Archive for Customer Service
Recommended Reading on the Health Care Crisis
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The current health care debate that is being engaged in across the country is so important because it impacts every person and every business in important ways. While I am generally conservative in my political leanings (with libertarian smatterings – and even an occasional liberal thought), I won’t be using this blog to further any political purposes, other than to support free enterprise.
Nevertheless, I thought I would share one of the most intelligently written and carefully thought-out pieces that I have read on the state of health care in the United States. Everybody seems to agree that the system is broken, but there are disagreements about “what” is actually broken, and how to fix it. The article, How American Health Care Killed My Father, written by David Goldhill and published in the September issue of The Atlantic, makes a powerful statement about the real problems in our nations health care system, and proposes a unique solution that nobody in Washington D.C. is discussing.
No matter what position you find yourself taking in the current political debate, Goldhill will assuredly challenge your assumptions and make you re-think your position. I know it had that impact on me.
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Protecting Your Credit in Economic Decline The "credit crisis" has become ubiquitous. It is being blamed for everything from home foreclosures to a plummeting stock market. Many individuals and most businesses are feeling the pinch from the credit markets today. Which is precisely why it is so important to carefully manage and protect your personal and...... -
Employees underestimate employer medical insurance costs According to a report issued by CCH, very few employees realize the magnitude of the expense incurred by employers who pay medical insurance benefits, even though it is generally a well-publicized fact that medical insurance costs are skyrocketing. A 2004 study by MetLife on Employee Benefits Trends showed that 28%......
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The Five Factors of Customer Loyalty
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One of the important trends in the realm of customer relations has been the transition away from focusing on Customer Satisfaction, and instead focusing on Customer Loyalty. As a performance standard, “customer satisfaction” is a rather low bar. We should have higher goals in business than to just meet our customers expectations. Increasingly, businesses that do no more than satisfy their customers are losing their customers’ loyalty to companies that exceed expectations.
Fred Reichheld wrote a terrific book called The Ultimate Question, that introduced the concept of a “Net Promoter Score” or NPS, which measures Customer Loyalty by asking questions based on the idea of how likely customers are to refer a company to their friends. It is an important idea that can revolutionize how a business looks at its customer, and I recommend it highly.
When you break down the components of customer loyalty, there are five factors that influence and determine its strength:
- Price. Customers are more price sensitive now than they have ever been. In the new, post-recession economy, I think that price will continue to be a primary driving factor that will determine how loyal our clients and customers are to our business.
- Product. There is no substitute for delivering a quality product. With so many options in the marketplace, if your product or service doesn’t live up expectations, or is less than perfect, customers won’t come back. I know that for me, one bad meal in a restaurant is all it takes for me to not return.
- Delivery. The experience of receiving a product or service encompasses the entire corporate promise to the customer. It includes every aspect of what the customer sees, feels, touches, and experiences.
- Service. Customer’s expectations about service are continually increasing. To some degree, we’ve become spoiled by immediacy of information that technology provides. When we have questions or problems, we expect to be able to get answers and solutions now – and in the format we want it.
- Recognition. We all want to be recognized – for who we are, for what we do. We love it when people know and remember our names. We all like to feel important to someone. A key factor in building customer loyalty is in finding a way to provide that recognition, and provide it consistently.
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Tip-toeing Past Fear Our internal fight-or-flight response is designed for our protection in times of danger. When our brain senses fear, it suppresses our creativity and shuts down access to the thinking part of our brain - the cortex. Scientists tell us that our fear response is controlled by a small, almond-shaped...... -
Your Business Checkbook Doesn't Tell You Everything It can be a real challenge for a new entrepreneur who doesn't regularly balance his or her personal checkbook to adjust to the demands of business accounting. Business accounting is a critical discipline that the business owner either must learn and adopt - or must outsource to someone else. No......
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