Customer Service

Building Happy, Loyal Customers By Closing Open Loops

Building Happy, Loyal Customers By Closing Open Loops

At 35,000 feet, it’s unnerving when your 737 spins sideways like a fighter jet dodging a missile. On a routine flight, you don’t want to feel your commercial airliner shudder, violently, as if the pilot drove you through a field of boulders in a convertible.

But that’s what happened to me on a recent flight, halfway between Washington Dulles and San Diego.

Conquering The World – Chatbots Gone Wild (Infographic)

In the early ‘90s, when personal computers could only beep and boop, you had to buy a sound card to hear realistic sound effects or music. By all measures, Creative Labs, Inc. was the undisputed king of PC sound cards, selling their Soundblaster hardware to video game enthusiasts across the country. 

Soundblaster touted 16-bit audio (later 32-bit) and multiple channels of sound as their “drool-factor.” But when I first picked up a sound card from the shelves of Circuit City (remember that store?), I was interested in it’s hidden secret: Dr. Sbaitso.  

Dr. Sbaitso may not have been the first chatbot ever created, but he was the first chatbot with whom I ever spoke. Hearing his canned digital voice tickled my geek feathers. But it wasn’t all kittens and unicorns. Dr. Sbaitso had an unrecoverable problem... 

He was quite possibly the worlds worst chatbot posing as an even worse clinical psychologist. 

Dr. Sbaitso... you were cool, but not very helpful.

Dr. Sbaitso... you were cool, but not very helpful.

More recently, chatbot have entered into consumers lives and minds with force. And for good reason. In an age where instantaneous communication is valued over human interaction, getting the answers you need from a chatbot makes good business sense. 

Given my historical interactions with Dr. Sbaitso (and equally dissapointing interactions with Amazon Alexa’s chat service), I doubted chatbots would have a positive influence on business owners. Then I came across this comprehensive infographic...

Check it out and let me know in the comments below if and how you think chatbots can help your business succeed in 2018 and beyond! 

(Posted with permission from Josh Wardini, 16Best.com 

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The One Thing Business Owners Should Be Doing Every Day

The One Thing Business Owners Should Be Doing Every Day

With my body aching from head to toe and hands covered in fresh blisters, the thing that hurt the most was my pride.

I tried to hide the pain from my two sons. But they could see right through my stiff posture and a fake smile.

Anybody could have. 

When you run out of strength and have to ask for help, it hurts. 

When you hear people laughing at you, it hurts more. 

When you realize that you were rowing a boat with the anchor dropped while dragging 75 pounds of seaweed through the mud, you feel like a complete and total dunce.

3 Hours Earlier…

How to Grow Your Business with Strategic Customer Retention

How to Grow Your Business with Strategic Customer Retention

The rising power of consumers is perhaps the biggest game-changer in the world of modern business.

People are well-informed, less tolerant of shabby service, and more specific in their demands. Digital technologies have empowered them and transformed the way businesses perceive and deal with them. Nowadays, attracting customers is just one part of the success equation.

The real work starts once you need to keep their attention and win their trust. ..

Dealing with Difficult Customers and Providing Great Customer Service

Dealing with Difficult Customers and Providing Great Customer Service

If you're reading this, you may have dealt with angry and difficult customers too. Maybe you’re dealing with one right now?

These customers seem to suck all your time, energy, and happiness right out of your business. They complain, make demands, and force you to spend an inordinate amount of time fixing their problems so nasty word doesn't spread about your customer service.

It's a firefight. And since you’re the business owner, someone handed you the hose.

Say the wrong thing, and it just adds fuel to the fire. Let it burn too long, and it spreads.

So how do you keep it from spreading? More importantly, how do you keep the next one from starting so you can focus on building a business instead of controlling damage?

That's what we're going to look at today. And it all starts with creating a customer focused organization, from the top down...