Crack The Customer Code

Adam shares some of the best ways you and your employees can stand up for yourselves when customers cross the line into unacceptable behavior. Customers’ needs come first, until they cross the line... Customers may say some unpleasant things when they’re not happy, but what happens when they cross the line? Whether their behavior makes employees fearful or just extremely uncomfortable, it’s never OK to let customers get away with it. Are your frontline teams prepared? You need happy employees who consistently deliver excellent customer service, and part of that is knowing you have their backs when they’re in peril. Whether it’s a customer who is getting too friendly, grossly inappropriate, or downright abusive, Adam has some tips you can use today (but hopefully you won’t have to!) Don't be caught off guard when customers cross the line into different kinds of harmful behavior. Listen in! Related Content 360Connext® post, What’s Your Culture Code? Customers That Stick® post, 5 Ways to Handle Unreasonabl

Adam and Jeannie share helpful tips for quickly turning cold calls into opportunities to spark meaningful relationships. Cold calls: Must they be so cold!? Sometimes making cold calls is still necessary. The idea is usually to start a new relationship, but it can be difficult to start anything this way! It doesn’t have to be so hard, and your reps don’t have to strike out so often. A slightly better understanding of the customer journey can make an amazing difference. If you take just a moment before each call, there are a few things you can do to get it started right. Just remember these pointers from Adam and Jeannie to warm things up right away while helping prepare for more personalized experiences later. Your reps will be happier right from the start, and so will your customers! Related Content 360Connext® post, You called Me. Please Don't Ruin My Day. Customers That Stick® post, Sales, Customer Service or Operations: Which Is Most Important? Episode  Casey Carpenter, Sales Breakthrough Coach Ep

We've learned some startling facts about how online reviews affect the decisions your customers make, so we're sharing tips on how to take action today. Your customer journey includes online reviews Adam and Jeannie have been researching online reviews, and they’ve found some interesting facts they can’t wait to share. 2016 was a big year for online reviews, but 2017 will be bigger. Are you ready? Studies show we rely more on customer reviews to find what we need than ever, and this is especially true for local businesses. It behooves leaders to understand how this trend affects the decision-making process of their own customers, yet many still don't. We’re here to help!   Are you paying attention to what customers are saying? More importantly, do you know how to interpret and interact with them? There will always be trolls and bad apples, but knowing the impact of even the positive reviews is not always as simple as you might think. Your customers are writing reviews, and they'll continue with or without

Jeannie shares a few simple ways advocating for customers can greatly improve overall experience and what any organization can do to get started. “Who’s advocating for customers in your organization?” No matter how buried you are in day-to-day processes, or how scarce your resources are for customer experience, this is the one question you should be able to answer. Who in your company is speaking with decision-makers on behalf of the customer? Integrating customer advocacy into your business means great things for your culture, satisfaction scores, and overall customer experience. What’s more, it doesn’t require a costly, labor-intensive initiative you just can’t pull off right now. Jeannie hears a lot from bootstrapped leaders looking for the number one thing they must do to improve customer experience. She has helped them find simple but powerful ways to advocate for customers in their organizations, and she’s sharing some of her best tips today! Learn to sprinkle some customer advocacy into the way you

Adam and Jeannie discuss tips for dealing with outrageous customer demands the right way. I’m sorry, you want what? When!? People are sometimes just irrational… Or, are they? Sooner or later, you’ll eventually be faced with outrageous customer demands. Emotions can run on overdrive in these situations, so it's important to keep yours in check while staying sensitive to your customer's! How do you handle these situations without losing your cool, or without losing a customer? If you haven’t already, soon you will have a situation where it seems impossible to deliver what a customer is asking for. Are they out of line, or just having trouble expressing their needs and concerns? Before you decide there’s nothing you can do to make them happy, first consider these tips from Adam and Jeannie. These three steps can help you keep things in perspective for yourself and your customer. Listen in! Related Content 360Connext® post, Confronting Your Customer Engagement Challenges Customers That Stick® post, 5 Ways to

