#client service

[freyadragonlord]

How to report credit irregularities to your phone operator (a modern odyssey)

Go to a physical store to talk to a physical real human being, because you know that if you try and engage with those automatic voice or chat boxes, you'll never see the end of it (in the shadows, the Fates laugh).

Physical real human tells you that sadly they can't help you in this, but they give you a phone number and an email address.

You try the phone number first. An automatic voice answers.

The Voice asks you what is that you wish to know. The Voice gives you options, but none seems to be quite right. No, you do not want to purchase new products, thanks. You wish to talk to a human.

Fear Not, says the Voice, for its dear friend Angelia can help you. Angelia shall answer any and all requests! The Voice sends you to Angelia to continue the conversation.

Angelia is an AI chatbox. Angelia tries Oh So Hard to understand, it wants to help! But no, Angelia, this is now what I meant. Can I speak to a human instead? Can I speak to a human? Can I speak to a human? Can I speak to a Human? Can I speak to a human?

You are starting to lose hope, but your pleads are honest and true, and even an AI chatbox, maybe, has a heart. Angelia schedules an appointment to talk to a real human. You will be called back, before the sun sets, for sure, you will be called.

Three minutes to dusk, the phone rings. You honestly didn't think it would actually happen at this point, the time was almost up.... But, your perseverance was rewarded! You answer the call, quivering in anticipation and relief. A Physical Real Human Person is about to assist!

Silence. No, not silence.... The sound of wind, intererference...... In the distance, voices, Real Human Voices, talking. But not to you. You call out to them. You call out again. They can't hear you! Can you hear me? Hello? Hello? Can you hear me? Hello? Hello? Hell

The call is disconnected.

The day after, you try the email address instead. You write your name, your request, you explain yourself as clearly as you can. You beg for help.

You send the email. An automatic response arrives imediatelly.

We cannot follow your email, it says. You have not included the necessary attachments.

It does not tell you what the necessary attachments are.

Angelia, can you make me speak with a human? Can we try again?? Maybe this time-

Angelia does not understand. It had given you the only shred of humanity it had. It shall not have pity on you again.

You burn in rage. You refuse to give up, you refuse! You know this is no silly misunderstanding, ha ha ha!

This is by design.

You call the number again, and the Voice answers. It gives you options, once again. You try new options this time, things that don't seem to fit your needs, but you have no other choice, this is the last chance you have......

Press 1. Press 2. Press 1. Press 3. Press 2. Press 1. Go back go back, press 3, press 2, press 3 again.

Please hold, the Voice says.

Please, hold. Music plays from the depths, distant, distorted, distasteful, and yet, at last......

A voice greets you. Not a Voice. This is.... a person. A real human person.

Trying not to weep, you explains your situation to them.

Kind, warm, real, human voice hums in the background as they search for answers.

I am sorry, they say, with real emotion (the real emotion helps). They cannot help you. But! They maybe know who can.

A new number is given to you.

You call. A Voice answers. Not the same Voice, and yet it's just the same. Do you know we have a website?, it says. Do you know you can solve your own problems, if you go to the website?

You stand your ground. You press 1. You press 1 again.

Please hold.

More music from the depths.

Hello, a new voice greets you, a new human voice.

This was easier this time, you're almost getting used to it.

You explain, once again, what your issue is. Ah yes, the person says. They can see what the issue is.

You have to send an email to have it fixed.

This real person is not unkind. They give you the address, they teach you all the tricks, secret protocol numbers tied to your account, numbers you did not know. They tell you what to write, what to attach, how to forward your request. This is an ally. This is a physical real human person, and they know how the system works. They do what they can for you.

So, you send the email. This time, there seems to be no issue. It seems not.

All you can do now is to wait. You have no way of knowing if used the right words, despite what your ally told you.

You can just.... Wait. Hope. Pray.

[briancantorinlasvegas]

Brian Cantor Las Vegas - Email Marketing and Everything Your Business Needs To Know About It

As we get introduced to a period of digitization, incalculable channels have arisen on the web for a wide range of promoting purposes. Not with standing the developing number of channels, advertisers depend on culminating efforts with a strong email marketing procedure. 

There is a straight forward justification for why email advertising has been around for a long time, the answer is that it works. To be sure, numerous associations today observed achievement through their email marketing techniques. The uplifting news is you can modify it as per your requirement. Peruse on as Brian Cantor dismantle some incredible campaigns regarding email marketing, check out the key components to a decent procedure, and find tips to assist grow your business. To learn about more marketing techniques read Brian Cantor Las Vegas - How to Promote Business with Unique Marketing Hacks?

Reason to use email marketing methodology? 

One significant benefit of using email for promoting your business is its moderateness. Email promotion is a compelling stage for correspondence that will not burn your pocket. Yet, there is something else to this promoting channel besides cost-cutting. 

