My friends and I have board game nights as a way to have fun without breaking the bank.  And while Apples to Apples and Phase 10 are our faves, there’s nothing like an old-fashioned game of charades. 

Whether we’re acting out Project Runway or The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, it’s always a hilarious experience.  In the heat of the moment, folks try wacky things to get their team to guess the correct phrase – it’s stuff that makes sense to the actor at the time (like jumping up and down to simulate flying), but looks like gobbledygook to their team.  It’s all about perspective, right?

And that got me thinking, what does the service organization do that makes total sense internally, but confuses the heck out of customers?  From recent conversations with some of our members, it sounds like our FAQs on our websites offers up some quick win opportunities.

FAQs are often the customer’s go-to information source, but they tend to be added on an ad hoc basis – cutting and pasting from press releases or internal documents.  The end result is a large volume of FAQs that are repetitive and hard to understand.  CCC data shows that between 2-5% of call volume comes from customers who were just on the company website but were either confused or unconfident in the information they found.

Just how hard are your FAQs to understand?  Well, there’s a simple, free tool you can use to find out.  Read More »

Big revenues and the CEO’s upcoming book release are winning Zappos loads of public press. Zappos doesn’t approach customer service like most organizations. In fact, the company makes it publically clear they have a culture that qualifies as more than just little bit quirky.

One of Zappos’s core principles is to promote employee and customer happiness. Of note on the employee side: Zappos values happy employees so much that at the end of new-hire training, trainees are offered $2,000+ to quit. Read More »