Chris Stiehl
Do Your Call Center Workers Like Working There? They Should!
Are your customer service representatives happy in their work? Are they proud of what they do? In my experience, it is rare to get a "yes!" answer to these questions. But believe it or not, a "yes" leads to higher customer loyalty and customer...
What Else Can You Do for Me? Nothing!
Do you see your customer contact center as a strategic advantage or as a necessary evil? When I was working for a utility, we hired a vice president of marketing from one of the competing telecoms. He wanted to attempt to incorporate sales messages into...
Startling Statistics!
Startling Numbers! I have returned home from Kuala Lumpur and the conference there on customer service. It was a great experience! I met some fascinating people and learned some interesting facts - quite startling actually! For example, a recent survey (which I cannot find at…
Employees Will Spread the Word, so Consider the Message Carefully
There is no doubt that employee attitudes about their company can influence the way the customer views the company. Two stories from my past illustrate the advantage and potential disadvantage of having vocal employees. We would all like to think that having employees who...
When It Comes to Customer Experience, Saturn Runs Circles Around the Competition
A few years ago, when I worked at Cadillac, we studied the customer-buying experience in great detail. Our customers talked about how uncomfortable they were when buying a car. They felt cheap and as if the dealer was taking advantage of them in the...
Manage Key Accounts as If They Were Key!
The idea behind singling out key accounts is that you will treat them as special, giving them the recognition and treatment they deserve. If the age-old "80/20" rule applies, 20 percent of your customers, or less, generate 80 percent or more of the profits....
Make Sure Your Entire Organization Is on the Same Path
Company XYZ (a real company, whose name I'm withholding) has an extensive toll-free customer service program. The company makes a technical product, and its 125 major customers can lose a lot of income if the product fails. Thus, when any of these 125 major...
Start a Trend: Treat Your Sales Staff Like Customers
Have you ever thought of your sales staff as customers? Henry Ford thought of his employees as customers for his cars. He wanted to pay them enough and charge the buyers so little that his employees could afford to buy the cars that they...
Does Higher Customer Satisfaction Mean More Sales?
Does Higher Customer Satisfaction Necessarily Mean More Sales? In brief, the answer is "No!" – you must do more than merely drive customer satisfaction scores up. As an illustration, consider the Cadillac Brougham of the 1980s. The design of this automobile had virtually no changes...
Find Out What the Customer Wants, First
In the early 1990s, while working on the new car designs at Cadillac Motor Car Co., I found that our customers had a different reaction to scratches and wrinkles in the leather than we did. We had thought these were "defects." Customers, however, were...