Bestselling author John DiJulius shares what it takes to join the Customer Service Revolution and differentiate your brand with world-class service. Will you survive the Customer Service Revolution? In today’s connected world, the traditional ways of serving customers are no longer serving anyone. We’re in the middle of a Customer Service Revolution, and today’s guest, John DiJulius, is here to help us understand what that means and rock it. John has worked with leading revolutionary customer service disruptors. What do they have in common, and what does it take to be among them? As John explains, “It’s a radical overthrow of conventional business mentality designed to transform what employees and customers experience…” It’s not just about hiring nice people! You need to bring a meaningful purpose to all customer service interactions with a Customer Service Vision. John shares some of the best ways to do this and some great examples of companies that get it right. Making it through the Customer Service

Adam shares tips for using automated customer service while keeping in tune with customers and preventing disasters. Preventing automated customer service disasters Automated customer service can help to create a smoother, more convenient process for customers while freeing up company resources. Ideally, it’s a win/win situation. But sometimes technology creates terrible experiences for customers, even while we think everything’s working well. Does your strong service culture work when #custserv technology doesn't?  Whether they take us by surprise or silently add more friction to the experience, technology failures will happen. But must they also be customer service failures? Sometimes it's not the tech itself that fails in the end, but the processes we create around it. How well you know what’s happening and prepare for what may happen on the other end of those circuits makes all the difference. You can prevent disasters and deliver great service no matter what’s happening with your technology. Listen t

Adam and Jeannie share tips for creating employee incentives that don't break the bank.  No budget for employee incentives? You have great employees who need to feel rewarded, but don’t necessarily have a budget for bonuses and pay increases. If you don't do something, engagement and morale could start slipping any time. We have good news for you: Your hands are not tied! What motivates a rock star employee, anyway? Though bonuses and raises certainly do help, it’s not just about the money! There are plenty of ways to make employees feel recognized and appreciated.  Join us today as Adam and Jeannie discuss non-financial employee incentives and share tips for keeping your staff highly engaged with little or no budget for extras. Related Content 360Connext® post, What’s Your Culture Code? Customers That Stick® post, 6 Can’t Miss Ways to Reinvigorate Your Customer Service Team Episode 157: Employee Incentives and Unintended Consequences Episode 039: Does Employee Empowerment Work? Sponsor message:

Adam and Jeannie share tips for calculating the ROI of customer experience improvement in your organization. Show us the numbers! Convincing executives to invest in customer experience improvement can be tricky, and you may need some convincing yourself. Is it really worth it? How can you predict the ROI of customer experience for your organization? Today we have tips to not only help you calculate the ROI of investing, but also calculate the loss of not investing. You can use the data you already have to get the answers executives are looking for. Need simple but reliable resources for calculating the ROI of customer experience, plus some examples to prove how they work in real life? Adam and Jeannie are bringing these to you today, plus a bonus tip and some compelling statistics. Listen in! Related Content 360Connext® post, Customer Experience ROI: Why Not Investing can Sabotage Your Success Customers That Stick® post, The Greatest Customer Service Statistic in the World Episode 149: Customer Service

Jeannie shares expert hiring tips to avoid costly mistakes and bring in a truly customer-centric employee who is a great addition to your team. What makes a customer-centric employee? Picking a candidate with the right skillset is important. However, if you want to deliver outstanding experiences, it’s not everything. Most skills revolve around a set of tasks rather than people. So if you’re not careful to hire customer-centric employees, watch out! Because the most “qualified” individual on your team may actually be a detriment to your customer experience. It's not just a customer service thing! Employees who don't interact directly with customers can prioritize their own processes over the very people those processes are built to serve. Some even come out looking like rock stars for being so on top of those processes. Meanwhile, customers suffer! So how do you avoid making this mistake? How do you balance skillset with gut to bring truly customer-centric employees into your team? Today, Jeannie has some

