Everybody’s got an excuse. Especially in business, there’s no shortage of excuses. We hear them every day—why something didn’t work, why a target wasn’t met, or why an opportunity was missed. The truth is excuses are easy; action is hard. If you want to achieve results, you need to stop making excuses and start taking […]
Great Customer Service Is Winning!
Customer service around the world is getting worse. How can it? But it is, isn’t it? How about those pain in the neck supermarket self-checkouts? How about that whenever you approach somebody at Best Buy or Home Depot they are never the right person. The right person is on break. Is it too easy to […]
Loving Your Customers
Great customer care goes far beyond great service. It means truly caring for your customers to the point of loving them like your own family and friends. Consider what that means. Loving your customers is not just a lofty ideal but a fundamental principle for achieving sustained business success. When companies genuinely care for their […]
Great Ideas From John Mitchell’s New Book
I have to say I find it ironic that most of the calls I am on with my clients these days are focused on the issues they are having with their work forces. I was on one last week where the General Manager was talking about hiring being the bane of his existence. In the […]
It’s The Little Things That Matter
When it comes to business-to-business customer service it is often the little things that matter. Many companies focus on the big things and ignore the little “softer things” that really in the end create a great customer experience. There is an old adage (actually I just made it up!) that goes; “The higher the technology […]
Making 2024 A Great Year!
Make sure you are ready for the new year by starting to prepare early. The most successful companies spend a great deal of time studying the present year, focusing on what worked and what did not work. They also spend time looking at market trends to make sure they are able to not only […]
Answering The Phone: You Are The Face Of The Company
We’ve all experienced it, we have all suffered through it, we have all cursed it: The way companies answer the phone…if they do at all. This is why Best Buy will go out of business. I called the other day to make an appointment with the Geek Squad. I did this because I learned the […]
Embrace Your Failures!
It’s a shame to waste a good failure. You can tell how great a company is by how many failures they experience. This is based on the idea that if you’re not failing, you’re not doing enough. In fact you’re probably standing still, you’re stagnating, which is the closest thing to death a company does […]
Words Of Wisdom From Bezos
There is no mistaking the fact that Jeff Bezos is a pretty smart guy. He saw things years before the rest of us did. Many of us sat by and laughed as his company lost money year after year while he invested in the future. In fact, that is one of his many premises: “The […]
Never Get Mad At A Customer
There is nothing dumber you can do than getting mad at a customer. What is the point? These days when it is harder than ever to get a new customer and even harder to keep that customer amidst the barrage of competition coming for all sides there is nothing more counter-productive than getting mad at […]