The top justifications for why you want to jump on board this marketing trend are: 

1. To assemble important information about your clients 

Email marketing strategy is an amazing method for testing and gathering information. By adding tools such as surveys, overviews, and feedback structures to your email content, you rapidly make a pipeline of important information. 

Consistently running split test or A/B test ought to likewise be an enormous piece of your email advertising procedure. This technique illuminates you regarding how specific gatherings respond towards various variants of a project. Contingent upon the reaction, you might have to change the pictures, design, or headline of your mission. 

Besides email crusades, A/B tests could be applied via online media posts, blog titles, and FB advertisements, to give some examples. You can even make use of animation in your marketing campaign, know all about it in the article Brian Cantor Las Vegas - Importance of Animation in Business Marketing.

2. To target consumers across their buying venture 

The kind of emails your customers receive should shift contingent upon where they stand in their buying venture. This excursion begins from attention to thought, plan, buy, and maintenance. The substance of your email should adjust to what the customer is searching for right now, regardless of whether that is additional data about your item or just a thank you note for the purchase. 

3. Your faithful clients like it 

Expanding your customer care through email, regardless of whether as elite offers, intermittent bulletins, client service, and inquiries for input, add a personal touch compared to web-based media posts. It is likewise the more favored strategy by most clients. 

Social media talks are regularly held for individual discussions and inquiries that request quick replies. Emails, then again, permit the clients to react without pressure. Follow tips from Brian Cantor and you are sure to see a transformation in your business as to how your consumers interact with you and choose your services over your competitors. 

[reneekarae]

Tour Tales | Reneeka Rae is proud of Janelle Monae’s growth she’s seen throughout the years

"I remember doing Glastonbury with Janelle in 2019, which was crazy because eight years before, she was opening on the same stage," Reneeka

010721/ i’m honored to have shared some tour tales for Revolt TV 🙏🏽✨

[theretherecaity]

just vet med things

i saw this post on this goofy meme account i follow today - my response and a few more of the comments are below the cut.

this is super frustrating to see as someone who’s worked in a couple of hospitals and had experience on both sides of the floor. it’s bad enough that we all get treated like shit by the clients (including technicians and even doctors, but reception obviously takes the brunt and the majority of it) - we shouldn’t be perpetuating these negative attitudes and stereotypes toward each other, even in a humorous way imo. 

i’ve worked with way too many techs who said and believed some really stupid shitty things about receptionists having it easy and how it’s so much harder being a technician when it really isn’t fair to compare the two. i have a ton of respect for the training and dedication that goes into becoming certified especially, but the requirements and the things you face in either position are challenging and demanding. 

apart from that, it drives me nuts when technicians think it isn’t their job to deal with people just because they work “in the back.” veterinary medicine is 100% a CLIENT SERVICE. you may think you got into the field of animal medicine because you’re not a people person, but it’s part of the job regardless of your position. nobody in the hospital should feel above or better than having to talk to clients lol. suck it up and then when you realize the front doesn’t have it so easy after all, adjust your fucking attitude. jussayin.

[mintytreble]

Goddamit, Cheritz

Your post about the banned accounts is so fricking long that it's literally crashing Tumblr on my phone...

PLEASE EDIT IT AND PUT THE EMAILS ON READ MORE

Everyone is asking the same, just do it.

[adventuresinclientservice]

Losing my religion.

In my many years as a client service person and more recently as the author of Adventures, I’ve avoided three topics of conversation with clients, colleagues, and what usually gets written as a blog post:  1) politics, given it tends to be divisive and best avoided; 2) advertising, because opinions are subjective, especially in the absence of knowledge about an ad’s origin; and, 3) religion, knowing that matters of faith are deeply personal and respectfully should be off limits.

Normally I adhere to this rule, but a few weeks ago I was in our sanctuary listening to guest Rabbi Neil Sandler, who was about to share a sermon -- in Judaism we refer to this as a d’var Torah, Drash for short -- that explores a Jewish text, often focusing on the weekly Torah portion.  I’ve heard many of these over the years, most of which don’t require further comment; this one does, because it relies less on the week’s Torah text and more on a story.

Rabbi Neil begins by holding up a prop – a uniquely shaped, pink plastic bottle – which leads to him recount a trip he and his wife Susan took to Portugal.  They are in a restaurant; the bottle makes an appearance, leading to a conversation with Miriam, the restaurant’s owner.  Talk turns to the people Miriam hires to serve customers; as Rabbi Neil tells it,

“Miriam said that when she hired someone, she didn’t immediately care about a prospective employee’s skills – she could teach those skills. “Instead, she cared about the person’s nature – about how she interacted with her prospective co-workers and customers. “Relevant skills – Miriam could teach; A pleasant Nature? – You either had it or you did not.”

