Category: Customer Service Evaluation

Customer service is an powerful tool that can support your brand or drag it down. Sometimes customer service reps do everything “right” but miss the point of your brand entirely. You work hard to define your brand, but if you ignore the capabilities of customer service to communicate your company’s values, you miss a crucial […]

By now, you’re probably one of the millions of people who have heard Comcast’s current call from H***. And while the spotlight is on Comcast, Michelle deHaaff correctly points out in her blog that an incident like this “could be happening in your company right now.” One Step Further We’d take this a step further. […]

This Sunday in The Haggler David Segal. “In a Stock Trade, It’s Man vs. Machine.” New York Times, April 27, 2014, David Segal looked at a situation in which a computer misunderstood human language. We’re not surprised. As we’ve said before, customer experiences are complex, so computers don’t always get it. In this particular case, […]

If your company is going to outsource its call center, make sure you find one that really knows how to evaluate customer service. Ask These 4 Questions 1. How do you evaluate customer service? What’s your criteria? When you look at the call center’s rules for scoring chats, calls, and emails, remember that specificity is […]

The following tips to improve customer experience can help you boost your customer satisfaction quick. But first let’s take a look at the state of customer satisfaction. We’ve written about it before: customer service gets a failing grade by our Quality of Customer Interaction (QCI™) Score. Other customer satisfaction metrics like Net Promoter Score (NPS) […]

Companies with bad customer service is everywhere, but don’t let your company be one of them! Apply these 3 tips to fix any issues you might be having. But first, a quick example of customer service gone awry. In Sunday’s the Haggler David Segal. “So You Thought You Canceled the Contract.” New York Times, July […]

Customer service errors are everywhere, but avoid these two big ones! Here’s an example of one: This past Sunday, The Haggler, David Segal “Halving the Portion, but Not the Price.” New York Times, June 23, 2013, wrote about how companies protect their profits by reducing package volume while charging the same amount. In other words, […]

Bad customer service: we’ve all had it, but why does it happen? In yesterday’s The Haggler (David Segal. Jun. 9, 2013. New York Times), David Segal praises Quicken Loans’ great customer service, which he attributes to their superior corporate culture. We don’t doubt that Quicken Loans provides great service (in fact, we would have scored […]

David Segal’s “The Haggler” column in the 2/12/12 edition of The New York Times covered a few horror stories about U.P.S., all of which had one thing in common: a customer’s package was lost, and U.P.S.’s customer service was useless. The haggler conservatively estimated that if U.P.S. is truly exceptional at keeping track of packages […]

Customer service boils down to a simple give and take: customers have questions or problems and companies provide answers. It’s pretty straightforward. But all too often, customers are left befuddled, scratching their heads and wondering: “What did they mean? Were they listening? What do I do now?” Transparency and authenticity are the buzzwords of business. So […]

Email and chat are key customer service channels. But too many companies think that providing customer service by email and chat simply means sending responses in a timely manner, although that’s a good start. It’s time for companies to step up and provide real answers to customers’ questions, answers that show its representatives are listening […]

Customer service language is a crucial aspect of customer service that is often overlooked. A great example of this is Shep Hyken’s reflections on his hotel experience. Shep’s Situation: What Happened Shep reserved a room, but when he got to the hotel it wasn’t ready, so the front desk worker offered to “downgrade” him to […]