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Jeff Toister
Jeff Toister is the author of Service Failure: The Real Reasons Employees Struggle with Customer Service and What You Can Do About It, a book that reveals hidden obstacles to outstanding service. His company, Toister Performance Solutions Inc. helps clients identify these obstacles so they can improve customer service.
The legendary customer service companies know something most of us don’t.
It’s not their strategy. Their strategies are extensively written about in books, magazines and blogs. These strategies are widely copied, yet without the same success.
So, what’s their secret?
Here are three...
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Many companies rely on seasonal workers to bolster their customer service teams during busy times like the back-to-school season.
To customers, these agents are indistinguishable from regular employees. That is, of course, until they experience a service failure due to the seasonal employee’s lack...
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The cure for excessive task orientation is aligning employee responsibilities with a clearly defined customer service culture. Employees should be focused on helping customers achieve their goals rather than following a set of rote procedures. Companies can take their service levels to new...
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The following is an approved excerpt from Jeff Toister's "Service Failure," which reveals many surprising causes of poor customer service and provides proven solutions drawn from real examples and cutting-edge research.
Many employees struggle to empathize with customers...
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Dave, an account manager for a company that sold uniforms, was a good example of what can happen to customer service employees when their managers are blind to the root causes of poor service. His job was to take orders, provide customer service, and find ways to increase sales with each of...
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Here are two things you can count on when scheduling customer service training.
Employees will be worried that the training includes role-playing.
Managers will be worried that the training doesn’t include role-playing.
Employees don’t like role-playing because it feels awkward and...
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Customers are getting tired of surveys. A 2010 study by Vovici revealed that Americans are inundated with over 7 billion survey requests per year. That’s nearly 23 survey requests for every American. (Ironically, I encountered a pop-up survey request when I went to the US Census Bureau website to...
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In the world of customer service, a lot of attention is given to the concept of customer delight. There are books written about it, and training classes offered on how to do it. Influential customer service experts tell us we’ve failed if we don’t delight every customer every time.
Legendary tales...
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Camille
was a guest service associate working in a hotel. She had natural service
instincts and had received hospitality training. Despite her qualifications,
Camille routinely provided poor service.
She
did it deliberately.
Camille
didn’t enjoy providing poor service. She felt terrible every...
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