Category Archives: Staff

Employee Attrition – What Can YOU Do To Reduce It?

Employees usually come and go and at some point, you can expect to lose a few workers. The service sector is notorious for high employee turnover at 30% with the average for all industries standing at 13%. Millennials are also partly responsible for the increased employee turnover since they are more likely to switch jobs than their older counterparts. 

There are some costs attached to losing employees and an organization with high employee turnover can incur heavy losses including the time taken to find new workers. When the bounce rate for new hires gets too high, you cannot get a return on your investment especially when you factor in costs for training and recruitment. 

A high bounce rate for new employees is an indication of something wrong with your hiring process. Here are a few ways to reduce new hire bounce rate:


Formulate a Comprehensive and Competitive Benefits Package


One way to retain new employees is to compensate them handsomely. Apart from needing enough money to pay for living expenses like food, rent, and utilities, employees want to know they are compensated in other ways too. Moving to a better paying job is one of the major causes of employee turnover and paying well can prevent this. 

To get a feel for a fair salary, research on what competitors pay for similar jobs in your area e.g. how much do accountants make in your area. In addition to salaries, add some benefits like life insurance, disability insurance, 401K and pension plans to retain new hires. When dealing with millennials, keep in mind that they’ve witnessed the financial mistakes of their parents and are keen on additional benefits.

Hire the right person for the job


When interviewing new employees, make sure you hire the people who are most capable of doing the job. This way, you get a return on your investment. Do not hesitate to hire smart people or people with the ambition and potential to become stellar employees. 

Smart people are more flexible and their versatility will be of benefit. One major reason that people give for leaving a job is that it was not what they expected. To counter this, clearly, define the roles to the interviewee and ensure they are familiar with what will be done on the job. 

Another consideration for hiring is choosing someone who will fit with the company culture; that is if it’s important to you. Cohesion with other employees will encourage new employees to stick around and consequently reduce new hire bounce rate.

Reward employees and recognize their efforts


Employees are humans and will greatly appreciate if you recognize their efforts. When your workers go overboard and produce excellent work, complete a project well before the deadline or perform any other notable action, congratulate them. Doing this in front of colleagues is more effective as they will feel motivated by your acknowledgment. 

You don’t have to shower them with praise for everyday tasks, only for notable achievements. Another effective way to reward employees is to tie tangible, financial rewards to certain feats. Giving bonuses to high performing employees in front of the colleagues will encourage new employees to work towards the preset goals and reduce employee turnover. 

Additionally, you can create a career path for your employees so that they don’t feel like they landed in a dead-end job. Although it may seem obvious, most companies do not offer opportunities for growth like raises and promotions. When career advancement options look bleak and a new hire finds the other employees looking miserable and downtrodden, they won’t think twice about leaving for greener pastures.

Create a positive working environment

To create a positive work environment you have to factor in a good work/life balance. This involves flexible starting and ending times so that they have enough time for other activities. Many a new employee is put off by inflexible working hours and swaps jobs for more flexible hours. 

A study by a Boston organization concluded that 80% of workers and 76% of managers agree that flexible hours contribute to employee retention. Remember that workers spend close to half of their day at work and a positive environment will go a long way to increase engagement. 

Additionally, a conducive environment will improve the worker’s performance and boost productivity which works in the company’s favor. A good example of a superb work environment is Google, whose Googleplex building looks more like an adult playground than an office complex. Google also offers free food, health benefits, massages and haircuts, video games, gym and swimming pools to employees. Although this increases the running costs, it effectively cut down employee turnover and dissatisfaction.

Setting up and Launching a Remote Office

In the early days of my career I was responsible for setting up an operation in a different city. It was a great opportunity for me and something that I really wanted to succeed in, however looking back on that person with the experience I now have. Well, lets just say that I was very lucky that I didn’t fall completely flat on my face!

The City

As a native Torontonian (that’s what people in Toronto, Canada call themselves for my International readers!), I’d visited Montreal a couple of times and had always enjoyed spending time there, so when my boss asked me to set up a new office in that city I thought it was a great idea! I mean, how hard could it be?

Well, it was 1998 or 1999, and while I was working for an Internet company, the many conveniences we’ve all come to expect and enjoy had yet to be invented or for that matter even thought of! Websites like Yelp! and Foursquare didn’t exist and while the multiple listing service (MLS) was there, it was really only useful for residential properties and in most cases you needed a realtor to provide the information.

