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Want employee engagement? Start recognizing small things
Written by: Brad Palmer | March 4, 2013
Employee engagement is an urgent matter. Recognition offers a quick fix. Before inflicting major change initiatives, why not simply recognize and reinforce examples of where you want to head? Recognition provides an easy to implement and low-cost way to engage employees and shift your culture towards new values. Recognition provides a low-cost way to […] Read more… Read More»
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Do You Like, Link, or Tweet?
Written by: Ted Coiné | March 2, 2013
As I sit to write this post, there are still only three main social media outlets: LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Chances are, before this goes live, a fourth network I haven’t discovered yet will burst onto the scene. But… let’s just focus on the three current biggest for this informal – but incredibly accurate – […] Read more… Read More»
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Customer Service Is Head & Shoulders Above When You’ve Got Their Back!
Written by: Kate Nasser | March 1, 2013
Thousands of company leaders around the world ask: Does customer service truly differentiate a company — head and shoulders — above the competition? Do customers return to companies because of customer service? These leaders raise the issue from a financial perspective. Well, there are many companies out there — from Ritz Carlton, Chick Fil-A, Zappos […] Read more… Read More»
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Customer Service Starts by Being Naked in the Mirror
Written by: Kristina Evey | February 28, 2013
Small businesses will save the economy and the American business model. Our economy has undergone several changes in recent years and the customer demographic has followed suit. One game-changer has emerged among all levels – service is the differentiator among successful businesses. Consumers even state that they are willing to pay up to 14% […] Read more… Read More»
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Leadership’s Essential Tie to Customer Experience and Employees
Written by: Dan Newman | February 27, 2013
I hate when I start to sound like a scratched record. It’s exhausting for me and I’m sure for those who have to listen to me. However, I recently found myself saying this a lot: If you’re merely providing a mediocre customer experience, then you may be better off providing a bad customer experience. Because […] Read more… Read More»
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5 Changes Needed for Best-in-Class Customer Service
Written by: Shawn Murphy | February 25, 2013
We can easily blame the lack of executive support, high turnover and under-skilled, poorly-trained employees for less-than-stellar customer service; certainly these issues are notorious contributors to failure. Truth is, however, outdated business views of customer service – and how that front-facing service is delivered – lurk menacingly in business processes and procedures. Sacrosanct are the […] Read more… Read More»
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Does Management Know Best?
Written by: Shawn Murphy | February 24, 2013
The belief that management knows best is outdated. It’s a remnant from the scientific management era that brought factory work to prominence in the U.S. We’ve believed in this view for so long we hardly realize it dominates our perspective. The truth is this belief cripples a team and ultimately an organization’s ability to compete […] Read more… Read More»
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ExchangeGain’s Five Questions with Dan Pink
Written by: Ted Coiné | February 23, 2013
A few years ago, I read a business book that made a lasting impression on me: DRIVE: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, by Daniel Pink. How big an impression? When Shawn and I created the Business Heretic’s Bookstore last year, we listed this book first. And it still holds that spot today, […] Read more… Read More»
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All I Know About Customer Service, I Learned as a Paper Boy
Written by: Mark Babbitt | February 20, 2013
As a kid growing up in the less-than-opulent lumber towns of central Oregon, I understood early that I possessed a “customer service” mentality. My first venture? Door-to-door sales; a publication called Grit – “Celebrating Rural America Since 1882”. I made a nickel for each sale. In my mind, though, I knew each customer had to […] Read more… Read More»
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What’s right (and wrong!) about Zappos’ customer service hiring and HR
Written by: Micah Solomon | February 20, 2013
One of the terms that gets thrown about a lot today in discussions of hiring strategies is ‘‘fit,’’ as in, ‘‘How well will this candidate ‘fit’ into the culture of our organization/company and exemplify our brand and our mission?’’ It’s not so easy to directly and definitively answer this question. Nevertheless, there are ways companies […] Read more… Read More»