty program work, and that’s a human connection. I’ve always believed that customer loyalty requires some type of emotional connection that the customer has with an organization, and that typically comes from one or more of the people who work in that organization.

Four Ways to Improve Customer Service by Seth Godin

(Seth’s Blog) Delegate it to your customers. Let them give feedback, good and bad, early and often.

My Comment: This is the second week in a row Seth Godin has focused one of his daily blogs on customer service. He always has valuable insights. This short article has four of them. My favorite is number four, which is a focus on culture. So important!

17 Experts Weigh in on the Term “Soft Skills” by Jeremy Watkin

(ICMI) From discussions I’ve had, some folks would beg to differ with the traditional definition of and value placed on soft skills. Feeling the need to understand the different points of view out there, I asked 17 customer service and training experts to weigh in with their stance on the term “soft skills.” If they’re opposed to it, I’ve asked them to offer up an alternative.

My Comment: Sometimes customer service training is called “soft skills” training. This is frustrating because I believe customer service is everything, but soft. It’s a skill that must be mastered to deliver the level of service and experience that will get your customers to return. My friend, Jeremy Watkin, did a survey for ICMI. He asked seventeen experts (myself included) what we thought of the term “soft skills training,” and if we feel it should be changed. Here are some interesting responses.

Uber’s Tipping Point by Roger Dooley

(Forbes) The Uber CEO chair was still warm from founder Travis Kalanick’s abrupt exit when the company announced several major policy changes. Unfortunately, these changes appear signal a shift away from its relentless focus on optimum customer experience – the very thing that has inspired remarkable customer loyalty.

My Comment: Uber was a disrupter to the traditional cab/transportation industry, mainly because of one thing: convenience. As the author of this article points out: “From the ease of hailing the ride to the lack of any checkout process, Uber has removed just about all friction from the traditional taxi experience.” Now they are considering adding in a friction point, which is tipping the driver. One of the most convenient parts of the Uber experience is when the ride is over, it’s over. No transferring of money. Just a “friendly goodbye.”

Shep Hyken is a customer service expert, professional speaker and New York Times bestselling business author. For information contact or www.hyken.com . For information on The Customer Focus™ customer service training programs go to www.thecustomerfocus.com . Follow on Twitter: @Hyken

The post 5 Top Customer Service Articles For the Week of July 3, 2017 appeared first on Shep Hyken.

Guest Blog: Technology Trends That Will Govern the CX Landscape

This week we feature an article by Shaista Haque who writes about the top technology trends of 2017 that she believes will disrupt customer experience benchmarks. – Shep Hyken

“Consistent innovation is the greatest invention for all generations.”

The breakthrough technologies have swamped the world and it’s the truth that all this change has been enticing for most of us. The pace at which mankind is moving towards digitalized economy is a clear evidence of the fact that the world will sooner become automated where the human intervention and manual interference will have no space. However, the new and the robust technologies have removed the loops and have provided humans with the opportunity to work at a lower rate of defection.

What comes to your mind when I talk about businesses revolutionizing their technology experience?

Some of you might be thinking about businesses upgrading their existing technology or buying a new one. Well, the year 2017 is not only about revolutionizing business experience but at the same time exemplifying your customer’s expectations by lighting up the dense areas that have been underlying beneath the shadows of grievances and dark memories.

Let us have a quick look at the top technology trends of 2017 that will disrupt the customer experience benchmarks:

Artificial Intelligence: Truly, Artificial Intelligence has made organizations capable of tackling different situations. Managing big data, providing efficient customer service, streamlining the process and enhancing user experience are some of the benefits that artificial intelligence has provided humans with. If we define AI, it is the science behind technologies that has the ability to act like human beings based on the data captured which might include behaviour pattern of the different set of audience, huge knowledge pool, and the competence to solve different problems. Also, the smart customers are becoming more inclined towards the online mediums of interactions like live chat, social media or even email. By proper integration of Artificial intelligence with these online mediums or call center software businesses can create awe-inspiring customer experience memories by analyzing the past customer history, behaviour trends, etc.

Mixed Reality: In the past few years, we have seen the battle between the augmented reality and the virtual reality, but now it’s time to witness the new reality i.e. the world of mixed reality. While Virtual Reality races the user into a new and pre-designed world, augmented reality clubs the digital informative layer in the user’s real world. Mixed Reality with its huge impact has the power to change the world as it will combine the positives of VR and AR, brushing away the odds of failures. By combining the two worlds, we can now see major advancements in the field of customer service, education, fitness, communication and much more. Just to give you a glimpse, a customer service representative wearing those magic glasses can now solve issues remotely with the flash of necessary information in his/her vision while diagnosing the complete machine virtually.

Intelligent apps: The cost of business operation and the rate of defection have reduced to minimal. If we talk about smart or intelligent apps, businesses that are into customer service or sales are the ones who have been witnessing continuous growth. For instance, let’s talk about a food delivery service app that is well known in the market to maintain its high level of customer satisfaction score. One day a customer during peak hours lodged a complaint on the live chat about the late delivery. The customer got amazed with the response time which was less than a second and finally left the chat with a smile on his face. Well, do you think that on the other side a human was typing? Obviously ‘No’

It was the chatbot on the other side replying with ‘0′ defection rate. The smart apps have some of the features of human assistance that are prebuilt in the system. Usually, during peak and festive hours, it becomes difficult for organizations to manage huge incoming traffic but with the help of chatbots, queries that involve less human intervention can be taken care of. Thus, by combining contact center technology with intelligent apps, businesses can reap out hidden benefits that will not only improve their service levels but at the same time will also reduce the operational cost.

Internet of Things: Are you able to imagine what you have never observed? Or are you able to observe what you recently imagined?

I know it sounds confusing, but this is what actually Internet of things can do to users. IOT refers to embedding objects with sensors or actuators so that they can exchange data in the dynamic world. Let us have a look at some of the examples to understand it better and you might be witnessing many of these in this year ahead. While driving down the street, a sensor in your car gets the interruptions from the cloud via traffic lights about the congestion ahead, an alarm on your phone can tell you about the possible theft in your house, the smart watch is able to detect your faulty heart beat urging you to visit a doctor and many examples like these can help you see a better tomorrow. Thus, businesses with the help of IOT have been taking their customer experience to several notches higher.

Conversational systems: A dialogue or a conversational technology is a computerized system that has been customized to converse with humans within a particular structure. From people conversing with computers for answers, ordering their phones to dial numbers, asking about weather and time is a clear indication towards the fact that the world today has the power to simplify workflows by reducing the manual work. The conversational system has been aiding humans in getting their work faster and simplifying their lifestyles.

Shaista Haque is a marketing enthusiast at   Ameyo call center software solutions . She is extremely passionate about B2B marketing strategies for products that harness the web and social media as customer channels. Armed with this information, she writes about latest industry technologies and how it benefits organizations from small scale to global enterprises.

For more articles from Shep Hyken and his guest contributors go to customerserviceblog.com.

Read Shep’s latest Forbes Article: Kidbox: A Boxful Of New Ideas For Customer Engagement And Personalized Experiences

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