Sometimes clients aren’t a good fit for your business. If you notice these 4 signs, it’s probably time to let a client go.

Customer service is a double-edged sword. Get it right and you can make loyal, lifelong customers who sell your products for you. Get it wrong and you can find your business in real trouble. The Wrong Way to Do It My friend Frank gave me an example of the exact wrong way to do customer […]

I don’t mean to sound unkind, but there are just some people you are not called to serve. You can spend all your time caught up in the drama of their demands and accusations, or you can move on. The sooner you cut the cord, the more productive—and happy—you’ll be.

If we are going to create wow experiences, we must become courageous. This is a personal, psychological bridge we need to cross. What we want—that wow experience—is on the other side of the ravine. There’s no other way to get there from here.

If you’ve ever worked in retail—and even if you haven’t—you’ve probably heard the phrase, “the customer is always right.” But just because you’ve heard it doesn’t make it true. My daughter Megan enjoys the BBC show, Mr. Selfridge, about pioneering retailer Jeremy Selfridge. Supposedly, he was one of the people to popularize the phrase that […]

If you make a stellar product but don’t provide stellar customer service, guess what you won’t have? Very many customers. If you’re looking for a competitive advantage in business, customer service is the answer. Why? It’s like investing in both customer loyalty and your promotional budget at the same time. Customer service is the new […]

The new marketing is about building relationships. It includes authenticity, generosity, and story-telling.

Being great at what you do is about more than being a competent professional or a skilled craftsman. It’s not enough to deliver a great product or service. It is about the total customer experience, from the first encounter until the last—and everything in between.

Perhaps you’ve noticed: customer service has deteriorated noticeably since the recession began. Fewer waiters in restaurants. Slower room service in hotels. Longer wait times for support. This is hardly surprising. With significant layoffs in almost every industry, fewer people are available to provide the level of service you have come to expect. Here are four strategies for responding to poor customer service.

As I was driving back to the office, I began to speculate about how many procedures my own company has that may be superfluous? What are we doing that is no longer necessary or useful? How much cost and frustration does this add for our customers and other key constituents? Probably more than I’d like to admit.