Customer Service Train Wrecks

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I had taken a client out to a Mexican restaurant in Woodland Hills yesterday. Normally I like the food and service in this place and everything started out fine, but it went downhill from there within an hour.

It was after the lunch rush and the buffet had been closed. We were sitting in the back and as our meal wore on, the waitress appeared less and less. Now mind you, we were a party of four. We had all ordered full meals and drinks (no alcohol). There was even a lady in a wheelchair with us. You would think someone would be more attentive to us than they were just because of her, but no.

When the waitress didn’t show up for 15 minutes and our disabled friend grew tired, we knew we had to get the bill and leave. With the waitress nowhere in sight, I turned around to scan the place and found that two booths down were SIX waiters and waitresses taking a break. They were all either in the booth or clustered around it, chatting and laughing. I stared a minute or two, hoping one would catch me staring, be embarrassed and come over, but no.

I finally decided to pull out the BIG GUNS. Warning my party of what I was about to do, I turned my chair around and sat there, staring at these employees.  Want to take a guess as to how long it took them to finally look over? FIFTEEN MINUTES! Then, what did they do after they caught my eye? They took another FIVE MINUTES to send someone to get our waiter!

What went wrong here? Why will we NEVER return? Let’s review –

1. Our waitress should have come around at regular intervals instead of less and less as our visit wore on. We were a party of four, dropping over $60.00 in food and drinks. You would think she might consider we would leave a nice tip for her if we liked the service.

2. The waitress should have been extra attentive to our party considering we had a disabled person with us.

3. The off-duty employees should have been in a back room during their break time, unseen by patrons of the restaurant.

4. They SHOULD NOT have ignored us under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES! If they are on the floor, even if they are on their way TO THE BATHROOM or BREAK, their job is to at least let someone else on shift know if a customer brings a request to their attention!

Grade? Sorry, El Torito, but you get a BIG FAT F!

Have your own customer service horror story? Add it here in the comments. C’mon, give us your worst!

The Top 5 Ways to Create Customer Loyalty in Business

Posted on by Posted in Networking & Sales Common Sense Leave a comment

(Taken from “100+ Ways to Create Customer Loyalty in Business“)

1. Promptly Return Calls

When a customer or potential customer takes the time to contact your business via phone or email, a prompt response (at least within 24 hours if not sooner) immediately creates trust and loyalty. Even if the response is brief and notes that you are unable to respond in full until later, the customer will appreciate knowing that you have received their message and intend to give it attention.

2. Hit a Home Run

Too many people miss opportunities to hit home runs. After doing business with someone, following up every now and then with an actual thank you card and a box of chocolates in the mail is a massive home run. We’re in the game of trust points and emotional impacts. Loyalty is bred from home run human connections. It’s no secret that the humanization of business is happening right now. Anything human wins. Real, solid, meaningful heart to heart stuff will always be king.

3. Relationships Matter

Relationships are important in business and are one of the best forms to create customer loyalty. Non-promotional contact is helpful in remembering/recognizing clients. We send fun mail outs- hand written cards with a coffee card to “take a break on us”, a book they might enjoy, or a hand written note keeping in touch. We offer a complimentary follow up program to help clients maintain success after our training event. Building a relationship is the first step; maintaining it helps create loyalty.

4. There is No YOU in Customer

Understand that what you sell or provide is not what is important to your Prospect or Customer/Client. What IS important to them is what you can do for them. What problem can you solve? What need can you meet? What pain can you alleviate? What cost can you reduce? This is advice I give small business owners in all my workshops and both my books and they thank me later for changing their viewpoint.

5. Speak Their Language

When you dig deeper into who your clients are, you’ll get vital insights into their unique language. This is huge. Certain words make your clients light up and others fall flat. Talk to leaders about order, strategies, and productivity. Teachers speak of training, courses, and methods of study. Most entrepreneurs speak their own language. If this matches their clients’ terminology, everything flows, but if the clients have a different mental framework, then a disconnect will hold you back.

Feeling ambitious? Want more ideas? Go to the BIG list of 100 ways!

WordPress Questions – How do I do an update?

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please-update-now

Have you ever seen this banner at the top of your WordPress dashboard? It means the folks at WordPress have a brand new, shiny update to the software they want you to install.

You? Yeah, their laying the responsibility of doing this on you. And they do it A LOT, if you’ve noticed. So, before you panic because you’ve never done this before, or don’t know how or don’t have time to, here’s a few options you can fall back on.

1. You can follow the instructions below for doing it yourself, or,

2. You can ignore it, or,

3. I’ll be happy to do it for you.

First, let’s look at Option #2 – ignoring it. This is the one everyone who doesn’t have time, forgets or procrastinates, falls back on. What happens when you ignore updates?

It used to be very little would happen. If you ran across a cool new plugin you wanted to use and it wasn’t compatible, no big deal. You felt you could live without it.

Unfortunately, WordPress blogging has become SO POPULAR in 2013 that many hackers are now targeting them as one of the easiest targets to hit and do major damage. Updates fix security issues and they know that many people are lazy or ignorant of the need for updates, so they can lay a very widespread path of virtual destruction by focusing on the popular blogging platform.

And you get to pay the consequences.

Option #1 – do it yourself, is really easy and quick. Just click on the “Please Update Now” link and it practically does the work for you. But if you don’t have time or patience for it doing it, or keep forgetting, there’s the third option…

We’ll do it for you.

For a one-time, once a year charge, we will keep track of these pesky updates and do them for you so you can pay and forget it, safe in the knowledge that it will  get done and you will have less of a chance of getting clobbered by those stupid hackers. How’s that?

And it isn’t even expensive. You can pay for a year’s worth of worry free updating for less than your kid’s allowance. What do you say?

