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...
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...
