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I remember doing a report on Cystic Fibrosis when I was in junior high. One of the clearest memories I have of this inherited, chronic disease - that affects the lungs and digestive system of about 30,000 children and adults in the United States (70,000 worldwide) - is an account I read of a child whose parents...

Tony Hsieh (pronounced Shay) is the CEO of Zappos.com, an online retailer of shoes and such that is well known for their excellent approach to customer service. If you have shopped at Zappos.com, you know what I mean. Tony has a book due out on June 7, 2010 and is already starting to get a lot of attention....

My last entry was about IVR blunders that made me want to scream. Well, since that blog, I’ve been screaming my head off. So I thought I would continue on with a Part Two of that blog to share my most recent frustrations with companies that use ridiculous IVR practices. Have you ever called a customer service line...

I feel like a broken record. I continuously preach about the importance of listening to the voice of our customers. Despite the ever increasing emphasis on this subject, we still see examples almost daily on companies that have failed to do so and are paying for it miserably. Enter the following news story....

People say the darnedest things, don't they? I'm sure every call center agent has a list a mile long of funny things they've heard on the job. I absolutely love hearing these stories, so we posted a query on Facebook and Twitter asking for people to submit the zingers they've heard. They were all so fabulous, I...

A moment of truth is the culmination of countless procedures, processes, and interactions within the business. In the ideal world, the caller (I'll use "caller" generically regardless of the mode of communication) will dial you up, instantly get to an agent who immediately provides the correct response. The ideal is an absolutely frictionless exchange between...

I recently read this article in the New York Times which highlights a couple of separate customer service examples. The first example is a customer service experience with a car rental company, and the second example is a customer service experience with PayPal. In both cases, a good deal of the article spends time describing...