Leadership lessons often come from unexpected places. Some recent events reminded me why we must talk to people not about people. The Valerie Bertonelli Incident Last week, you may have heard about a social media incident that involved Valerie Bertinelli. In case you don’t know, Valerie is an actress, television personality and perhaps most famous for being the ex-wife of Van Halen guitarist, Eddy Van Halen. She currently hosts the cooking shows Valerie’s Home Cooking and Kids Baking Championship on Food Network. Long story short, someone had posted a negative comment ..read more

Customer support self-service has been around for many years, but in 2020 is more important than ever before. As Gartner states in its article, “5 Customer Service Tech Trends in 2020”, Self-service is king. Some of the drivers of self service royalty include…. Firstly, as a result of the pandemic quarantines, many more employees and customers are working from home. As a result, they have to rely more heavily on self-help technology, and less on day to day human interactions.  Secondly, the pandemic has driven up customer service demand in many businesses. Offering excellent, customer se ..read more

Over the past 5 years I have had the opportunity to volunteer at two different animal rescue organizations. They both have the same ultimate goal, which is to save the lives of animals. However, their volunteer executions plans are vastly different. This is because one leverages a generalist approach, while the other leverages a specialist approach. What is the difference? In her May 2020 article, “Deep or wide: Should you become a specialist or generalist in your career?”, Sharlyn Lauby did a great job describing each option.  Per Lauby, “Generalists are competent in several differ ..read more

The massive impact of Covid-19 on call centers and customer support teams must drive a significant call to action for leaders of these organizations. In particular, there are three actions every customer operations leader must consider. The Employee Perspective Call centers in certain industries have been deemed “essential” by the Department of Homeland Security. Employees of these call centers are expected to risk their own health, and the health of their families, by coming to work. If the employees do not come to work, they may face repercussions, up to and including termination. This, at a ..read more

If you are leading a customer support team in the midst of Covid-19 you know that the show must go on. Regardless of the pandemic, customers still need their software to work, their hardware to process transactions and the cloud services to be available. The Operations Blog has gathered together the best resources across the internet to help you manage customer support and operations teams amidst the Covid-19 pandemic challenges. The content is broken down into three segments and this blog post will be updated regularly. Managing Remote Workers Through Covid-19. Managing Customer Service, CX ..read more

I recently attended a webinar called “The future of AI (artificial intelligence) in customer service”.  Experts at both Zendesk and Netomi presented their research findings and answered questions from the audience members. This webinar intrigued me. So, I went on to study the impact of AI on customer experience across industries and solutions. This blog recaps my key takeaways. What is AI in customer service? When people think about AI, they often think of Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri. Can Alexa or Siri help you with your NPS scores? Maybe! Let me define AI in the customer service realm ..read more

As a leader do you feel like you are “on” all the time while at work, or interacting with employees or customers? You should. Leaders must operate as if he or she are living in a fish bowl. Everyone on the outside can look in and watch you. Every interaction with every colleague, employee and customer, matters and has a spill over effect.  Whether you leave a positive impression or a negative impression, that effect will be shared with others…verbally, electronically or even on social media. Being “on” means that you are consciously thinking about your words, behaviors and body language ..read more

It’s time for leaders like us to plan more meaningful, team building experiences for our employees.  As a leader in 2019, it is likely that you have direct reports scattered across different offices, maybe even different countries. And, it is also likely that at least once per year your dispersed team gets together in person for a strategy or planning session. One common element in these in-person meetings, is a segment set aside for “team building”.  Sometimes this segment is during the day, other times it is after hours. I had one boss who loved to plan out of office team-building ..read more

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