Continuous Improvement

How Well does Customer Support Answer Questions?

How Well does Customer Support Answer Questions?

Over the last month and a half, I had quite the customer service experience with my car insurance broker and car insurance provider. All to get an answer to two questions on the renewal of my car insurance policy. Two questions…sound simple?

As you can tell from the duration of the back and forth, turned out to be far from straightforward. So many things went awry there are several blog posts I could write, and, today I’m going to focus on how their customer service did at answering my questions.

What abilities were the customer service representatives and customer supervisor lacking that resulted in their own manager being shocked once the escalation reached her?  Would customer service for the product / service you’re responsible for do any better?

Click Read More to:

  • See what:

    • My customer experience was

    • Abilities the customer service personnel below the manager were lacking

  • Reflect on these questions to see if customer service for the product / service you’re responsible for would do any better

How a Bad Assumption can Bite You...Literally

How a Bad Assumption can Bite You...Literally

I’ve previously talked about how making assumptions can be dangerous in the “What are Assumptions Costing You?” blog post. Well here is an example of how a bad assumption can bite you…literally. Warning: If you easily get squeamish, you may want to skip reading this blog post.

The below happened to me a few weeks ago and here is what I’ve since learned.

How Much are you Driving Customers to the Competition?

How Much are you Driving Customers to the Competition?

Happy New Year everyone!

A few weeks before the December holidays, I logged into my email marketing tool to find a pink banner at the top stating: “Use of the marketing email tool has been suspended because your spam reports rate exceeds our acceptable thresholds. Marketing email access will stay locked for this account and this decision can't be appealed further. You can still continue to use other tools in the application and send 1:1 emails”. To say I was shocked was an understatement as:

  • This meant I was left in a lurch with my business as suddenly I could no longer email my distribution list / community

  • No warning had been given I was approaching a threshold

  • I had been careful about who I was manually adding to my distribution list

  • I had an email sign-up confirmation set-up on my website’s newsletter template to avoid spam sign-ups

  • I was unaware there was no appeal process for free accounts before using this company’s product

I had been under the impression this brand was the Cadillac of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools which is why I hadn’t bothered to look too much into their customer support model before using it. Boy was that a lesson learned given my customer experience in December drove me straight to a competitor’s product.

As change agents / leaders we’re frequently improving a product or customer support model. Reflecting on the product or customer support you’re working on or responsible for, click below to see the short version of my customer experience, and ask yourself these questions to see if you’re driving customers to the competition.

How Easy Is It for Customers to Use Your Product or Service?

How Easy Is It for Customers to Use Your Product or Service?

In the past few weeks I have learned way more about toilets and how toilet seats attach than I have ever wanted to. After having the plastic hinges wear out and break on a porcelain toilet seat on one of my toilets, I ignorantly thought, “no big deal, get a new toilet seat, unscrew the old one, and screw in the new one”. Boy was I in for a rude awakening.

Why am I talking about toilets and toilet seats? They’re simply another product that we use. As change agents / leaders, frequently we’re focused on continuously improving a product or service. As you think about the product or service you’re working on or responsible for, ask yourself:

  • How easy is it for customers to use your product or service?

  • What is the customer experience when it comes to product maintenance / repairs?

  • How open minded are you and your staff to customer feedback on the above?

  • How well are customers listened to on the above?

After going through the below product experience with one of my toilets, I decided to write this blog post to illustrate how a company can frustrate its customers with:

  • Their product design

  • How they choose to respond to customer feedback


What if There is a Better Way to Handle Your Frustration?

What if There is a Better Way to Handle Your Frustration?

With so many people in Massachusetts having trouble getting a vaccine appointment, I’ve seen a lot of frustration being vented, understandably so as people are desperately craving a sense of normalcy. Especially when some other countries have been experiencing a sense of normalcy for quite some time now because of the national strategies those countries implemented early on in the pandemic.

As change agents and leaders, we are very accustomed to the feeling of frustration. Sometimes it’s with leaders choosing to ignore an issue we’ve brought to their attention or not following a recommendation we’ve provided, sometimes it’s with stakeholders who are resisting the change, other times it’s at ourselves for not handling a situation well. Regardless of the reason for the frustration, the question becomes, what do you do with that frustration? What if there’s a better way to handle your frustration than what you’ve been doing?

How are you Keeping your Spirits Up?

How are you Keeping your Spirits Up?

It’s now Feb 2021 and how are you feeling? Are you looking forward to the year? Or are you frustrated with the monotony of the pandemic, being at home so much, miss traveling, and being around people? Or maybe you’re feeling all of the above and more.

Several have asked me how I’ve kept my spirits up during Covid-19 so I figured it was time to write a blog post on this. Here are five ways I’ve been able to keep my spirits high:

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