Posts Tagged ‘customer service speaker’

Texas Customer Service Speaker Endorsement from Weaver Boos (Dean Lindsay is based in Dallas Texas)

“We invited Dean to provide the “kick-off” speech to a very important internal leadership summit that involved our Firm’s top 70 leaders. Both entertaining and informational, Dean’s keynote provided the jump start we needed to get the Summit off on the right foot! The issues that Dean focused on, service in a challenging environment and the message of “Be Progress” were echoed throughout the weekend, long after Dean wrapped up his speech on Thursday night. Thanks for providing a rockin’ start to our conference!!!” – Jeffrey P. Young, Principal, Weaver Boos Consultants

Watch Dean Lindsay – Texas Customer Service Speaker Video Clips

How can Texas Customer Service Speaker, Dean Lindsay,  Be Progress for you?

Dean is ready to discuss your program – shoot him an email at: Dean@DeanLindsay.com or give him a buzz at: 214-457-5656

MetroPCS Vice President’s Endorsement – Dean Lindsay on Customer Service

“We recently had the opportunity to have Dean come speak at a Global Service Meeting. We appreciated the fact that Dean took the time to talk us about the event and customize his presentation to focus his vast experience on our goals. The feedback from the attendees was OUTSTANDING! Dean was humorous, energetic, and very relatable – everyone walked out reenergized too!! We would highly recommend Dean for any event and plan to have him back soon.”

– Greg Pressly

Vice President of Customer Operations

MetroPCS

Watch Customer Serivice Video Clips from Speaker Dean Lindsay

Booking info for Dean Lindsay, Customer Service Speaker

Customer Service Training Tips on Serving Inside Out (part 2)

4.  Customer Service Training Tip on Serving Inside Out - Show Appreciation & Compliment

Sincere appreciation and compliments are great way to show you know Service is Everything. 

 We thank external customers, right? 

We know we should never take our external customers for granted, right? 

How about our internal customers?

 “A group becomes a team when each member is sure enough of himself and his contribution to praise the skills of the others.” — Norman Shidle

Sincere compliments cost us nothing yet can become priceless for both the giver and receiver.  As Mark Twain wrote, “I can live for two months on a good compliment.”  It takes some confidence to notice good things about others and to tell them about it. Smile, say thank you and mean it.  Giving team members a lift has the power of raising our confidence even further because when we start noticing good things about others, we often start noticing more good things about ourselves.  But be careful, compliments that are ill-timed or thought to be insincere are likely to have the opposite effect than intended.  Start by finding something, however small, to genuinely thank or praise others for.  The more specific the better because it shows the person we truly noticed them. 

“If people did not compliment one another there would be little society.” – Marquis De Vauvenargues

 5.  Customer Service Training Tip on Serving Inside Out - Don’t air dirty laundry.

Resolve internal conflicts so they don’t seep into the service.  Grumbling, complaining about co-workers and lack of cooperation will start to chip away at confidence in you and ECI.  If we don’t feel good about our team, our team won’t either. 

 6.  Customer Service Training Tip on Serving Inside Out - Spread the bounty

When a manager or someone on the team receives a thank you or Holiday gift from a customer or vendor, sharing it with the ECI team is a progress –heavy teambuilding move.

 7.  Customer Service Training Tip on Serving Inside Out - Cherish and Cultivate Constructive Communication

All should be in the loop as to developments within the company.  Team members must feel they are not only ON the team but important TO the team. 

“If you get everybody in the company involved in customer service, not only are they ‘feeling the customer’ but they’re also getting a feeling for what’s not working.” — Penny Handscomb

All team members must feel they are ‘being progress’ for the organization.  Just like with our external customers, internal customer feedback needs to be encouraged and their insight followed up on.  Work to make all communication ripe with respect, kindness and goodwill.

Service is Everything.

Be Progress.

Customer Service Training - Tips on Serving Inside Out (part 1)

Most of us know it is mission critical that every contact between internal customers and external customers be professional, positive and effective.  Unfortunately it is common to overlook the fact that it is also mission critical that every contact between two internal customers be professional, positive and effective.

The cool thing is that the tips and strategies about how to treat external customers apply to internal customers also.  Listen.  Care.  Smile.  Respect.  Bathe.  All rock solid tips when it comes to treating co-workers, employees, direct reports and others.

Consider for a moment the internal customers you serve.

How can we serve fellow team members better?  Will we?

Here are the first three of Seven Solid Tips for Serving Inside Out.