I didn’t know how to promote my company – we were established in Toronto but no one outside of that city had heard of us. I didn’t know where to open the office – downtown would be great but the rents would be a lot higher than out of town, but how much higher? I didn’t know how to get new customers or even hire staff for that office.

The Marketing

Knowing what I didn’t know (which is I’ve found the first step!), I decided that I couldn’t do it all by myself. I’d need help. Local help. So I started interviewing marketing companies that could help me with two of the things on my list – promoting the company I worked for and finding new customers.

Fortunately I was able to find a small bouteque agency that was priced right and seemed to have all of the appropriate credentials. I didn’t interview three different firms though or get competitive quotes (mistake #1?), but they seemed to know their stuff!

Over the course of the next 2-3 months, we were communicating back and forth about radio spots, billboards, print advertising, product pricing and other minutae relevant to launching in a new location. Again they seemed to ask all of the right questions so I thought I was onto a winner.

The Hiring and Staffing 

While the marketing piece was going on, I started looking for office space and staff to work in the office. Based on the model we had in Toronto, we’d need a local manager and customer service/technical support staff that could both resolve issues and perform administrative and billing functions in French and English.
Monster.com had launched and was used quite extensively in Canada around that timeframe so the interviewing process began in earnest.  Fortunately it was very buyount job market so getting some good quality candidates was fairly straightforward. The local MGR however – well that one took a while and although I ended up putting someone in place he wasn’t my first choice (mistake #2).

Now vs. Then

Looking back, I think I did the best that I could with the tools I had available at the time. Money was tight so my budgets were definitely constrained. Everything was moving extremely quickly and change was happening at an ever increasing pace.
Comparing the piecemeal strategy of those years with the way I’ve setup two new locations over the previous 2 years is very much night and day. Part of that of course is my seniority now and my ability to talk to people and leaders that are higher up the food chain. People that can actually negotiate based on the potential upside that they can see. The other part of course is the confidence I’ve gained in doing this a couple of times now and knowing some of the potential pitfalls inherent in having remote staff and operations.

You see, while the Montreal operation was successful both of my mistakes ended up coming back to bite me. My manager choice – well, without local oversight, he turned out to be a bit of a dictator and was making the office environment toxic for the other staff. He had to go and I had to find someone else. My first mistake though – the marketing company – was probably the bigger one. While the comminucation and interaction had seemed positive and enthusiastic they didn’t actually end up producing anything of real worth. Sadly, they actually ended up going out of business themselves before we’d launched which set us back several months.

What could I have done?

Hindsight is always 20-20 isn’t it? With the tools and information available to us today, most of my requirements could have been dealt with, without even leaving my office. I would have been able to search and get reviews on other companies that had done the same things. I would have been able to pick and choose marketing companies and been able to interview them remotely only after shortlisting them based on reviews and feedback from clients. I would have been able to evaluate property prices and rental costs remotely and conducted interviews remotely. Would I have had to go to Montreal at all? Yes, probably, but for different reasons – more along the lines of ensuring things are moving smoothly vs. setting up.

Things have definitely changed in only a few short years – I’m fortuntate that the mistakes I made early in my career helped me to learn how not to do things and I’ve taken that knowledge and applied it. I wonder what mistakes await the next generation though? I’m sure they are going to be doozies!

Managing Technical Teams

Managing technical staff is becoming more of a challenge daily.  Even more so, when your staff are MORE technical than you are – which to some extent is expected … you are a manager and responsible for multiple area’s of the company, they are specialists and able to focus on their area to the exclusion of everything else.

In most cases technical staff are those who prefer to perform their work with little or no supervision and they often view Managment “oversight” as a hinderance to their – getting the job done.  They also quite often forget that at the other end of the phone line, there is a customer (or customers) that has been impacted and regardless of the fact that they “think” they can resolve the problem, there are timelines and SLAs in place to ensure that issues get escalated.   Now, while “techs” are members of the team that managers depend upon heavily to resolve the problem, it is the managers responsibility to understand the “big picture” and also the challenges faced by these key members at a non-technical level.

The manager is responsible for balancing the needs of the company against the needs of these key resources and obviously directing technical staff can be a challenge.  It is made even more of one, by those managers that are unable to step back and release control.  The understanding between a manager and his team must be such that trust exists at either level.  You trust them to get the job done in a timely manner and escalate those problems that they are unable to handle & they trust you to keep their best interests in mind, work with them to get more training (which is something a “true” techie will never have enough of), ensure that they have the resources and training to resolve the problems that you are assigning to them and in those instances where its necessary … pull them back and away from a problem so that they do not get defeated.  This mutual respect MUST be in place if the team and organization is expected to be effective. 

