Customer Experience Tip #1191

It’s nice that we use this time of year to express thanks to our customers. Let’s just be sure that this is our ongoing quest and not just a once-a-year thing, okay?

Customer Experience Tip #1190

Online reviews continue to be relevant and important in establishing credibility with your prospects … and this is of growing importance. What are you doing to proactively invite your best customers to review you online?

Customer Experience Tip #1189

Ask your clients, upfront, what method of communication they prefer and then do two things: 1) make sure that you and your team acknowledge and honor their request, and; 2) check back in with the client at a later date to see if perhaps their preference has changed.

Customer Experience Tip #1188

“Listening is a hugely powerful form of attention. It’s presence. And if you are really listening, you are genuinely curious. And you are open to be surprised and changed by what comes back at you. So compassion is not necessarily about agreeing with somebody else. It’s not even necessarily about liking them. It is about making a choice to honor their humanity.”

–Excerpted from NPR’s TED Radio Hour interview with Krista Tippett

Customer Experience Tip #1187

While it may be your tendency to think about that next appointment (that next customer), be sure that you are fully present and engaged for the client in front of you right now. In other words, “Love the one you’re with.” People can usually sense the moment you mentally disengage.

Customer Experience Tip #1186

Your customers want to know that they can count on you to deliver a consistent and predictable experience each and every time. Inconsistency is unsettling and causes many customers to never return … and certainly never refer others. What are you doing to ensure consistency in your customer experience?

Customer Experience Tip #1185

Ask your team, “When our best customers are referring their friends and colleagues to us, what are the words you believe they’re using to describe our people?”

Customer Experience Tip #1184

Plan to get back to your customers a little more quickly than you promised. Better to be a “hero” than a “zero.”

Customer Experience Tip #1183

“We have to figure out a way to relearn compassion and that is ultimately being able to appreciate and validate someone else’s experience … even if it isn’t our own.”

–Excerpted from NPR’s TED Radio Hour interview with Sally Kohn

Customer Experience Tip #1182

Consider the general mix of telephone and e-mail communication we experienced 5 years ago vs. today. Now consider where we’ll be in another 5 years. Telephone relationships with customers are becoming a lost art and will continue to be one area in which you’re sure to have a competitive advantage … assuming you’re willing to make the investment.