Service Untitled » Hiring & Training. The ultimate success of a company is predicated on exceptional customer service experiences.
For post-sales service, Consumer Reports ranked Apple Customer Service ahead of other companies for best PC tech support with the company scoring an 86 out of a possible 100 points. The survey included 6,313 owners of PCs and laptops and explored their experiences with technical service over the past year via telephone, online communication, and in-store help. According to Consumer Reports, Apple’s in-house technical support service, the Genius Bar, rated as high as telephone and online services stating as many as 88% of problems are addressed in person. So peeking in at the Genius Training Student Workbook chock full of Apple “Dos and Don’ts,” we can understand the psychological mastery of an organization that clearly understands when you make people happy, they tend to buy more. Service Untitled» Blog Archive » Interview with Rob Siefker of Zappos – Part 1 of 4. After interviewing Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh and seeing the company’s HQ outside of Las Vegas, I knew I wanted to learn more about the nuts and bolts and day-to-day operations of Zappos.
To get this information, I spoke to Rob Siefker, Director of the Zappos Customer Loyalty Team. In part one of this four part interview, Rob talks about what he does at Zappos, how the company handles operating 24/7, what the training process is like for Zappos employees, and how the company makes the most out of cross-training its employees. Click “Continue Reading” to see the questions and answers. 9 1/2 Principles of Innovative Service. [ <script/style> code inserted at beginning of text ] About the Book: The 9 ½ Principles of Innovative Service, by international bestselling author Chip Bell, provides an engaging instruction manual and inspirational guide for making service an experience that causes your customers to swoon, smile, and sing your praises.
Value-added has been the service solution for many service exemplars. But tough economic times call for a brand new approach—value-unique service. It is not about addition—adding more than customers expect; it is about a unique and unexpected creation. “This book has a lot of heart,” wrote world famous author Ken Blanchard. Downloadable Discussion Guide: Customer Service Speaker and Expert - Official Shep Hyken Site Shep Hyken. Richard Branson on Building Brand Loyalty. Editor's Note: Entrepreneur Richard Branson regularly shares his business experience and advice with readers.
Ask him a question and your query might be the inspiration for a future column. Operational Excellence, Meet Customer Intimacy - Brad Power. By Brad Power | 9:00 AM March 29, 2013 Most organizations continuously strive to achieve operational excellence, but they spend less effort understanding customer needs — and few marry these two sources of customer value effectively.
While a focus on lowering costs, improving quality, and providing consistent, reliable service will continue to be important, I see a shift in the coming decade to combining operational excellence with customer intimacy: tailored solutions for individual customers based on a deep understanding of their needs. Consider Tesco, one of the world’s largest retailers with over 500,000 employees, which has spent the last three decades improving its supply chain processes, and the last two decades collecting and analyzing customer data. But to get the full value of its improved supply chain capabilities, Tesco needed to marry its upgraded operations with a deeper knowledge of its customers than it could get from aggregated scanner data. Customer Intimacy, Meet Operational Excellence - Brad Power. What is more important to company success, a strong external focus on customer experiences or an internal focus on effective and efficient operations?
Of course, it’s a false dichotomy — you need both. I described in an earlier post how Tesco worked for years to improve its supply chain capabilities, then leveraged this value by using deeper customer knowledge to enrich customer experiences. But let’s flip the paradigm. Some organizations which have competed successfully for decades by focusing primarily on creating unique solutions for each customer are now embracing operational excellence to drive even more customer value.
For example, catalog and online retailers like L.L. L.L. While retailers and consumer packaged goods companies are leaders in understanding and serving their customer uniquely, no industry is closer to its customers than healthcare. Consider ThedaCare, a health delivery system with five hospitals, 26 clinics, and over 6,000 employees, based in northeast Wisconsin. New Research: You're Doing Customer Experience Innovation Wrong - Kerry Bodine. By Kerry Bodine | 11:00 AM June 27, 2013 “Innovation” has become a buzzword in the customer experience field.
In a recent Forrester survey of 100 customer experience professionals, nearly half of respondents said that their executive team’s strategy for customer experience is market differentiation. And an ambitious 13% said that they’ll settle for nothing less than having the best customer experience across every industry — in other words, these companies want to be the next Apple, Disney, or Zappos. They also believe that innovation will help them achieve these lofty goals — and they’re investing accordingly. Sixty-nine percent of these respondents report that their companies have dedicated personnel for customer experience innovation.
Turning Customer Intelligence into Innovation - Scott Anthony. By Scott Anthony | 9:00 AM August 20, 2012 It’s a paradox of the information age.
The glut of information that bombards us daily too frequently obscures true insight. Intelligence should drive better innovation, but unless it is strategically collected and used, it functions like a summer beach novel — an engaging distraction. Thoughtful companies intertwine customer intelligence throughout the three phases that characterize most successful innovations. How Roche Used Training as a Business Strategy. On Thursday, January 17th 2013 I attended “Training as a Business Strategy,” a CIASTD session led by Jennifer Zinn, VP of Commercial Education and Communications at Roche Diagnostics.
This is my summary of the ideas Jennifer shared with us. I’ve been involved with CIASTD for many years, and in the L&D field for more years than I want to acknowledge. It’s an ongoing challenge to get clients thinking beyond training as a short-term transaction. Too often, folks requesting a training solution view it as a checkbox item or a compliance item. These are scenarios we encounter in our work that are included with a request for training development services: We need to update our safety regulations to make sure we’re in compliance.We have a bunch of new-hire sales reps. So – Zinn’s presentation came across as a breath of fresh air to me.
Zinn referenced a model and terminology that ASTD actually introduced way back in 1998. Image credit: Mashable.com 1. 2. 3. How do you make this happen? 1. 2. 3.