Crack the Customer Code

Adam shares some of the best ways you and your employees can stand up for yourselves when customers cross the line into unacceptable behavior.

Customers may say some unpleasant things when they’re not happy, but what happens when they cross the line? Whether their behavior makes employees fearful or just extremely uncomfortable, it’s never OK to let customers get away with it. Are your frontline teams prepared?

You need happy employees who consistently deliver excellent customer service, and part of that is knowing you have their backs when they’re in peril. Whether it’s a customer who is getting too friendly, grossly inappropriate, or downright abusive, Adam has some tips you can use today (but hopefully you won’t have to!)

Don't be caught off guard when customers cross the line into different kinds of harmful behavior. Listen in!

• 360Connext® post, What’s Your Culture Code?
• Customers That Stick® post, 5 Ways to Handle Unreasonable Customers
• Episode 173: (Tip) Resolving Customer Service Issues
• Episode 137: Culture and Customer Service

Sponsor message:

Want to bring game-changing customer service training to your team? CTS Service Solutions offers a half-day in-person workshop designed to motivate and educate your customer-facing team members. Using energy, excitement, and interaction, our workshop helps frontline teams embrace a customer-centric outlook, then — using the principles from our book Be Your Customer’s Hero — gives them the skills and confidence they need to handle any service interaction. Don’t leave your frontline team hanging… Give them the training they deserve. Learn more at customerheroworkshop.com, that is customerheroworkshop.com.

Take care of yourself and take care of your customers.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Adam and Jeannie share helpful tips for quickly turning cold calls into opportunities to spark meaningful relationships.

Sometimes making cold calls is still necessary. The idea is usually to start a new relationship, but it can be difficult to start anything this way!

It doesn’t have to be so hard, and your reps don’t have to strike out so often. A slightly better understanding of the customer journey can make an amazing difference.

If you take just a moment before each call, there are a few things you can do to get it started right. Just remember these pointers from Adam and Jeannie to warm things up right away while helping prepare for more personalized experiences later.

Your reps will be happier right from the start, and so will your customers!

• 360Connext® post, You called Me. Please Don't Ruin My Day.
• Customers That Stick® post, Sales, Customer Service or Operations: Which Is Most Important?
• Episode  Casey Carpenter, Sales Breakthrough Coach
• Episode Search helmers 104: Pat Helmers, Sales Babble Podcast

Sponsor message:

Want to bring game-changing customer service training to your team? CTS Service Solutions offers a half-day in-person workshop designed to motivate and educate your customer-facing team members. Using energy, excitement, and interaction, our workshop helps frontline teams embrace a customer-centric outlook, then — using the principles from our book Be Your Customer’s Hero — gives them the skills and confidence they need to handle any service interaction. Don’t leave your frontline team hanging… Give them the training they deserve. Learn more at customerheroworkshop.com, that is customerheroworkshop.com.

Take care of yourself and take care of your customers.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We've learned some startling facts about how online reviews affect the decisions your customers make, so we're sharing tips on how to take action today.

Adam and Jeannie have been researching online reviews, and they’ve found some interesting facts they can’t wait to share. 2016 was a big year for online reviews, but 2017 will be bigger. Are you ready?

Studies show we rely more on customer reviews to find what we need than ever, and this is especially true for local businesses. It behooves leaders to understand how this trend affects the decision-making process of their own customers, yet many still don't. We’re here to help!  

Are you paying attention to what customers are saying? More importantly, do you know how to interpret and interact with them? There will always be trolls and bad apples, but knowing the impact of even the positive reviews is not always as simple as you might think.

Your customers are writing reviews, and they'll continue with or without you. Not only is it important to respond, but your business can leverage these reviews to help drive sales while improving the overall customer experience. 

We’re sharing key study data and tips to help you get your finger on the pulse, so get ready!

• Hear some crazy figures about the impact of mobile reviews as a driver for decision-making. [3:00]
• As a business owner, what can you do about negative online reviews? [4:50]
• What’s the biggest action item for local businesses, and what should they focus on first? [6:30]
• Consider the reviews themselves as part of the customer experience. [8:15]
• Hear some quick tips for keeping a prosperous relationship with online reviews. [9:50]

• 360Connext® post, 3 Ways to Survive Dangerously Casual Customer Reviews
• Customers That Stick® post, Social Media Customer Service with Jay Baer (Video)
• Infographic: 50 Stats You Need to Know About Online Reviews
• Episode 096: Jay Baer, Hug Your Haters
• Episode 152: Daniel Lemin, Manipurated

Sponsor message:

Want to bring game-changing customer service training to your team? CTS Service Solutions offers a half-day in-person workshop designed to motivate and educate your customer-facing team members. Using energy, excitement, and interaction, our workshop helps frontline teams embrace a customer-centric outlook, then — using the principles from our book Be Your Customer’s Hero — gives them the skills and confidence they need to handle any service interaction. Don’t leave your frontline team hanging… Give them the training they deserve. Learn more at customerheroworkshop.com, that is customerheroworkshop.com.

