Jeremy Watkin
Is Resolving the Customer’s Issue Good Enough, or Can We Do Better?
Image by StockSnap from Pixabay As an early-morning runner with a dog, one of the most essential pieces of equipment to ensure success is my headlamp. As a clumsy human trying to control a dog that loves to lunge after just about any moving non-human...
Tags in Your Ticketing System: How, Why, and When to Use Them
In a world of social media, especially Instagram, I fear that we’ve fallen into a belief that more hashtags is better. Think about the last time you scrolled through the ‘gram and landed on a post that included a 100-character description followed by a...
5 Lessons Learned While Attempting to Boost Contact Center Productivity
I’ve come to the realization recently after seeing several demos of various CCaaS (Contact Center as a Service) platforms that there’s a flaw in the whole selling process. And I don’t think it’s the fault of the fine sales folks or even the software...
3 Practical Ways Your Customer Support Team Can and Should Listen to Customers
I was recently thinking about certain practices we talk about in the world of customer experience. I can’t help but think that we’re sometimes a bit careless about how we speak of them as if we can start doing them with the flip of...
6 Questions to Assess Your Contact Center’s Readiness to Identify Customer-Impacting Issues
A customer contacts us with an apparent product issue. With a bit of digging, we discover a larger bug or problem that may need to be addressed by engineering. Before reporting to engineering we get a sense of how many customers are impacted by...
The Way It’s Always Been Done
Meet Mouse, our corn snake. I’ve never really considered myself a “reptile person.” On those occasions where I’ve encountered snakes while hiking or working in the yard, I always jump clear out of my shoes in complete fright. It was Christmas of 2020 w...
4 Internal Customer Support Practices for the Modern Contact Center
Thinking back to the early days of my first management role in a small contact center, I can remember one day when a newly-hired customer support agent came over to my cubicle for what had to have been the twentieth time to ask me...
Sometimes you win and sometimes you learn
My kids have this sign hanging in their room that says “Sometimes you win and sometimes you learn.” I’m pretty sure it’s just a cheesy saying from some craft store, but the lesson rang true tonight. Giving up a game-winning homer One of my sons…
Optimizing Self-Service: 4 Lessons Learned from Our Chatbot Journey
Almost exactly a year ago, I published a column titled How to Optimize Zendesk to Deliver Both Effective and Efficient Customer Support. In my third point about the importance of optimizing your Zendesk knowledge base, I left incomplete exploring artificial intelligence as a means...
Striking the Right Balance as a Customer Service Leader
As a customer service leader, there’s a certain balance I’ve struggled to find. Specifically, I’ve found myself feeling like I was failing my team on those busy days if I didn’t roll up my sleeves and help them get those calls answered or bust through…
Online Reviews: A Window Into the Truth About Your Company
Image by PIRO4D from Pixabay Since beginning my new role as a customer service and experience leader, I’ve gained a bit of new experience. I, along with my team, am now responsible for monitoring our activity on review sites like Yelp, TrustPilot, Site...
5 Favorite Quotes from “Excellence Wins” by Horst Schulze
For those of us in the business of serving customers, when Horst Schulze, co-founder and former president of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company speaks, we listen. Why? Well, the Ritz-Carlton has long been a gold standard for service, and in the book Excel...
How to Optimize Zendesk to Deliver Both Effective and Efficient Customer Support
Just a couple of years ago I was working at a contact center outsourcing company where nearly half of our clients were Zendesk users. Part of my job was to regularly work with our managers and clients to share best practices for implementing and...
Stimulating Thoughts on Reducing Customer Friction
Image by Thomas Breher from Pixabay Who doesn’t love a good workaround? A system doesn’t work as expected, so we contact customer support and they say something like, “install this free plugin” or “click this button over here” or “stand up and spin aro...
3 Reflections From a Downright Easy Lego Experience
Image by Andrzej Rembowski from Pixabay In a household with three elementary age boys, it may not come as a surprise that we’re inundated with Legos. In fact, I’m pretty sure I could build an addition onto my house just using Legos. My wife, however,…
Customer Service Lessons from Non-Customer-Facing Roles
Image by Tina Koehler from Pixabay I’m about six months into my role as Director of Customer Support at NumberBarn — and in this role, I have the pleasure of interacting directly with paying customers on a semiregular basis. Throughout much of my caree...
5 Holiday Gift Ideas for Employees
[embedded content] You know the person who always comes bearing gifts and they’re always great gifts? I don’t consider myself to be one of those people. But a well-timed, thoughtful gift to employees, especially during the holidays, can be a huge mor...
The Responsibility of Front Line Staff When Lines are Long
[embedded content] I was recently with my father-in-law at a doughnut shop. The line was fairly long and not moving quickly. The person behind the counter serving customers wasn’t moving particularly fast as he cared for one customer at a time. As we w...
Thrive, Not Survive During Those Contact Center Peaks
[embedded content]I was recently asked to share some ideas and tips with the readers at Customer Service Weekly as part of a larger Black Friday Survival Guide. It’s a fantastic resource and you should definitely check it out. “Black Friday” isn’t just...
Adopting a “One to say yes. Two to say no” Policy in the Contact...
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay I was trying to remember where I originally heard or read the concept, “One to say yes. Two to say no.” Of course, it was on Shep Hyken’s blog some seven or so years ago. The concept has certainly…