Adam and Jeannie are Champions from the customer-centric school of Hard Knocks, and they’re sharing a few things that are missing from the typical curriculum at business schools. What’s missing from business schools? Business schools traditionally do not teach us how to become customer-centric in the real world, so many of today’s business leaders like Adam and Jeannie have had to combine business training, years of real-life experience, and their own tireless research to learn this the hard way. If you’re joining us today, you know your customer service and overall customer experience can have a huge impact on business outcomes. Can you honestly say business school has taught you everything you need to know? It seems most of us could stand to learn more about understanding customers and creating lasting connections. Today we’re naming a few subjects we’d add to the curriculum to help the next generation of leaders succeed in the age of the customer. Did you learn any of these in business school? You may w

Today we discuss the business impact of augmented reality now and in the future with technology titan and "The Fourth Transformation" co-author Robert Scoble. Augmented Reality: Coming to a business near you “It’s clear that the world is going toward augmented reality (AR) or mixed reality,” says technology titan Robert Scoble. This means lots of challenges and opportunities for business as AR and artificial intelligence become a part of our daily lives. In this interview, Robert shares defining highlights from the three past tech transformations, and how they have impacted business and daily life. He says recent developments in AR have marked the beginning of “The Fourth Transformation.”  What does this mean for business, and how can we be a part of it? Should we be? Through each transformation, some of the biggest companies have disappeared as innovative mavericks have taken their place. Staying educated and thinking ahead to your customers’ needs are the keys to surviving this transformation! Join us a

Adam shares best practices for resolving customer service issues and a simple time-tested process you can share with your front-line associates. Rocking your worst customer service issues Many customer-facing employees benefit greatly when there's a shortcut to remember how to handle the trickier customer service issues with finesse. If you’re listening today, your employees and customers are in luck! You're about to learn a special process from Adam's book, Be Your Customer’s Hero, called the CATER process. If you’re thinking CATER is an acronym for something, you are right, but you’ll never guess what these letters stand for. One of them is something we’re typically told NOT to do!  We argue it makes a huge difference when it’s done right. Want to make handling unhappy customers less stressful while ensuring better outcomes? Find out what the CATER process is all about! Related Content 360Connext® post, 5 Ways to Rock your Worst Case Customer Experience Scenario Customers That Stick® post, 5 Ways to H

Adam and Jeannie share a few valuable tips about personalizing the customer experience. Taking the experience personally With so many great ways to access and leverage customer data, companies are getting creative about personalizing the customer experience. But do customers really want to be where everyone (and every thing) knows their name? Some companies personalize as many parts of the experience as they can, but that’s not always a good thing. Be careful! Personalizing for personalization’s sake can harm some experiences. So what should you know? Are you personalizing too much? Too little? Perhaps you need to take a different approach. In this episode, Adam and Jeannie share a few quick but vital personalization tips everyone should know. Related Content 360Connext® post, 5 Mobile Personalization Tweaks to Keep Customers On Track Customers That Stick® post, The Greatest Customer Service Statistic in the World Episode 019: Writing for Machines, Andy Crestodina, and Personalized Robots Sponsor

Are you ready for 2017? Adam and Jeannie share some announcements about what’s coming to Crack the Customer Code this year. Announcing exciting changes for the new year! We’ve had a long holiday season, but we’re back! And to kick off the new year, we’re announcing some changes to our podcast. Don’t worry - we’re still the same podcast you know and love… but better! We’ve been listening to our fans, and we’ve decided to bring you more of what you like and some new things you've been asking for. Adam and Jeannie have been working hard to bring you an exciting lineup of guests, expert tips and more. What else is changing this year? We couldn’t wait to tell you about it, and we recorded a special episode to fill you in. Listen in! Related Content Customers That Stick® post, 3 Areas to Focus your Customer Experience in 2017 360Connext® post, 3 Powerful No-Sweat Customer Experience Quick Fixes Episode 100: Customer Service 100 Years Ago Sponsor message: Give your team the customer service training they d