The manager of a technically oriented department MUST have a reasonable grasp of the technologies and issues that his staff will face.  They should be able to understand it at a “high” level, but it is OK to let your staff know that they are smarter than you!  Remember they are skilled in their unique discipline and while you could not do their job, they are not managers and could not do your job either.  It is far more important for the manager to be able to direct the staff to the right resources, tools or training when working issues.  If the employee cannot perform the task with his current level of knowledge, it is incumbent on the manager and the company to ensure that appropriate and relevant training is available in a timely (& frequent) manner.  Technical skills “rust” when not used and with the plethora of new technologies constantly being developed and launched it is very difficult to always be current with the newest while maintaining a grip on legacy tools/applications and knowledge.

Managers are constantly expected to do more, with less resources, regardless of the economy (think about it – in good times, the number of customers you have are increasing whereas your resources won’t (at least not at a comparative rate) as the company is in business to make a profit … in bad time, you lose staff and have to service what customers you have left with fewer and fewer resources) and unfortunately is probably one of the few constants in our world!  Now, not only do you always have to do more with less, but you need to also ensure that the staff you have you KEEP!  The cost of hiring/training and integrating new staff and making them useful is a topic for another day, but suffice it to say, if you have a “good ‘un”, you want to keep him!  Its a fine line between customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction and its a tightrope you’ll be walking every day.  I generally tend to err on the side of employee satisfaction – if you have good staff, doing a good job who are happy doing that job … customer satisfaction just comes naturally!

Work Ethic and Today

A famous quote from Thomas Edison reads – 

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

Thomas Edison
Now how often have you been the one to procrastinate or put something off till later?  How often have you not studied for that big test or perhaps not got onto that train because the weather was a little bit bad or you felt a little bit under the weather?
The unfortunate truth is that with the prevalence of modern conveniences that we now have available to us, people have gotten lazy.  It is easy to forget that a requirement for success is dedication and hard work.  This doesn’t mean that you stop using the tools available to you … what it does mean though is that you need to learn how to use them correctly.

Work smarter – not harder … use your email client to track issues that you need to stay on top off – most clients have a “flag” option and any good email client will actually thread conversations together so that you do not need to read every individual message.  Use tasks and task management … if your email client doesn’t support this, use one of the free ones on the net – a great one that I use that is extremely customizable is called “Remember The Milk”.  Make sure that you have access to all the people and resources you need to instantly by keeping your address book synchronized through tools like Plaxo.  If you have a PDA (Blackberry, Palm or equivalent smartphone) make sure that your email client is integrated appropriately so that you can take it with you.  
Remember however that you need to “clock off”!!  Do NOT work to the exclusion of your family.  You need to remember that the only reason you are there is to support your family and it should NEVER be the other way around.  

Use appropriate and useful project management tools  – if you do not have access to Microsoft Project there are several free alternative Project Management sites that you can get access to – check out Zoho Doc for a good option.

Think about MindMapping software – Freemind is a great application if you can download and use it on your desktop.  However, if your IT department has restricted your access you can use – bubbl.us – this is a free and fairly easy to use application.

The Curse of the “berry”


Are you invaluable?  How about irreplaceable?  Will the world stop turning if you don’t pick up the phone or answer that email? No?

OK, so why are you ignoring your family (or friends or yourself??) to pick up the phone?  It’s very easy for companies to take advantage of employees & even more so managers who feel a personal responsibility for the performance of the team and department.  Now I’m not talking about those of you who get paid for being “on call” – unfortunately, I’ve found that Managers rarely get compensated for this – but rather the ones who don’t. 

Companies need to understand and realize that employees lives and health are at stake and for some of you (you know who you are) … their family lives also.  Staff needs time away from work and away from the stresses of the job if for no other reason than to recharge their batteries for the next day.  In addition, if staff members are constantly contacted outside of regular business hours than their staffing and hiring needs to be looked at and examined.  

Management needs to create and have in place a proper escalation plan for customers of course and a Manager should be included in there at the appropriate level.  However a Manager should not be the FINAL point of escalation and if Customers matter (which all companies state, but few actual shows), Senior Management should also form part of that plan and in addition, perhaps appropriate out of hours coverage should be put into place!

