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Is Your Customer Service Roadworthy? Fixing the ‘System’ That Leaves Drivers Stranded
Imagine you’re driving to an early morning networking event. You’re navigating a familiar stretch of road, only to find it partially flooded. Your wheels are cautiously floating in the water until a massive clunk vibrates through your vehicle. A pothole strikes your front tyre. Fifteen minutes later, the tyre pressure light flashes on the dash—it’s […]
Working in a Call Centre is not for the Faint-Hearted
Working in a call centre is not for the faint hearted. The environment can be stressful and challenging. Customers don’t call to pass the time of day or enquire about your health, they call because something is not working the way it should work which can be having a huge impact on their business, increasing […]
Leaders are Like Gardeners
We think about and refer to leaders in many ways – good, bad, poor indifferent, charismatic, dynamic, legendary, but have you ever thought that leaders are like gardeners? Let me explain. What or who is a gardener – someone who prepares the earth, plants seeds, nurtures those seeds as they grow to become young tender […]
Does your employee appraisal process need an appraisal?
“The most basic problem is that performance appraisals often don’t accurately assess performance.” – W. Edwards Deming (Founding Father of Total Quality Management) We traditionally rely on employee management performance systems / performance appraisals to give feedback to our employees. In most organisations this is a yearly ritual after having completed the statutory probation period. […]
Is your job making you sick? The impact of fear on health
In a recent blog I wrote about the impact of a toxic job. The blog covered typical symptoms that the body expresses when subjected to a constant level of “uncontrollable” stress. What I didn’t talk about is why these symptoms appear and the damage that might be occurring in the body as a result of […]
5 Ways to Create a Great Customer Experience
Great customer service and a great customer experience is the foundation to any business. It does not matter whether you are in the frontline serving customers or not. Any member of a team is always either serving the customer directly or serving someone who is serving the customer. The Ritz-Carlton company motto perfectly sums this […]
Seven Actions in Working with Customers during a Crisis
Having lived successfully through two previous crises as the founder and director of a business in Russia, the 1998 financial crisis and the 2008 economic crisis, it stands me in good stead to work through this current economic, business and health crisis caused by actions and directives taken by governments globally, in response to the […]
Are Bots Really The Best Option?
With the ever-advancing fast pace of technology, more and more customer support functions are being taken over by bots. WHAT IS A BOT? As defined by www.Techterms.com, “A internet bot, also known as web robot, www robot or simply bot, is a software application that runs automated tasks (scripts) over the Internet. Typically, bots perform […]
You scratch my back and i’ll scratch yours – the law of reciprocity
In Robert Cialdini’s Influence: Science and Practice (2009), he describes the powerful rule of reciprocity as one of “the most influential dynamics of human behaviour, the reciprocation rule essentially states that if someone gives something to us, we feel obligated to repay that debt.” Reciprocation, “the quality or state of being reciprocal: mutual dependence, action, […]
Spotted Dick or Spotted Richard?
Can someone tell me what happened to debate? Is the current state of lack of initiating, wanting and allowing debate a result of the mobile phone and its many apps, twitters, instagrams and the like, or is it the fear of being politically incorrect and the consequences of that? The benefit of free speech is […]