Adam and Jeannie discuss exciting new changes to make your favorite customer-focused business podcast even better in 2017. What’s happening next for Crack the Customer Code? We’ve had an exciting year on the podcast, and we’re so thankful you’ve been listening to us twice per week. Thank you! As we head into 2017, it’s time for us to look back on the last 169 episodes to see what has worked well and maybe a few things that didn’t. You may see changes in our format, frequency, website, and images. Most importantly, we want to know what works best for you! Let’s start the new year with more of what you love about our podcast, less of what you might not love as much, and an overall better experience for all our listeners. What do you find the most valuable in a customer-focused business podcast? What changes would you like to see in 2017? Listen in and let us know! We'd love your feedback and ideas! Email us: thecustomercode@gmail.com Call us: (470) 223-CODE Tweet to Adam: @adamtoporek Tweet to Jeannie:

Today we discuss how the results from the recent US Election Day betrayed the projections made from massive amounts of data. Every day is Election Day in business In the months leading up to the recent US election, tens of millions of dollars were spent analyzing the data to predict the outcome… and we all got it wrong! The data did not reflect the emotional state of the electorate, leading to false predictions. We see this happening a lot in business. Data often fails to show the emotional state of our customers. And when we look at data in simple “A vs. B” terms, we underestimate the power of entire groups where data was either not collected or not considered significant enough to make a difference.   Much like voters, customer sentiment can change very quickly. What customers say today is not always indicative of how they will feel tomorrow, or how they will act on these emotions. And many business leaders fall into the trap of thinking they have an advantage where sentiment appears neutral. What else

Today we explore ways to create outstanding service center engagement with renowned speaker and HDI certified Support Center Manager Nate Brown. Redefining service center engagement Call center processes are ever-complicating. And customer expectations are getting higher while their patience gets shorter. How can you create a service experience that works better for customers? Nate Brown explains the difference between a “call center,” where the experience is based on processes, and a “service center,” where the experience is created around a customer-focused culture. “It’s really about putting technology in the right place.” –Nate Brown Properly engaging your team is a huge part of this. A team that is customer-focused, happy working together and communicates effectively can make all the difference. This can mean a huge shift in mindset and execution! Today we explore some of the ways you can go about facilitating these changes. “There is nobody in the organization that is closer to the customer, and

Today we explore proactive ways to tell when you’re losing a customer. Can you recognize the warning signs? Losing a customer: It doesn’t have to be this way! You’re lucky if customers explain why they’ve left you. That feedback can save future customers from jumping ship! But while you read this, there’s a good chance you’re in the process of losing a customer. Now is your chance to throw out a lifeline and keep them on board. Retaining individual customers can be very tricky, especially when they’re not directly sending you distress signals. And in many cases, processes and technology designed to help manage customer relationships actually hide critical warning signs. So how can you get ahead of this? Those warning signs may be subtle, but if you know how to look for them, it can be painfully obvious when the relationship is in peril. In this episode, Adam and Jeannie share real-life examples and different ways customer relationships could have been saved, had the right proactive measures been taken. D

Adam and Jeannie discuss the challenges and benefits of instilling customer-centric thinking in service technicians with Justin Deese, CEO of The Blue Collar Business Group. About our guest CEO Justin Deese is a highly sought-after business strategist, visionary, and self-made entrepreneur. He simultaneously built three flourishing in-home service companies in multiple states, is a certified E-Myth Business Coach, and is an expert at helping fellow business owners structure and manage their companies for maximum profitability. Justin has extensive working knowledge regarding all aspects of operating a successful in-home service business, including (but not limited to) sales and marketing, recruitment, systematization, and human resources. He has helped numerous business owners revitalize their companies and become true business owners, not just operators. Justin has a distinct talent for helping entrepreneurs recognize growth opportunities, remove what’s hindering their success, and develop customized strat