Why you should stop trying to delight your customers

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Customer Service

Delighting customers does not build loyalty. Reducing customers’ effort does.

These were the findings from a large customer service survey conducted by the Customer Contact Council (CCC), and featured in the July edition of the Harvard Business Review. The survey’s aim was to get answers to three questions:

  • How important is customer service to loyalty?
  • Which customer service activities increase loyalty, and which don’t?
  • Can companies increase loyalty without raising their customer service operating costs?

    • After conducting structured interviews with customer service leaders and a study of more than 75,000 customers, the CCC uncovered three findings:

    1. Exceeding expectations during service interactions has negligible …

    Why you should stop trying to delight your customers Read Post »

    Five reasons to ‘Mind Your Emotions’®

    By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Emotional Intelligence, Self Development, Wellbeing

    “Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says ‘I’ll try again tomorrow’.”

    This quote more often than not reflects my life as an entrepreneur, business woman, sales person, mother, partner and friend. On those days and nights when I feel overwhelmed and sometimes exhausted by all my responsibilities and commitments that little voice reminding me to ‘try again tomorrow’ keeps me focused on why I am doing what I am doing – it helps me to continue to cultivate my resilience, to continue to put one foot in front of the …

    Five reasons to ‘Mind Your Emotions’® Read Post »

    More lessons from MasterChef – Can you take the heat?

    By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Emotional Intelligence, Performance Management, Sales Skills, Self Development, Success

    As the saying goes, “If you can’t take the heat get out of the kitchen”. Once again MasterChef has served up some great life lessons. Last year I wrote about the great leadership, coaching and mentoring we can learn from MasterChef. Again Garry, George, Matt and the other guest chefs showed us how to excel in this area of leadership.

    On this occasion, I want to comment on ‘Resilience’ and dealing with setbacks and challenges, and how MasterChef gave us a window into how people handle stress and demanding situations. The time pressures and …

    More lessons from MasterChef – Can you take the heat? Read Post »

    What’s the difference between a member, a client and a customer?

    By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Communication, Customer Service, Ethics & Values, Sales Culture, Sales Relationships, Sales Skills, Strategy

    What’s in a name? Well, there seems to be some confusion in the market place around the terminology used to describe those people who pay us money for goods, services, experiences, donations, etc.

    Different industries can have different terms for the consumers of their products and/or services. We see terms such as customer, client, patient, guest, patron, member, subscriber, donor, etc. used to describe a person who buys our products or services and intends to use them directly. In short, these terms are referring to the same person – the ‘end user’. However, not everyone ‘consumes’ our products or services or …

    What’s the difference between a member, a client and a customer? Read Post »

    We want more than a script

    By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Communication, Customer Service, Prospecting, Sales Relationships, Sales Skills, Sales Tips, Sales Training

    Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of sales people around the world use sales scripts. Used properly, sales scripts act as scaffolding or bridgework to earn us the right to have a meaningful discussion with our prospecting customers, members, donors or subscribers. The sales script is a well constructed set of guidelines that support us when we prospect.

    Good sales scripts:

    • are purposeful – have a clear reason why you are calling someone;
    • use language the customer understands;
    • are designed for the benefit of the listener with it always being “the prospects choice” to accept …

    We want more than a script Read Post »

    Is internal competition eating away at your sales results?

    By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Ethics & Values, Performance Management, Sales Culture, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Relationships, Sales Talent, Self Development, Strategy, Success, Teamwork, Value Proposition & Value Add

    Many sales cultures are traditionally based on respect for authority, status and success, and encouraging competitive, challenging and achievement-oriented atmospheres. Although this is not true for all businesses, especially in the 21st Century! There are a growing number of businesses adopting more collegiate, lead team approaches. However, despite different types of cultures, sales performance and results are usually derived from the efforts of individuals. Harnessing those individual efforts to achieve synergy (the sum is greater than its individual parts) is a key task of management, yet so many get it wrong. Let’s take a look …

    Is internal competition eating away at your sales results? Read Post »

    How do you create future sales superstars?

    By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Sales Assessments, Sales Culture, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Skills, Sales Talent, Sales Training, Strategy, Success, Value Proposition & Value Add

    How many of us entered our sales careers with our eyes wide open? Fully aware of what it takes to be an effective sales person – ably resourced with the tools, processes, plans and support essential to our success. Knowing full well what you were getting yourself into.

    For most, if not all of us, our initiation into sales was nothing like this, and was cushioned with little or none of these luxuries. Does the analogy “sink or swim” resonate with anyone?

    All of this makes the story I am about to share quite unique and refreshing. Recently, …

    How do you create future sales superstars? Read Post »

    Culture Fit

    By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Ethics & Values, Sales Culture, Sales Leadership, Strategy, Value Proposition & Value Add

    Culture Fit was voted by you as the number 6 Sales Trend for 2010. What is Culture Fit? Well the first place you are likely to hear about Culture Fit is when you are recruiting for new staff or being recruited yourself. For instance, Culture Fit Interviews differ from Behavioural Interviews, in that the Behavioural Interview attempts to find out about the candidate’s behaviour, skills, knowledge and experience. Culture Fit Interviews generally do not try to determine the individual’s capability, but rather considers the candidate’s ‘cultural fit’ with the organisation, their …

    Culture Fit Read Post »

    Selling is not a dirty word

    By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Ethics & Values, Sales Culture, Sales Relationships

    We are not born with our beliefs or values, they are taught to us. Our thoughts, feelings, views and opinions about the world are shaped by our experiences of many people and many things. They are coloured, rightly or wrongly, by our perceptual filters which we learn from others.

    ‘Watch who you let near your mind’ is a statement that is often quoted in my articles and for good reason. It takes between 6-8 weeks to unwittingly pick up and adopt another’s views, beliefs and perceptions and own them as your own if we do not question and thoroughly examine the …

    Selling is not a dirty word Read Post »

    Noise Reduction part 2: Is too much information making you miserable and losing you sales?

    By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Call Reluctance, CRM, Sales Planning, Sales Research, Time Management

    With information comes choice and without proper guidelines and filters in place, too much information and too many choices can lead to indecision. Indecision can then lead to paralysis making us unhappy, unproductive, and at worst, ineffective. In sales careers, or any role for that matter, too much information and the subsequent indecision is a real killer – in fact, making no decision is far worse than making the wrong decision.

    Barry Schwartz, professor of social theory at Swarthmore College in the US and author of The Paradox of Choice states “too much choice is …

    Noise Reduction part 2: Is too much information making you miserable and losing you sales? Read Post »

    Scroll to Top