Wow. It's been a decade since companies began offering customer service via social media, and we certainly have improved over the years! We've shed outsized fears about being criticized by customers...
With the rise of SMS, chat, and social media, is using email for customer service as quaint as sending postal mail? "Tell us about the old days, Grandpa. Did you really have to lick an envelope to...
Last month, customer service expert Jeff Toister and I co-presented the webinar, "How to Write Like a Human in an Age of Speed." Jeff reported the results of his survey, "How Fast Should a Business...
Stay with me here as I connect this sad spelling test story to the task of scoring email quality in a contact center. When managers score agents’ email quality in a “gotcha” fashion, or when they...
I can picture you. It’s the end of a busy week and you’ve finally carved out an hour or so to do a quality check on the emails your agents send to customers. From the “Sent” pile, you randomly grab...
I. Am. Pumped! Last October, I met consumer advocate and syndicated travel writer Christopher Elliott when he gave a wonderful presentation at a customer relations conference. When I proposed that...
If your company is gearing up to offer customer service via text, that’s great! Your customers are going to love the convenience. Texting is their go-to channel for personal communication, and...
“Don’t judge a book by its cover.” Did your mother say this to you? Mine did, especially during my hypercritical middle school years when I’d decide I didn’t like a kid because their Trapper Keeper...
There are about 1,000 varieties of insincere apology. There’s the smirking “Sorry if you were offended” apology which blames the person you insulted. There’s the oblique, passive voice “Mistakes...
My Lynda.com course is live! Yep, you read that right! My first Lynda.com course, "How to Write Customer Service Email" is ready to view, and I am thrilled to share it with you. The course is made...
Preparing to use bots in your customer care organization? Confused about what a bot is and how one works? Is the robot army marching toward us? Maybe? Probably! As customer service professionals,...
I've just completed filming my first Lynda.com course, and I am on a work-related high. (Really.) It was a great experience. After months of working on the scripts and storyboards for my course, How...
