It’s all about the pie.
Beth Honshell
Sep14th
Topics: Customer Service
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My husband, Brent, loves pecan pie. His obsession extends to sampling it in every restaurant, as well as requesting it special made every time he visits his mother. Then, we found IT in Pawley’s Island, SC at Kudzu’s. This pie we fight over who gets the crust crumbs – even 4 days later. The nuts are fresh, it’s sweet but not overly sweet. It seems to get better with age – have you ever had a pie that got better with age? This is THE PIE that real pie lovers search for their entire lives.

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Publix — Where Shopping is a Pleasure
Beth Honshell
Jun16th
Topics: Customer Service
7 Comments »

Problem

True to form, I managed to find the slow line while checking out at Publix. Not only slow, but stalled. I was behind a mega-coupon queen. By the time I realized my predicament I had already unloaded my cart. So, I just resigned myself to a long, hopefully patient wait. Honestly — as a customer service leader, I have learned to temper my waiting impatience. I’m trying to work on remembering how I like to be treated when I’m the one giving service.

All of a sudden, the cowbells appeared. My cashier didn’t pause in her service to the customer in front of her, but she picked up a cowbell and rang it. Then I noticed her glancing at the Service Desk Agent. That person looked up from their customer transaction and rang a cowbell in return…whoa! What was going on here? Was it time for the cows to come home?!

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If Staples can do it, you can too.
Beth Honshell
Feb3rd
Topics: Customer Service
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I was delighted yesterday by outstanding customer service from a “big-box” company. Not just delighted — actually blown away. It’s reinforced for me the concept that every company can give good customer service if it’s really important to them. In other words, service is not dead, but very much alive and well.

It started with my mistake. I missed paying a Staples invoice 11 months ago. I had no idea about my oversight until I got a phone call from a collections agency. Yikes! Of course, digging up paperwork and an account manager’s id after 11 months was a struggle. I logged into my corporate account, but couldn’t find any missed payments. So, I did what any baffled customer does — I emailed Staples Customer Service. In fact, I found 2 different ways to email them. That’s when the magic started happening…

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Customer Service: It’s a dog’s life
Beth Honshell
Oct19th
Topics: Customer Service
3 Comments »

The beginning of the tale

Eight of us spent a long weekend at the beach with our kids several years ago. We were enthralled by a new personality-typing tool one of us had run into — and we spent a lot of time comparing ourselves to animals. Specifically, we were otters, lions, beavers and golden retrievers. Every action we took was instantly labeled by one of the group as being “animal-like” to one of those particular species.

As funny as it was to catch people behaving like animals — the dad who gathered up all the loose flip flops and carried 10 chairs back from the beach each day while the kids danced blithely around him is forever known to us as “the golden retriever” — I think type-casting good customer service attributes to dog characteristics is even easier than to animal species.

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What happens when your phone rings?
Beth Honshell
Sep7th
Topics: Customer Service
10 Comments »

Recently I found myself on the other end of the line — making phone calls instead of answering them. I called 30 businesses. In the morning. Before lunch. My results:

  • 2 were answered with a directory assistance message
  • 5 were answered just with “Hello”
  • 20 were answered only with a business name

AND, ding-ding-ding!

  • 3 were answered by someone who told me their name along with their business name = instant connection!

The most shocking fact,  I called the main number of these businesses. No direct dials to an office extension. To add it all up, of the businesses I called I had 27 completely impersonal conversations. That’s over 90% disconnect.  So much for being concerned about knowing your customer.

If you have a company with a phone, there are several key characteristics to good phone etiquette.  These companies forgot one of the most important principles.

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