Irate Customers

The unfortunate fact of the matter is that you will receive complaints from customers.  Sometimes these are warranted and sometimes not.  Having the skill and patience to deal with these types of issues is what makes (or breaks) an excellent service & help-desk team.

People working the Customer Service and Helpdesk fields are often at the sharp end of having to deal with angry customers.  One the one hand, some of these customers are just looking for fault or being extremely picky or even those (shudder, dread) chronic complainers who just like to hear their own voice.  I’m not going to discuss those types of people in this post, as although they exist, generally, people who complain about a product or service are ones that have NOT received what they have paid for.  Most people don’t enjoy complaining and find it a difficult (and to be avoided) process, so keep this in mind when you are speaking to them.  They are NOT trying to just make your life difficult – they DO have a genuine issue that should be looked into and hopefully addressed.

Difficult customers

Come in several varieties including (but not limited to) the following: Angry, Impatient, Intimidating, Talkative, Demanding, Indecisive etc… and any (all) combinations you could think of.  Dealing with these extremes is not easy and shouldn’t be considered such, but the key is that they must be dealt with and must be dealt with in a Professional Manner! Just like you cannot change someone else, you cannot control someone else’s behavior  You have control only over yourself and your own actions. You can, however, influence how customers respond to you though, and I hope that my suggestions below give you some ideas.

Realizing the Issue

Remember that the majority of customers in the world are reasonable people. They may get “difficult” from time to time if they feel they’ve been let down. It’s how you handle them that’ll determine if they continue to be a problem or if you can turn them around. Difficult customers and situations usually occur because something has gone wrong.  It’s what happens then that’ll decide whether they deal with us again or bad mouth us to other people.  As I’ve mentioned in previous (& will be mentioned again in future) posts, is that the problem you are facing is not the one individual on the phone complaining about their problem.  It is the 10 or more customers that have left without speaking to you because they are dissatisfied!  A very good phrase you see advertised frequently – which you should always keep in mind – goes something like this:

If you are happy with our service, please tell your friends.  If you are unhappy with our service – please tell us!

This should be more than just a trite phrase that gets thrown around.  Companies need to actually believe, understand and live this statement.  The only way you are going to ensure that your customers are happy is by talking to them.  While a customer may be berating you, you still have an opportunity to win them over.  I cannot count the number of times that I have been able to do this and not only keep them with my company but transform them into my biggest advocates.  Research indicates that customers who complain are likely to continue doing business with your company if they feel that they were treated properly. It’s estimated that as many as 90% of customers who perceive themselves as having been wronged never complain, they just take their business elsewhere. So, angry, complaining customers care enough to talk to you and have not yet decided to take their business to the competition. They are customers worth saving.

Turning Them Around

OK, if I’ve not scared you away already, here’s what you need to do.  The steps below are laid out in a fairly logical fashion (and you will see that some of them overlap in terms of how they work) and is illustrative of most of the cases and situations you will come across.
  1. Control Yourself
  2. Listen
  3. Empathy
  4. Identify the Problem/Issue
  5. Don’t Blame Someone Else!
  6. Resolve the Issue
Let’s explore each of these in a bit greater depth below.
  • CONTROL – The easiest way to do this is to remember that it’s not YOU!!  When a person complains about something, it’s important to remember that they’re not attacking you personally. It’s the problem they’ve encountered which is causing the irritation.  This correspondingly maps quite closely to the feedback you should be providing to your staff when they are not performing well and as mentioned in my review of the One Minute Manager.  Never argue with customers when they are angry, displeased or complaining. If you allow a customer to push your buttons and lose control of yourself, you’ve lost control of the situation. You can lose a good customer if you show boredom, irritation, disdain or displeasure. Remember if a customer is being abusive and difficult, it’s NOT YOU!!  If you can keep this in mind, dealing with them will be significantly easier … it’s crucial you maintain a respect for the person even if you don’t respect their behavior towards you.  Remember and repeat … they are NOT mad at YOU!!!  Apologies for the repetition, but this fact is extremely important and more than one Help Desk Manager has gotten flummoxed by the fact that they are taking the issue personally.
  • LISTENING – If an angry customer is explaining the situation to you … let THEM talk.  Do NOT interrupt them mid-flow to argue a point.  This sounds easier than it actually is as everyone wants to justify themselves or bring up some rationale for a fault … don’t do it!  Once you’ve asked the person to explain their problem or issue to you, it’s then crucial that you simply listen without any kind of interruption whatsoever until they’ve finished. This is the only way that you will get a full picture of the issue from the customers’ point of view.  Remember they are upset and in their eye’s justifiable!  You cannot take that away from them – regardless of what you say.  It’s your actions after that will determine how they feel at the end.  More often than not, once the customer has had an initial chance to vent his rage, it’s going to die down a little, and that’s your opportunity to step in.

