Posts tagged as:

customer service

Using 5 Whys to Write Customer Support Help Pages

by Pete Abilla June 28, 2010

Customer Support Help Pages is a self-service method for the customer to resolve his or her own concern without having to chat with a customer service agent, call customer service, or email customer support. Sometimes, self-help methods are not very helpful. But, one way to make them more helpful than they are is to apply [...]

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Sears Customer Service, Hall of Shame

by Pete Abilla May 28, 2010
This entry is part 5 of 4 in the series sears customer service

My experience with Sears Customer Service and Sears Repair Center can be found here: Sears Customer Service, Part 1 Sears Customer Service, Part 2 Sears Customer Service, Part 3 Today’s post is a compilation of Sears Customer Service stories, to show that my experience is not an isolated one, but just the tip of the [...]

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Stand in a Circle, 5 Whys, and a Call Center

by Pete Abilla May 11, 2010

Sometime ago while consulting for a huge call center, I took a group of customer service agents for a little Gemba walk and a quick activity to demonstrate a few Lean fundamentals. What was scheduled for a 60 minute exercise turned out to be an experience that awakened the agents, several of whom went on [...]

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Just Dial “0″ (“Zero”)

by Pete Abilla February 3, 2010

On the way to work this morning, a commercial on National Public Radio (NPR) caught my attention.  It was a commercial for Ally Bank and one phrase piqued my interest (I’m paraphrasing): To open an account, call xxx-xxx-xxxx and to talk to a real person, push “0″ anytime. In the radio commercial, they emphasized “real [...]

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Goodbye Customer: Loyalty, Costs, Complexity, and Recovery

by Pete Abilla August 22, 2009

Goodbye Customer. That is sometimes what we say, without knowing the full costs and burden that proposition means on the business.  Ironically, businesses are often unaware that their actions are pushing the customer away while at the same time trying to recover and retain them through expensive customer retention programs.  Metaphorically, this is like pushing [...]

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Amazon and Zappos Sitting in a Tree

by Pete Abilla July 22, 2009

As most you know by now, Zappos has entered into a definitive agreement with Amazon.com and will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Amazon.  This is exciting and, after speaking with my friends both at Amazon and at Zappos, they are all quite excited too.  Congratulations to Amazon, Zappos, Tony Hsieh, and Jeff Bezos 1  [...]

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Customer Service – A Chance for Redemption

by Pete Abilla March 24, 2009

In a very tough economy, keeping customers happy should have more considerable weight and attention from companies.  I had a negative customer experience recently at Home Depot, where they had a chance to redeem themselves from a very poor customer experience. On March 18, 2009, I went to Home Depot to buy some tools to [...]

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Customer Service and the iPhone

by Pete Abilla March 13, 2009

related update: Jeff Bezos on Root Cause Analysis In some organizations, the Customer Service function is largely viewed as a cost center, draining resources of the firm.  I maintain that this viewpoint is largely false and is one that less mature companies support.  I believe that Customer Service is an accurate litmus test of the [...]

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Customer Service Contacts are Symptoms, not Root Causes: How to Apply the 5 Whys

by Pete Abilla October 8, 2008

Most organizations believe that Customer Service contacts are what needs to be fixed or eliminated.  On the surface, that might be true.  But, when approached as a Lean Thinker, Customer Service contacts are truly only symptoms, the root causes of which are not yet fully known.  In what follows, I’ll explain the role of Customer [...]

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