This is a guest post by my friend and colleague, Jeff Janes. Here's how Jeff describes himself: "I travel the world to find things to photograph and write about." Jeff is currently based in the...
On a typical day, most customers will understand what you mean even if you use less-than-graceful words when you speak or write. For example, lots of customers dislike the phrase “No problem!” but...
These are difficult times, and our anxious customers need us more than ever. Some of them need help with a simple task, like “How do I add a new driver to my auto insurance policy?” Others need help...
The future is unknowable and people who gaze at crystal balls to predict it are probably crooks, not clairvoyants. In spite of that, I’m going to have a go at predicting a slice of the future based...
I admit it. I hate the term “soft skills” and want everyone to stop using it. Right now. It’s vague, it’s dismissive, and it pits “soft” skills against “hard” ones when we know support professionals...
Is your company or government agency using a tone of voice that connects with customers online, or is it using a stale, bureaucratic voice that repels them and breeds distrust or confusion? In this...
You know that scene in the heist movie? The one that comes right after the criminals rob the bank but right before the cops bust in? When the ringleader says, “We’ve got to get our stories straight...
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...