1.  Customer Service Training Tip on Serving Inside Out  – View co-workers as customers.

Helping fellow employees do their jobs more efficiently and effectively not only helps our organization, it helps us too!  It is important to learn to view team-focused interruptions as solid opportunities to help our organzations.  When our organizations progress, we progress.

Providing service that helps other team members rock ‘n roll is what it is all about.  Get jazzed about your role in sharing information and take pride in helping your colleagues.  As a bonus: when we are cool about helping co-workers get their jobs done, they will likely be cool about helping us. 

2.  Customer Service Training Tip on Serving Inside Out - Have Fun Together

Create an company sports team, or better yet you’re creative, come up with something unique that fits your organization’s unique vibe.  Sure some of your ideas might take some extra time and bit of money, but the company-wide results will far surpass the effort and added expense.  Even a monthly breakfast or lunch on the company dime is good for morale.  It would be a good move for the breakfast or lunch to cost the company more than a dime.  Super cheap is a buzz killer.

“It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.” – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

 3.  Customer Service Training Tip on Serving Inside Out – Surpass the expectations of your internal customers.

I don’t know about you but I get a kick when someone exceeds my expectations.  It makes me want to exceed theirs.  That old saying of ‘under-promising and over-delivering’ works with internal customers as well.

Next up 4 more customer service training tips for Serving Inside Out!

Service is Everything.

Be Progress.

“More than a motivational speaker, Dean Lindsay is The DEAN of Sales and Service! Energetic, Funny and Thought Provoking, Dean delivered an outstanding presentation to our elite group of business people. We look forward to inviting Dean back to our next business event!”
- Jeff Chernoff, President, Consumers’ Choice Award ®  

Booking Info on Customer Service Training with Dean Lindsay

Sales Speakers Endorsment (NEW) from DORMA

“Dean was asked to speak at our sales leadership conference to support our theme of “a new day for new thinking”.   Dean took the quality time up front to understand the deliverables we needed for our specific audience and he delivered as promised.  His style, material and overall delivery and facilitation hit the mark for our group. 

Many participants later commented about enjoying the 4 hour session but also benefiting from it by getting new ideas to bring back to their territories to go after additional sales.  I would certainly work with Dean again and recommend others to as well.”

 - Larry O’Toole, President,  DORMA Americas

“Progress in SERVICE leads to Progress in SALES.” - Dean Lindsay, Sales and Customer Service Speaker

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A Customer Service Speaker Training Ideas Post

Serving Inside Out (Part Two)

an excerpt from Customer Service Speaker, Dean Lindsay’s new book (being published in early 2012, SERVICE IS EVERYTHING)

Link to Part One

One of the surest ways to drastically reduce negative employee and external customer service issues is to create work environments that are upbeat, positive and collaborative.  It is well documented that team members that receive solid internal customer service are more likely to voluntarily offer assistance to other team members.

Our feelings about our internal customers are on display with every internal contact.  It shows in how we greet co-workers at the beginning of the day.  It shows in what we do when a superior asks for information needed to wrap up a project.  It shows in how quickly we respond to that sometimes kind of pushy team member who has another question.

How can we expect team members to care about and listen to customers when they are not offered that by other team members or management?

A pledge of internal service must be felt all through a company, from head to toe and back again.  Nordstrom’s, Disney and Southwest Airlines – all toting world class service buzz  – didn’t get that way without (most) everybody in that company being enthusiastically on board.  It is an ideology, an understanding that everybody serves and lifts up everybody else in the organization and that everyone within the organization has an affect – positive or negative – on the outside customer.  Everyone has each others back. 

“If you are not serving the customer, your job is to be serving someone who is.”  — Jan Carlson

Showing team members that ‘Service is Everything’ is essential to the external customer feeling you know ‘Service is Everything’.  In assisting others on your team, you are helping yourself progress.  Every contact a customer – internal or external – has with our organizations gives the customer insight into the ideology we hold dear. Make your ideology  ‘Service is Everything’.

 Show you know ‘Service is Everything.’

In the next couple of Customer Service Speaker Training Ideas Posts, I’ll share seven tips on Serving Inside Out.

Service is Everything.

Be Progress.

Watch Customer Service Speaker Dean Lindsay in ACTION!

Customer Service Speaker Article

Serving Inside Out (part One)

By Dean Lindsay (from his upcoming book, SERVICE IS EVERYTHING)

A company’s progress hinges on the progress of its people.  What many organizations often overlook in their search for ways to improve their level of external customer service is the importance of their internal customer service.  It is vital to know that ‘Service is Everything’ to Everyone.