On November 25 of this year, my publisher John Wiley & Sons will issue a substantial revision of The Art of Client Service.  Much of the material is new, but one item is not:  Chapter 22 covering “What, Why, and How:  The Skills, Qualities, and Capabilities that Define Great Client Service, ” a topic discussed with little change since the publication of Brain Surgery for Suits more than 25 years ago, followed by the three subsequent editions of The Art of Client Service, leading to this most recent, forthcoming edition.

As I tell it, there are there are three things to look for in client service – experience, skills, and qualities – with qualities mattering by far the most.

Experience you gain with time.  Skills you learn.  When it comes to qualities, the book points out that integrity and judgement are key, combined with resilience, consistency, patience, discipline, grace under pressure, a sense of humor, meticulousness, a sense of ownership, a spirit of collaboration, self-effacement, a sense of context, and a service orientation. 

Collectively these are part of what Miriam describes and Rabbi Neil cites as “the person’s nature.” 

As he closed his remarks, Rabbi Neil returns to his opening:

“And this pink water bottle?  “It was an apt symbol of Miriam, her husband and co-workers - a symbol of commitment to their customers and to making them feel special.”

Those who know me know religious I am not, but the Rabbi’s gift to those who heard him that evening was deft storytelling married to an impromptu, unscripted exchange in a restaurant far from home.

It’s a story about faith that also speaks to the qualities of character defining stellar client service, embodied in a message that requires no religion to practice.

[adventuresinclientservice]

How I learned to drive.

My Dad was a mercurial sort, given to unexplained highs populated with joy, wedded to fits of sadness and anger, bewildering to a little boy and later frustrating to a high school student beset with troubles typical of a teenager. 

After I turned 16 and qualified for a learner’s permit, the last thing I expected was for my Dad to serve as my teacher, but there we were, me in the driver’s seat, him to the right, riding shotgun as I awkwardly turned the key and shifted out of “park” as the engine grumbled to life.

At first I was beyond incapable, an awkward amalgamation of unknowing arms and legs, cowled by the need to control thousands of pounds of metal as I crawled through traffic in fits and starts, negotiating turn after turn, rashly accelerating then stopping with a slam of the brakes, all without wrapping the car around the tree or, god forbid, striking the neighbor’s dog.

Overwhelmed and intimidated, I asked question and after question; my Dad, betraying not an ounce of his customary dismissiveness, calmly answered each and every one, even when it meant explaining the same thing a second or fifth time.  If you need evidence of my being a slow learner, well… here it is.

I was really, really woeful, willing to give up; the only person unwilling?  My Dad.  Time and again he took me out for yet another driving lesson, knowing that consistency leads to competence, and competence leads to confidence. 

As days turned into weeks then months, with lesson after lesson, I slowly improved.  What I once found daunting began to feel almost manageable. 

As I became more adept, the driving tests became more onerous.  If you’re familiar with my hometown Philadelphia, you likely know the twists and turns a driver needs to navigate the two lanes on suburban, tight-squeeze Conshohocken State Road.  Even more challenging is to traverse the faster, four-lane Wissahickon Drive, leading to the Schuylkill Expressway, formally known as I 76, informally known among the knowing as the “Surekill Crawlway,” a high-speed, limited-access interstate that is not for beginners or the faint of heart.

My Dad made me drive these routes and many others, doing them over and over until he was satisfied I was in control of the car, the car was not in control of me.  

Finally the day came:  “I think you’re ready.”  

We booked an appointment with the DMV for my driving test.

I passed on the first try.

What strikes me now is how effective my father was.  Patient.  Methodical.  Consistent.  A good listener.  Never angry.  Always steady.  There was no quit on his watch.

In truth, there was no need for him to teach me; I already was enrolled in my weekly high school driver’s ed course; the instructor there could have taught me just fine.  Parents are not required to become teachers.  My Dad thought otherwise; he saw it as his responsibility to serve as my hands-on instructor.    

There’s a good bit of my father in me.  Like him, I could be mercurial, prone to fits of anger, stubborn, more than occasionally difficult to deal with, not the ideal qualities for someone devoted to client service.  I’ve been an account person most of my working life, but this is not where my true capability lies.  Like him, at heart I’m a teacher.

As the advertising world grows increasingly more complex -- more options to consider, more time pressure, more client demands, more opportunities to fail -- sharing what you know has become not optional but essential.  Teaching shouldn’t be viewed as a burden; it’s a gift, a skill that, more than anything else, defines a leader.  No matter how busy they might be, good leaders make time to listen, to answer questions, to demonstrate the right way to handle a problem or a person.

As I look back on my career, I know I wasn’t as good an account person as I needed to be, but I’m pretty sure I was a decent teacher.  Credit goes where it is long overdue, to my father, starting with the day he guided me behind the wheel.

Happy Father’s Day Dad.  Wish you were here.