Friday, August 6, 2010, I lost a dear friend, Bekah Facemire. We didn’t grow up together. Our kids weren’t in soccer together. We didn’t work at the same place. Bekah was the friendly, neighborhood cashier at Drug Mart. That’s where we met – at register 5. Bekah greeted every customer with more than just [...]
A favorite customer of mine called last week and asked if we could meet for an hour. It seems that she has a customer who asked her to do something that she isn’t comfortable doing. But her motto is to “just say yes and figure it out later.” What a great attitude. We talk about [...]
I get confused sometimes, more often than not, some would say, about the right word to use. Like when you are driving 65 miles per hour are you on a turnpike, a thruway or a highway? Or a neighborhood road with the cops fast approaching. (bad joke – sorry about that) The same is true for [...]
I used to have a little cartoon from the paper that said “Shrug off Apathy.” How ironic, I’d chuckled, as I snipped it from the paper, and yet so many of today’s workers in the retail and food service environments have an attitude that is just this side of apathetic. Some would call it “indifference.” [...]
Okay, confession time. I once dated Johnny Bench. Now “dated” is a relative term. * During his final year of baseball with the Cincinnati Reds I attended all of the home games, purchasing a bleacher ticket and sneaking my way down to the seats behind home plate. I’d come early to watch the warm ups and [...]
I was at the monthly Akron Blogger meeting yesterday and as always the conversation expands to more than just blogging. We all shared our thoughts about social media and what we were currently working on to increase our visibility and credibility on the Internet. I view social media as the ultimate customer connnector but others [...]
What is the cost of a lost customer? I have often theorized the importance of building relationships with customers and now a recent survey puts dollars to the sense of that theory. I learned today from CustServ that the cost of lost customers equals 338.5 BILLION a year! Further investigation from CustServ’s blog led me to [...]
I was just reading John DiJulius’ recent newsletter in which he shares the latest statistics on customer service. In the past (survey from 1997-2007)38% of companies ranked a “3″ on a 1-5 scale in terms of customer service. One representing the worst possible experience and “5″ as World Class. That’s a “C” on my report [...]
COSE (Council of Smaller Enterprises) is an amazing organization – one of the largest of its kind supporting small business entrepreneurs in the country. I am proud to be a member and have attended many of the great workshops, coffee conversations and seminars offered through COSE. One of the reasons I joined was so that [...]
It is raining. In fact, it is supposed to snow over the next few days. April snow. Not my fav. In my travels this morning I needed gas and so stopped into a new place: Waterway home of the Clean Car Club. Truthfully I didn’t notice the name of the place, I pulled in because of [...]