“A customer is anyone who can influence a sale, or a suit, a vote, an appropriation, a budget…a job or a career.” — Warren Blanding

In the big picture, whoever is affected, positively or negatively, by the work we do is our customer.  Every person, in every role, at every level, in every organization has customers.  Every team member is a link in the customer-service chain.  To some degree, each individual is responsible for creating world-class customer service.  When a team member not dealing directly with customers drops the ball or is slow to respond to another team member’s organizational need they are weakening the external customer service.

 “Love all, Serve all.”  — Motto at Hard Rock Cafe

Internal customer service is the support we provide team members and the attitudes that go along with that support.  All the folks within an organization need to be treated like the vital components they are. 

“For an organization’s external customer service to be first rate, its internal customer service must be first rate first.” – Dean Lindsay, Customer Service Speaker (from his upcoming book, SERVICE IS EVERYTHING)

There is overwhelming evidence to the direct relationship between employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction.  External customer satisfaction rarely rises above internal customer satisfaction.  In other words, it is tough to get our external customer service better than our internal customer service.  If a company wants its employees to exceed customer expectations, a solid first step is for the company to create a work environment that exceeds the employees’ expectations.    

In many organizations it is common to find that employees and co-workers – internal customers – don’t treat each other nearly as well as they do the organization’s external customers.  This is un-FORTUNE-ate because internal customer service touches all aspect of a business including morale and productivity.  Companies that suffer in internal customer service usually face challenges with turnover and absenteeism as well as lower external customer satisfaction.

Be Progress.

More on SERVING INSIDE OUT in the next post!

CLick to Watch Dean Lindsay, Customer Service Speaker, in action.

Free Customer Service Article

The Upside of Customer Complaints

By Dean Lindsay - Author of The Progress Challenge

 “A customer who complains is my best friend.” — Stew Leonard

It’s interesting to consider that when someone chooses to become our customer, they WANT to be loyal.  They want us to rock their world.  They want the relationship to last.  They see us as Progress.  They don’t want to change.  They choose us. 

 So, why do they sometimes leave or choose to work with others? 

How do they decide that moving to some other supplier is Progress?

 The above question is tough to answer since research shows that, on average, 24 out of 25 customers will make their switch without telling the business of their dissatisfaction.  No news is NOT good news.  It is dangerous to think that customer silence is a good thing when it is overwhelmingly the quiet customers – clients, guests – who just leave.

 Consider:

What are some reasons you stopped doing business with a particular company? 

Did you tell the company about your dissatisfaction?  If so, how was it received?

Complaining is tough on everyone, including the complainer.  There is an element of risk to relaying dissatisfaction as a customer. We don’t want to come off as a complainer. 

Instead of coming out and sharing a concern, it is quite common as customers to let our concerns and dislikes build up to the point that we feel it would be easier to leave than attempt to fix all that’s wrong. 

Often customers choose not to complain when there is a problem because they – often rightly – feel that it won’t do any good to complain.  They don’t trust how the complaint will be received.  “No one is going to do anything about it anyway.”  Maybe, they think the company is too big to care or believe their concerns will fall on deaf, uncaring, possibly even rude ears. 

Ponder & Progress

If a customer shares a ‘complaint,’ what should they expect in return? 

As a customer, what would you expect?

 So again, why do customers leave?

 As the research suggests, most of the time we don’t know.  Only one 1 in 25 is willing to inform a business about their dissatisfaction and enlighten the business about possible needed modifications.

 And most often, how is  this 1 in 25 treated? 

How much attention and respect do their concerns get?

How are you treated as a customer when you ‘complain’? 

 We know customer complaints are to be minimized.  We also know that rarely are they totally eliminated.  We also know they are no fun to listen to.  In fact – and it may be embarrassing to admit – but sometimes we wish the complaining customer would just go away.  I did say “sometimes.”

 There is a powerful upside to customer complaints however.  Customer complaints are one of the most inexpensive, available, useful and yet ignored forms of customer market data.  Truly proactive and insightful companies see a customer ‘complaint’ as a proven way to gain valuable insight into possible needed improvements (not just as a demand to repair damage).

 “Mistakes are the portals of discovery.” 

– James Joyce

That complaining difficult customer that we sometimes wish would just go away is extremely valuable.  Often customers know our weaknesses better than we do because they feel the effects of our weaknesses. 

 Wouldn’t we rather have our customers tell us what they need instead of telling our competitor?

