Erika Blanchard

It’s 2012, which means; a new calendar, a new year and a new opportunity to start over…

Over the past week, I’ve seen a lot of resolutions come (and already go), but I feel that each year, we each have the opportunity to look back at what we discovered, what we learned along the way and what we can look forward to. Best of all, we have a chance to leave behind the mistakes that we’ve made.

Now, I’m not assuming everyone failed in 2011 – I’m not even assuming anyone failed, all I’m saying is with customer service – we can all always get better!

Also, let’s not forget, more and more customers are abandoning companies because of bad service. With that said, here are 7 customer service resolutions you may want to consider for the new year:

Make finding information and contacting you, as painless as possible

Today’s society is hurried. Everyone wants what they want and they want it now. When customers...

We recently conducted a survey during a webinar which we hosted on Experiential Rewards, “Experiential Rewards Programs: Rewarding Customer Loyalty One Unforgettable Experience at a Time”. This webinar offered attendees insight into the role of experiential rewards in an overall customer loyalty offering, as well as providing best practices into design, development and implementation of an experiential rewards program. We were pleasantly surprised by the number of loyalty marketers we had in attendance from prestigious corporations across several industries.

Our research indicates that the role of experiential offerings in loyalty programs is expected to increase in 2012 and beyond.  Over half of all loyalty marketers plan to add an experiential offering to their loyalty program in the near future, in comparison...

Now that Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday are behind us – I thought this would be a good time to reflect on the good, the bad and the ugly.

Much of what we talk about on this blog is about customer service and customer loyalty. Our core service offerings are personalized concierge services and premium customer care which we take very seriously. We, like every other company, know the importance of excellent service and treating the customer right. We know that by treating our customers and our clients’ customers right, we build loyal (and hopefully lifetime) fans of our brand, our product(s) and our service(s). A feat every company hopes to conquer.

Based on the numbers, the 2011 holiday shopping season has gotten off to a record start. According to the Black Friday weekend consumer survey conducted by BIGresearch for NRF, over half of U.S. consumers hit the stores this past weekend and almost a quarter of those consumers shopped on...

I think we all know that many companies are seriously deficient in quality customer service. I know in any given week, I am horrified on at least a few occasions – either in person at a store or over the phone.  This week, I called another major company and was on hold for over 19 minutes. Now, I know it’s not easy – and I know companies have good days and bad days, after all – companies are made up of people, not robots. I do, however, encounter 90% more bad interactions than good which, in my opinion, is far from acceptable!

What I think companies need to realize is that great customer service is not only customer-facing. To have a truly customer centric organization, customer service must be omnipresent. Leaders and marketers know how important customer service is – and they preach about it, write about it – many even hang posters on the walls throughout their building about it. What I think happens though is that they are instructing the front line staff on what to do...