Customer service

A source of customer complaints became a source of revenue.

The notion of going above and beyond customer needs is so entrenched in organizations that managers rarely question it. But delighting your customers...

Citibank overhauled its service areas with a minicomputer and processing models copied from the manufacturing industry. However, this system was insufficient...

Touchpoints matter, but it’s the full journey that really counts.

Buyers expect the same level of service and flexibility as when they shop in their personal lives.

A framework to help policymakers, insurers, and providers consider how telehealth fits into their future.

The bigger the employee’s smile, the happier the customer. That’s the conclusion of new research from Bowling Green State and Penn State universities. With the help of trained observers, Patricia Barger and Alicia Grandey followed 173 encounters between customers and employees in coffee shops, scoring the employees’ “smile strength” on a scale from “absent” to […]

It improves quality of care.

Greg Smith’s resignation op-ed from Goldman Sachs Wednesday raised a zillion questions. What was the back-story? What was with the ping pong? And what’s wrong with being a muppet? But the biggest question would have to be: What happened to Goldman Sachs? Smith wrote that the culture at Goldman had shifted during his 12 years […]

Instead of forcing customers to do all the work, the most successful e-commerce sites are taking over many aspects of the shopping process.

Patients want to talk about their treatment in different ways.

Consultant Frank Rohde describes a system for evaluating frontline workers' interactions with customers.

While management skills can improve service systems, a manager is better off if he or she first has a clear understanding of the operating characteristics that set one service system apart from another. This author offers one view of services, which, if followed, results in a “rational approach to the rationalization” of services. His view, […]

Back in 1998, Marks & Spencer (M&S) was the first British retailer to reach a profit of 1 billion pounds. Just a few years later, profits were down to...

The best stay attuned to their customers’ signals in the social graph.

This post is part of Creating a Customer-Centered Organization. How well do you know your customers? We’re guessing not as well as you would like to … and not as well as you’ll need to in the future. Understanding customers has never been more important as empowered, fickle consumers take less notice of your marketing […]

Companies like Microsoft and Intuit have started bringing sales and marketing teams together to craft a coordinated customer journey.

Key questions investors will ask.

Three ways to prepare your staff and workplace.

Used correctly, time-based competition can erode the boundary between the external and internal environment. Used incorrectly, it can lead to the heart of darkness.