 We should be careful what we sometimes wish for:  That complaining customer will eventually go away — along with their business, their buzz, four to five positive referrals and their valuable insight into how to make our companies better.  View a complaint as an opportunity for improvement, an opportunity to progress.

“Your best teacher is your last mistake.”  -Ralph Nader

Ponder & Progress

What are some examples of how your organization has benefited from customer feedback?

 Be Progress.

Dean Lindsay is the author of The Progress Challenge: Working and Winning in a World of Change.  You can get more info on Dean and sign up for his free monthly newsletter at: www.DeanLindsay.com. (You are welcome to repost this article as long as links and this brief bio are included.  Thank you.)

Free Customer Service Article – The Upside of Customer Complaints

10 CUSTOMER Loyalty Tips from Dean Lindsay, Customer Loyalty Speaker

For Video clips of Dean Lindsay in action click here.

The Little Mind That Could (an excerpt from The Progress Challenge by Dean Lindsay)

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I was listening to my elder daughter, Sofia, reading Wally Piper’s classic The Little Engine That Could to her younger sister, Ella, one night and it occurred to me what a powerful little story it is.  In his book, Mr. Piper shares the story of a little red engine pulling a train “filled full of good things for boys and girls” on the other side of a mountain. 

When the little red engine breaks down, a toy clown hops off the little train and starts asking larger passing trains if they will help. 

The first two trains refuse to help because they feel they are too big and important to pull toys and goodies. 

A rusty third train relates that he is too old and tired to help, and chugs away saying, “I can not.  I can not.  I can not.”

Finally, a little blue engine passes by and stops immediately when she sees the clown waving.  The little engine’s first words are, “What is the matter, my friends?”  

The clown relays the challenge, and the little blue engine explains that she has never been over the mountain.  She then sees the tears in the dolls’ eyes and thinks of the good little girls and boys who will not have any toys to play with or good food to eat unless she helps.  She looks at the mountain and says, “I think I can. I think I can. I think I can.” 

The little blue engine hitches herself to the little train and starts tugging and pulling and pulling and tugging.  Slowly, the train moves forward. 

“Puff, puff, chug, chug, went the Little Blue Engine.  ‘I think I can.  I think I can.  I think I can.  I think I can. I think I can.  I think I can.  I think I can.  I think I can. I think I can.’”   – from The Little Engine That Could by Wally Piper 

Up they go, ever so slowly to the top of the mountain.  When they reach the top, the toys cheer.  After coming down the mountain and unhitching the train, the little blue engine chugs away, saying happily, “I thought I could.  I thought I could.  I thought I could.” 

The conviction that we have the power to progress is a major key to progressing.  Remember, our brains want to be right.  Whatever the mind believes, it will work to make true.

But, the little blue engine didn’t say, “I think I can,” only one time.  She said it over and over and over and over.  Repetition, repetition, repetition. 

 What do you think that little blue engine will say next time she is asked to pull a train over a mountain?

Will she say, “I think I can”?

 I think not.  She will say, “Yes, I can.”

Also, the little blue engine did not say, “I think I can,” and then glide away.  She said it and immediately hitched herself to the little train and started tugging and pulling and pulling and tugging.  To progress in this world of change, there must be ACTION. No dallying!

The little blue engine had to tug and pull to reach her goal.

Will some of the progressive action steps that you and your company need to take to climb that mountain and reach your crafted goals be painful?  Yes.  Again, consider: 

What is more painful to you, discipline or regret?

Finally, the little blue engine had strong reasons.  She saw the tears in the dolls’ eyes and considered the little children, who would not have any toys or good food to eat unless she helped.  She would feel pain if she didn’t help, and would gain pleasure, prestige, and power if she did.

Develop strong reasons for taking strong action.  Remind yourself often of the personal benefits that reaching your and your company’s goals will have for your life.  Help others develop strong reasons, so they too choose to take strong actions. 

Define your Parameters for Progress.

Commit to well-crafted, progress-based goals.

Stop Changing and Start Progressing.

Uncover others’ Parameters for Progress.

Earn and Maintain Customer Loyalty.

Be a BAM and Believe you can help others progress.

Stop, BOP, and Roll.

Focus on Being Progress – not being perfect.

Believe in yourself.  Chug.  Chug.  Puff.  Puff.

 Progress is a step forward.  Take today’s step.  To change is human; to progress, divine.  

 Meet The Progress Challenge

Be Progress.

(an excerpt from The Progress Challenge by Dean Lindsay)