Take care of yourself and take care of your customers.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jeannie shares a few simple ways advocating for customers can greatly improve overall experience and what any organization can do to get started.

No matter how buried you are in day-to-day processes, or how scarce your resources are for customer experience, this is the one question you should be able to answer. Who in your company is speaking with decision-makers on behalf of the customer?

Integrating customer advocacy into your business means great things for your culture, satisfaction scores, and overall customer experience. What’s more, it doesn’t require a costly, labor-intensive initiative you just can’t pull off right now.

Jeannie hears a lot from bootstrapped leaders looking for the number one thing they must do to improve customer experience. She has helped them find simple but powerful ways to advocate for customers in their organizations, and she’s sharing some of her best tips today!

Learn to sprinkle some customer advocacy into the way you do a few things, and the impact it has on your overall customer experience will be incredible.

• 360Connext® post, Customer Advocacy is Not What You Think
• Customers That Stick® post, To WOW Customers, Listen and Care
• Episode 074: Denise Lee Yohn, Brand-Building Expert
• Episode 154: Adrian Swinscoe, How to Wow

Sponsor message:

Do you know how to deliver the superior customer experience you visualize? We can help your team become a force for positive change, starting with a customer-centric mission. The Customer Experience Investigators™ at 360Connext specialize in helping companies across industries and around the globe. Developing and internalizing unique and scalable customer-focused missions has been crucial to their success.

Want to compete with the other 89% of companies staying afloat by providing better experiences? You need a compass for making astounding changes in the customer experience while breaking down the silos that are holding you back. We offer evaluations, workshops, and roadmaps to keep your wheels firmly planted on the road to a customer-centric future. Join us on our mission To Create Fewer Ruined Days for Customers™ today. Visit us at 360Connext.com.

Take care of yourself and take care of your customers.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Adam and Jeannie discuss tips for dealing with outrageous customer demands the right way.

People are sometimes just irrational… Or, are they? Sooner or later, you’ll eventually be faced with outrageous customer demands. Emotions can run on overdrive in these situations, so it's important to keep yours in check while staying sensitive to your customer's! How do you handle these situations without losing your cool, or without losing a customer?

If you haven’t already, soon you will have a situation where it seems impossible to deliver what a customer is asking for. Are they out of line, or just having trouble expressing their needs and concerns? Before you decide there’s nothing you can do to make them happy, first consider these tips from Adam and Jeannie. These three steps can help you keep things in perspective for yourself and your customer. Listen in!

• 360Connext® post, Confronting Your Customer Engagement Challenges
• Customers That Stick® post, 5 Ways to Handle Unreasonable Customers
• Episode 173: (Tip) Resolving Customer Service Issues
• Episode 161: How to Approach Customer Threats

Sponsor message:

Do you know how to deliver the superior customer experience you visualize? We can help your team become a force for positive change, starting with a customer-centric mission. The Customer Experience Investigators™ at 360Connext specialize in helping companies across industries and around the globe. Developing and internalizing unique and scalable customer-focused missions has been crucial to their success.

Want to compete with the other 89% of companies staying afloat by providing better experiences? You need a compass for making astounding changes in the customer experience while breaking down the silos that are holding you back. We offer evaluations, workshops, and roadmaps to keep your wheels firmly planted on the road to a customer-centric future. Join us on our mission To Create Fewer Ruined Days for Customers™ today. Visit us at 360Connext.com.

Take care of yourself and take care of your customers.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bestselling author John DiJulius shares what it takes to join the Customer Service Revolution and differentiate your brand with world-class service.

In today’s connected world, the traditional ways of serving customers are no longer serving anyone. We’re in the middle of a Customer Service Revolution, and today’s guest, John DiJulius, is here to help us understand what that means and rock it.

John has worked with leading revolutionary customer service disruptors. What do they have in common, and what does it take to be among them? As John explains,

“It’s a radical overthrow of conventional business mentality designed to transform what employees and customers experience…”

It’s not just about hiring nice people! You need to bring a meaningful purpose to all customer service interactions with a Customer Service Vision. John shares some of the best ways to do this and some great examples of companies that get it right.