Say, “I can tell you’re upset…” or, “It sounds like you’re angry…” then connect to the customer by apologizing, or empathizing. When you say something like “I’m sorry that happened. If I were you, I’d be frustrated, too.” It’s amazing how much of a calming effect that can have. 

  • EMPATHY– OK, we’ve already touched upon this a little bit above, but let’s explore this in a bit more depth here.  Put yourself in the customer’s shoes, and try to see the situation from his/her perspective. Don’t try and cut him off, don’t urge him to calm down. Instead, listen carefully. If someone is angry or upset, it is because that person feels injured in some way. Your job is to let the customer vent and to listen attentively in order to understand the source of that frustration. When you do that, you send a powerful unspoken message that you care about him and his situation.  Often, as the customer comes to realize that you really do care and that you are going to attempt to help him resolve the problem, the customer will calm down on his own, and begin to interact with you in a positive way.   Once they’ve finished their diatribe, it’s important that you try to look at the situation from their perspective. Having not interrupted their flow and by listening intently, it’s already sent a signal to the person that you have listened and that you care about them and the situation they’re facing.
  • IDENTIFICATION – Sometimes while the angry customer is venting, you’ll be able to latch right on to the problem because it’s clear-cut. Something is broken. Or late. Or he thinks a promise has been broken.  Once you have identified what the problem is, it’s important that you reiterate it to the customer so that they are sure that you have heard them correctly. If you’ve assumed correctly, the customer will say ‘yes’ and then you can move on. If not, this is a good place for some specific questions. Ask the customer to give you some details. “What day did he order it, when exactly was it promised. What is his situation at the moment?” These kinds of questions force the customer to think about facts instead of his/her feelings about those facts. So, you interject a more rational kind of conversation.  Eventually, you will get to the heart of the matter and at that point, you should reiterate to them to ensure you’ve got it right and then you can move on to the next stage.  However … remember this … you MUST apologize for the problem caused by the customer and the impact that he has felt.  This is NOT an acknowledgment of fault or wrongdoing, simply another part of empathizing with your customer.
  • BLAME GAME – I don’t know how else to say it but to be frank.  This is NOT the customer’s fault.  NEVER blame them for coming to you with a complaint.  You should be thanking them for giving you an opportunity to excel! This might also not be your companies fault either, but it is still proper and correct for you to apologize. 
  • RESOLUTION – Now it’s time to try to resolve the situation. There is never going to be a successful outcome every time here and what may be a satisfactory resolution for one customer may not appease another but what is important is to go about trying to resolve the problem in the correct manner.   You won’t always be able to fix the problem perfectly. And you may need more time than a single phone call. But it’s critical to leave the irate customer with the understanding that your goal is to resolve the problem. You may need to say, “I’m going to need to make some phone calls.” If you do, give the customer an idea of when you’ll get back to him: “Later this afternoon.” Or “First thing in the morning.”
Then do it. Whatever your commitment has been to the customer it is IMPERATIVE that you keep it.  If you do not, you will have them angry at YOU for not fulfilling your promise and this time they would be justified!   Even if you don’t have all the information you need, call when you said you would and at least let him know what you’ve done, what you’re working on and what your next step will be. Let the customer know that he and his business are important to you, that you understand his frustration, and that you’re working hard to get things fixed.
If you are not going to be able to resolve the situation to the customers’ satisfaction – as them how they would like it resolved!  There is no harm in asking that simple question, and even if their response is not something you can do, perhaps it is something that could be done at a higher level of the organization. By taking all of these steps, you’ll have done your job to the best of your ability and in a manner which is likely to resolve most issues.

You have the Power!

It is important that you remain calm in the face of your customer’s anger.  This will allow you to think rationally and eventually win the customer around.  The moment you start reacting to them is the moment you’ve lost the plot and the control of the situation.  You will not succeed in your intent if you do this.
The more you encounter difficult customers, the easier it becomes to deal with them and the more you’ll experience satisfactory outcomes. As long as you adopt an approach similar to that above, you’ll win more than you’ll lose.
Nevertheless, always bear in mind that you’re never going to win them all.  Don’t get disheartened … if you have treated them with respect they will REMEMBER and chances are good when you competition causes them grief, they will be back!