If you are interested, please contact us at kristine@civicsitedesign.com, put the words “WordPress updates” in the subject line, and your contact information in the email. We’ll save you those few extra hours a year and take care of the worry for you.

Referrals and Recommendations – Hank Truxillo

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Hank Truxillo of the Reseda Neighborhood Council is a wonderful organizer and produces RESULTS! Chaired Reseda’s Centennial Celebration and pulled it off when others said it couldn’t be done. I’ve been to a lot of RNC meetings, but his always packed them in and people were eager to work under him and pull together. You rock, Hank!

Tell him Kristine Cherry of Civic Site Design sent you.

Update: March 9, 2014. Hank moved out of the Los Angeles area. He is still in California. Considering how the internet removes the barrier of distance, still try to contact him if you find you have a need.

 

Facebook symbols

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For all of us who tinker around on Facebook and want to make our posts stand out more or just look prettier, Social Media Dialogue has published a useful list of how to create symbols in Facebook posts. Want to create a heart, a musical note or a male or female symbol. Check out this useful list:

Alt + 1 ☺
Alt + 2 ☻
Alt + 3 ♥
Alt + 4 ♦
Alt + 5 ♣
Alt + 6 ♠
Alt + 7 •
Alt + 8 ◘
Alt + 9 ○
Alt + 10 ◙
Alt + 11 ♂
Alt + 12 ♀
Alt + 13 ♪
Alt + 14 ♫
Alt + 15 ☼

Once Upon a Time…

Posted on by Posted in 2012 Leave a comment

…there was a young man, say about 26 years old, who lived in a suburb of Los Angeles. His father went into the hospital because he was vomiting blood and while there, was diagnosed with a life-threatening, bleeding stomach ulcer. They had to operate immediately.

The young man wanted to do something to help. The doctors told him he could donate and thus he discovered he had a very special type of blood that could be given to anyone and, despite his fear of needles, donated blood for the first time in his life.

Dennis donating bloodThat was in 1986.

Today, the young man is still donating, working towards his 9 GALLON donation pin from the American Red Cross. (When this post was originally written, he was working towards 6 gallons.) Inspired to action, he began sponsoring his own blood drives in conjunction with the Red Cross and this year, 2012, will mark his 21st year working for this cause.

I am very proud to say that young man went on to become my husband, Dennis Amador Cherry and in 2014 we celebrated 25 years being happily married.

We’ve had a lot of fun over the years running the drives. For many years we would cosplay (wear costumes). Dennis always bakes homemade cookies for our Thanksgiving Day Blood Drive at the LAX Marriott. He also coordinates and encourages other volunteer/friends who happily do the same.  This February we just finished our second year hosting a brand new blood drive, creating the tradition of making homemade scones for Gallifrey One’s drive at the same hotel. Both conventions center around a theme of science fiction – the Thanksgiving Day drive being held at Loscon (a literary sci-fi con) and Gallifrey (a primarily Doctor Who event). I am not ashamed to say these are “my people”, these sci-fi nerds and geek girls who all share with us a common love of science fiction in general and Doctor Who specifically. They are generous to a fault and seeing them every year like clockwork as I work the blood drive registration table is both a wonder and a comfort as they are all people I have come to dearly love for their generosity in giving the gift of life. They would give the shirt off their back and do give the blood from their veins so that you and I and all who need blood in times of crises never have to worry there won’t be enough.

It is to these people I dedicate this post to, with all love in our hearts. You are always loved and never forgotten.

‘droid app review – Google Sky Map

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Sky Map by Google

Okay, I’ve got something really nifty for all us ‘droid nerds out there this week. I was reviewing a rather nicely set up mobile phone & broadband website and seeing the next generation of Samsung Galaxy S class phone out there listed under “Best Selling Phones”, it reminded me I have been wanting to review my newest ‘droid app I stumbled upon a couple of weeks ago. (The next generation of Galaxy S phone is, btw, white. Weird, considering I am so used to mine which is black with a purple, shock-absorbing case surrounding it.)

google sky map detail

Google Sky Map is the best app you could possibly hope for if you are a night sky watcher. A free, Open Source program donated by Google, over 175,000 users rate it a 5 out of 5 and with good reason. Point it anywhere, ANYWHERE, day or night, and it will show you exactly what is out there beyond planet Earth. It views stars, constellations, planets, Moon, Sun, Meteor Showers, the Horizon line, poles & Messier Objects (whatever that is). Any of these objects can be switched off with the flick of a finger for clearer viewing of your object(s) of study.

Perhaps one of the more fun perks of this app is called, “Time Travel”. Choose a date and a time somewhere between the years of 1900 – 2100 and view the sky as it would appear on that date. How cool is that? The Apollo 11 moon landing and solar eclipse of May 29, 1919 are pre-loaded under popular dates, but any date and time is programmable into the interface for your viewing study and pleasure. Once in Time Travel mode, one can tap the buttons to move forward or backwards in time at the ratio of anywhere from real time (1 second to 1 second) to 1 week per second. Teach kids how the movements of the planets appear from Earth in a real neat way.

Having trouble locating the object of your interest? There is a search mode. Just plug in the name of whatever it is you want to view and the app will find it for you on the map. Under the Gallery you can view beautiful shots of our sister planets, nebulas, galaxies, the Pleiades and star clusters as the Hubble telescope has caught them on its cameras.

This is by far the most fun app we have come across in our reviews AND if you pick it up NOW, you will be able to see many of the planets aligned in a straight line including Pluto, Neptune, the Sun, Mercury, Uranus, Venus and Jupiter. Quite a line up, especially when the Moon gets into the act during the evening hours.

As always, we welcome feedback, comments, etc. Pick up Google Sky Map for yourself, check it out and let us know what you think.