Making it through the Customer Service Revolution means having a high Customer Service Aptitude. Does your organization have what it takes? John outlines how you can test and improve yours.

“It’s not the employee’s responsibility to have a high service aptitude, it’s the company’s to give it to them.”

Join the Customer Service Revolution! Use John’s processes and evaluations to find your strengths and weaknesses, bring a meaningful purpose to customer service, and make more money. Listen in!

Highlights from the interview:

• What does John mean by creating a Customer Service Revolution? [3:30]
• What is a Customer Service Vision Statement and how does it differ from an organization’s mission? [5:30]
• Great ways to communicate the Customer Service Vision within your organization [10:10]
• How can you evaluate Service Aptitude at the organizational level? [13:20]
• Hear about the toughest lesson John learned in customer service [17:20]
• John and our hosts discuss training and culture vs. hiring for world-class customer service. [23:50]
• John gives us vital advice for balancing technology with customer experience. [29:00]

International consultant and best-selling author of three Customer service books, his latest book, The Customer Service Revolution, instantly hit #1 on Amazon. John works with world class companies like The Ritz-Carlton, Lexus, Starbucks, Nordstrom, Nestlé, Marriott Hotels, PwC, Cheesecake Factory, Progressive Insurance, Harley Davidson, Chick-fil-A, and many more.

John isn’t just talking about it, he lives it, as a very successful entrepreneur of two businesses. John Robert’s Spa, a chain of upscale Cleveland locations, has been repeatedly named one of the top 20 salons in America; and The DiJulius Group, a consulting firm focused on changing the world by creating a Customer service revolution. John will demonstrate how we can make our Customer service our single biggest competitive advantage and make price irrelevant!

Connect with John

• Twitter
• Facebook
• John’s website

• 360Connext® post, 3 Ways to Add Magic to your Customer Service Training
• Customers That Stick® post, For Great Customer Service, Treat Policies Like Plaque
• Episode 137: Culture and Customer Service 
• Episode 081: Walking the Talk of Improving Customer Service

 Sponsor message:

Do you know how to deliver the superior customer experience you visualize? We can help your team become a force for positive change, starting with a customer-centric mission. The Customer Experience Investigators™ at 360Connext specialize in helping companies across industries and around the globe. Developing and internalizing unique and scalable customer-focused missions has been crucial to their success.

Want to compete with the other 89% of companies staying afloat by providing better experiences? You need a compass for making astounding changes in the customer experience while breaking down the silos that are holding you back. We offer evaluations, workshops, and roadmaps to keep your wheels firmly planted on the road to a customer-centric future. Join us on our mission To Create Fewer Ruined Days for Customers™ today. Visit us at 360Connext.com.

Take care of yourself and take care of your customers.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Adam shares tips for using automated customer service while keeping in tune with customers and preventing disasters.

Automated customer service can help to create a smoother, more convenient process for customers while freeing up company resources. Ideally, it’s a win/win situation. But sometimes technology creates terrible experiences for customers, even while we think everything’s working well.

Does your strong service culture work when #custserv technology doesn't? 

Whether they take us by surprise or silently add more friction to the experience, technology failures will happen. But must they also be customer service failures? Sometimes it's not the tech itself that fails in the end, but the processes we create around it. How well you know what’s happening and prepare for what may happen on the other end of those circuits makes all the difference.

You can prevent disasters and deliver great service no matter what’s happening with your technology. Listen to these great tips from Adam you can use today.

• 360Connext® post, How Micromapping Can Save Your Business
• Customers That Stick® post, Three Big Picture Ideas for Introducing New #CustExp Technology
• Episode 153: Training for New Customer Service Technology
• Episode 085: Proactive Customer Service and Worst-Case Preparation

Sponsor message:

Want to bring game-changing customer service training to your team? CTS Service Solutions offers a half-day in-person workshop designed to motivate and educate your customer-facing team members. Using energy, excitement, and interaction, our workshop helps frontline teams embrace a customer-centric outlook, then — using the principles from our book Be Your Customer’s Hero — gives them the skills and confidence they need to handle any service interaction. Don’t leave your frontline team hanging… Give them the training they deserve. Learn more at customerheroworkshop.com, that is customerheroworkshop.com.

Take care of yourself and take care of your customers.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Adam and Jeannie share tips for creating employee incentives that don't break the bank. 

