I just got off the phone with the production engineer of Winn Cassette Sales, a Texas-based company that has produced my cassettes for years and is now producing my CDs. Their engineer, Mike, reminded me though his actions today of why I do business with them. While discussing CD label options, he mentioned off-handedly how he made some minor cosmetic adjustments to the label I had sent them. He said “I hope you don’t mind, but I tweaked it a little bit to make it look better.”

Are you managing your service professionals in ways that inspire – and enable – them to give great service? Customer service research done at Sears and published in the Harvard Business Review revealed that store managers who enjoyed:

- 40%-50% less turnover
- greater sales
- greater customer satisfaction and loyalty

were the ones who helped employees:

- understand the value of their contributions
- grow professionally
-work more autonomously
- benefit from gainsharing

Are you doing these things?

I had another experience of this the other day. After many radio commercials by a computer store about how they offer a nice alternative to the typical name-brand computer service experience (if you’ve been “helped” by an offshore call center rep, you know what they’re referring to), I decided to check them out.
My long term Dell-loyalty had been damaged by many teeth-grinding experiences with tech support people who could barely speak English and some who seemed to be less familiar with PCs then I. So, I did what was once unthinkable for me: go for a computer other than Dell.

But then… the plot thickened…