Exceptional Customer Service

One important thing to remember from a Customer Service point of view is that the last person you speak to (or chat with or email) is also the most likely to buy your service or product in the future. This is obviously not a hard and fast rule, but more an estimation of the impact word of mouth plays with any business!

A repeat customer does not happen by accident. It is something that is only developed (& nurtured) through hard graft and constant work. You need to build relationships and this is where Exceptional Customer Service comes into play.
Communication is key. You have to remember that when a customer first signs up to your service – you should THANK THEM. They didn’t need to bring their service to you as I am sure that regardless of your industry you have competitors. A simple Thank You email will most times suffice. When the scope of the contract is sufficient, ramp it up to a personalized letter or perhaps even a bottle of wine at Christmas time! Now speaking to them when they first sign up is important – granted and mentioned … how about when they are having a problem???
SPEAK EVEN MORE!!!
The only communication a customer has is with you and the only insight they have into the status of their issue is what you are telling them. There have been many instances where I have been able to “Save” a customer simply by giving them updates. Please note – I have not solved the problem, that still existed, all I have done is told them what we were doing to get their issue resolved, gave them a timeframe to when I expected (hoped and prayed in some cases!) their issues would be resolved, and when I would next communicate with them. One key thing to remember here is if you give a customer a commitment – make sure that you stick to it… Think about it from your point of view and if you were the one experiencing this issue – wouldn’t you like to know what was going on? You probably have customers of your own that you need to inform also! This is something that always seems to be lacking at the lower levels of a CSR team but should be enforced and driven down. Remember, your staff doesn’t need to give out sensitive information to satisfy your customers. Most customers know that the people they are speaking to are not the ones who have caused the problem and they are just there to help solve it – for those ones that don’t, I will discuss handling IRATE customers in depth in later posts.
Give your customer as many ways as possible to get in touch with you. Obviously, resource constraints come into play also as you don’t want to offer 24/7 telephone support if you have a staff of 1. But perhaps in addition to email, offer chat as an option. When you get to the size where you can offer telephone support – do it, even if its only on an outbound basis.
The one thing that you must always remember and keep uppermost in your mind whenever you are dealing with a Customer from a Service/Support standpoint, is that the issue they are experiencing which has caused them to contact you – is affecting them and THEIR BUSINESS. The only reason they are doing business with you is so that you can provide a specific service to them. Once you fail in that regards you have not fulfilled your side of the bargain and there are many surveys that point to the fact that when someone has a bad Customer Service experience, they are likely to tell at least 10 other people about it. Think about it this way … not only could you potentially lose the business and money this one customer is paying you … you have now lost 10 others also! Word of mouth, unfortunately, is a lot more prevalent when spreading the bad news than it is about the good service you provide.
Now, what do you do if you had an issue (I’m assuming you’ve kept the customer informed throughout the process so that they are not too annoyed with you!) and have only just restored the customer’s service? Well, the first time it happens, you probably don’t need to do anything, aside from a brief apology! Hopefully, you’ve got an SLA in place and you’ve not exceeded the terms set out inside them. However in some cases, you might want to consider upgrading a customer to a better package or service – even if only for a limited time – you’d be surprised how often that works with customers and although the cost to you is not incidental … think about what the cost could potentially be if you had to find another customer!
Exceptional Customer Service matters because retaining existing customers are significantly easier than finding new ones. Customer Churn and Retention are two phrases you might hear bandied about quite a bit depending on the industry you are in and in some – Telecoms for example – there are huge teams and departments created to address just these issues. Their main and only goals are to keep the existing customers that they have with them instead of losing them to other competitors. In a very simple example think about it like this. If you are the industry leader and have 1 million customers and your nearest competitor has only ½ a million, you might think you were doing great. However if you are only growing at the rate of 10% per year (due to the negative press you’ve been receiving) and are churning at 25% per year to that competitor (who in the same timeframe is growing at 50% per year) … how long do you think you have at the top? Trust me it’s a lot shorter than you think!!
You want your customers to experience Exceptional Customer Service and instead of that 50% growth going to your competition you want it to flow towards your company. This mantra must be believed, understood and LIVED by your Customer Service Representatives and Support Teams. They need to understand that the reason they are getting a paycheque is that those customers are paying for it!
It might be trite and tired and a little bit old but the one phrase that is absolutely true is –

The CUSTOMER is ALWAYS RIGHT!!!!
Love it, believe it and spread it on!