You have great employees who need to feel rewarded, but don’t necessarily have a budget for bonuses and pay increases. If you don't do something, engagement and morale could start slipping any time. We have good news for you: Your hands are not tied!

What motivates a rock star employee, anyway? Though bonuses and raises certainly do help, it’s not just about the money! There are plenty of ways to make employees feel recognized and appreciated. 

Join us today as Adam and Jeannie discuss non-financial employee incentives and share tips for keeping your staff highly engaged with little or no budget for extras.

• 360Connext® post, What’s Your Culture Code?
• Customers That Stick® post, 6 Can’t Miss Ways to Reinvigorate Your Customer Service Team
• Episode 157: Employee Incentives and Unintended Consequences
• Episode 039: Does Employee Empowerment Work?

Sponsor message:

Want to bring game-changing customer service training to your team? CTS Service Solutions offers a half-day in-person workshop designed to motivate and educate your customer-facing team members. Using energy, excitement, and interaction, our workshop helps frontline teams embrace a customer-centric outlook, then — using the principles from our book Be Your Customer’s Hero — gives them the skills and confidence they need to handle any service interaction. Don’t leave your frontline team hanging… Give them the training they deserve. Learn more at customerheroworkshop.com, that is customerheroworkshop.com.

Take care of yourself and take care of your customers.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Adam and Jeannie share tips for calculating the ROI of customer experience improvement in your organization.

Convincing executives to invest in customer experience improvement can be tricky, and you may need some convincing yourself. Is it really worth it? How can you predict the ROI of customer experience for your organization?

Today we have tips to not only help you calculate the ROI of investing, but also calculate the loss of not investing. You can use the data you already have to get the answers executives are looking for.

Need simple but reliable resources for calculating the ROI of customer experience, plus some examples to prove how they work in real life? Adam and Jeannie are bringing these to you today, plus a bonus tip and some compelling statistics. Listen in!

• 360Connext® post, Customer Experience ROI: Why Not Investing can Sabotage Your Success
• Customers That Stick® post, The Greatest Customer Service Statistic in the World
• Episode 149: Customer Service and Technology Investment
• Episode 119: CXPA Live, Predictive Analytics

Sponsor message:

Want to bring game-changing customer service training to your team? CTS Service Solutions offers a half-day in-person workshop designed to motivate and educate your customer-facing team members. Using energy, excitement, and interaction, our workshop helps frontline teams embrace a customer-centric outlook, then — using the principles from our book Be Your Customer’s Hero — gives them the skills and confidence they need to handle any service interaction. Don’t leave your frontline team hanging… Give them the training they deserve. Learn more at customerheroworkshop.com, that is customerheroworkshop.com.

Take care of yourself and take care of your customers.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jeannie shares expert hiring tips to avoid costly mistakes and bring in a truly customer-centric employee who is a great addition to your team.

Picking a candidate with the right skillset is important. However, if you want to deliver outstanding experiences, it’s not everything. Most skills revolve around a set of tasks rather than people. So if you’re not careful to hire customer-centric employees, watch out! Because the most “qualified” individual on your team may actually be a detriment to your customer experience.

It's not just a customer service thing! Employees who don't interact directly with customers can prioritize their own processes over the very people those processes are built to serve. Some even come out looking like rock stars for being so on top of those processes. Meanwhile, customers suffer!

So how do you avoid making this mistake? How do you balance skillset with gut to bring truly customer-centric employees into your team?

Today, Jeannie has some important team-building tips to help you define what traits you are really looking for, and how to recognize those traits in your candidates. Learn how to look beyond the skills so you can answer this question before you make a big mistake: Are they qualified to put my customers first?

• 360Connext® post, Are you SURE you’re Hiring the Right person?
• Customers That Stick® post, 7 Customer Service Qualifications Everyone Must Have
• Episode 051: Jobr and Hiring Innovation
• Episode 166: Justin Deese, Blue Collar Service

Sponsor message:

Do you know how to deliver the superior customer experience you visualize? Your team must become a force for positive change, and a customer-centric mission is the fuel they need. 360Connext specializes in helping companies across industries and around the globe develop customer-focused missions that are both unique and scalable.

Want to compete with the other 89% of companies staying afloat by providing better experiences? You need a compass for making astounding changes in the customer experience. You need to break down the silos and get to the root of what's holding you back! We offer evaluations, workshops, and roadmaps to keep your wheels firmly planted on the road to a customer-centric future. Join us on our mission To Create Fewer Ruined Days for Customers™ today. Visit us at 360Connext.com.

Take care of yourself and take care of your customers.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices