Amazon has spoiled all of us. Today people want everything now. Organizations that want to survive have to dramatically increase speed.  If it takes you 48 hours to process an order speed is 2 hours. If it takes you 6 days to ship, speed is shipping the same day. We have several obstacles. Internal barriers are the mindset of employees which tends to be slow. Employees know if they have 4 days to process a loan they wait until the 4th day day and then they say I didn’t know I would snow or rain. Almost all employees take their time and procrastination reigns. The other obstacle is the la ..read more

Are your employees empowered to make decisions on the spot in favor of the customer? Your single goal should be to have over happy customers. Too many things go wrong each day. You want your employees to understand they are in customer service and their number one responsibility is to take care of customers. If they fall in love with you your competition is dead. It often takes 2 miracles at one time to get an employee to spend $10 on a customer. The Ritz-Carlton allows any employee to spend up to $2,000 to take care of a customer. What is your ceiling? Most employees do not complain. They jus ..read more

Everyone makes mistakes. When you screw up and say, “I am sorry. Our mistake.” it is good customer service but NOT Service Recovery. Most organizations never admit mistakes and less than 1% practice Service Recovery. Keeping customers is critical to your growth. Gaining a new customer is expensive. When you lose one it is super expensive. Not many customers know the lifetime value of a customer, so if a customer has a problem with a $25 purchase most employees say big deal. It’s only $25. The lifetime value of that customer could be $1,200, $3,500, or even $11,000. To employees, it is ins ..read more

I talk about 9 critical elements to drive a service culture. Speed is one of them. Most employees think slowly. What is another 2-3 minutes. Another 1 -2 hours or 1-2 weeks. I am in Hilton Head this week for my 47th wedding anniversary. My wife Pat and I got married here 47 years ago. We arrived in Savannah, Georgia on Sunday. Delta took off on time twice and landed early twice. I rented a car from Budget. At the airport, Budget had a sign that said to go to the Avis counter. It took 2 hours to get a car. There were at least 40-50 people ahead of us in line. By the time I got to the counter, t ..read more

In 1979 I developed Feelings, the world’s first customer service program. It was released in January 1980 and millions of people throughout the world have gone through the program. We have 5 versions of Feelings. Feelings Service Retail. (The video was upgraded in 2023) Feelings for Professionals Healthcare with Feelings (Totally customized for healthcare) Feelings Customer Care for Supermarkets (Updated in 2023) Connections for Higher Education We share the foundational principles essential for outstanding customer service, which are noticeably absent in many organizations today. These pri ..read more

Amazon and Northeast Delta Dental were both featured in my book, Relentless. (See all my books). When I was quoted in the Time Magazine cover story on Customer Service in 1981 I said the only thing that motivates CEOs is hard numbers. Time Magazine called me a Customer Service Guru. Amazon I believe is the most customer-driven firm in the world. They are Relentless. Net sales increased 12% to $764.8 billion. A $60.8 billion increase in revenue. AWS sales increased 13% to $90.8 billion. Net income was $30.4 billion. The $1000 I invested in Amazon in May 2023 is now worth $111,648 as of Februar ..read more

Everyone in the world knows customer service is critical to an organization’s success. The problem in the last few years is the quality of customer service seems to get worse each month. Almost every customer-focused company in the last 20 years has gone through some variation of a customer service program. It’s like attending a class on losing weight. It might have been 4 or 10 years ago and there is a good chance we didn’t maintain the skills we learned. Over time, this often leads us to forget the lessons entirely. There are 3 critical elements that must used to create maximum impact. 1 ..read more

In 1980 I released Feelings the world’s first customer service program based on a very simple concept. When you treat a customer like a king or queen they come back, spend more with you, and bring their friends. This is the foundation of great customer service.  When customer service is poor customers don’t come back and they also tell their friends. In the last 4 years during the COVID pandemic customer service across the world has gotten much worse. Frankly, it rarely exists. The most powerful method of marketing and advertising is positive word of mouth. This week my wife, Pat, and I w ..read more

Last month I finished reading the 670-page book, Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson. A book worth reading. When I read a book I highlight the key ideas and mark outstanding ideas with a star. Then I rate the book and put down the date I completed the book.  (This was October 29 and I rated it an A+) Elon Musk was born June 28, 1971, in South Africa. In 1989 he got a Canadian passport and moved to Canada on his own when he was 18. Elon became a U.S. citizen in early 2002. He is the founder of Telsa, SpaceX, Starlink, and many other firms His net worth on November 10 was $223.79 Billion the rich ..read more

I just tried to buy another Bluetooth headset for my son for his birthday at Best Buy. The employee was not very effective. He could not find my account after giving him my phone number 3 times. I asked for a manager. It took him a few seconds to find my account and I told him I wanted his help because the employee was ineffective and did not know his job. The manager would not help me and insisted I apologize to the employee which I would not. He refused to let me buy the $247 headset so I went to Amazon, placed the order, and had it delivered to his home in Estes Park Colorado. I guess I wa ..read more