Often our first interaction with our customer is over the phone.  If you had to rate that experience from the caller’s perspective – how would you do?  A+ – you answer the phone personally with a warm greeting and a smile on your face F -    they have several confusing options with a menu that [...]

It is a scary time.  Companies are laying off hordes of employees.  Businesses are closing.  Sales are down. Now is not the time to scare off those employees you’d like to keep around. Your boss calls and says “I need you to be available for a conference call with the entire sales force next Monday [...]

I called for information about my son’s college fund yesterday.  In light of the current economic climate and the fact that my son leaves for college in less than eleven months – I had a few questions. I can’t imagine being in the financial world right now.  As people work to stamp down their panic [...]

I was attending a meeting today when the facilitator received a text message.  The meeting format is a casual breakfast round table and so it was appropriate for her to quickly view the message while the rest of us continued our discussion. I noticed that she did a little thumb dance over the keys and [...]

Not to belabor the whole “make or break telephone moments” conversation but today  Drew McLellan left a tweet that he’d called a company and got a human.  He said: Just called a company — was surprised to hear a human answer the phone. That’s how rare it is today. Wayne Hurlbert responded back saying: Being rare also [...]

This wasn’t a test.  I really wanted to find a colleague from my past, but the experience was just too good to pass up sharing. I found someone that I used to work with via LinkedIn and according to their profile they work at AM Trust.  Of course LinkedIn doesn’t provide the phone number and so [...]

When we think of customer service, we generally think about face-to-face conversations, yet often our first contact with the potential customer is over the phone. When I was first promoted to Regional Manager over the Greater Detroit Pearle Vision stores (back in the late 80s) I spent the first few months traveling the stores and [...]