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Make customer service easy

By Becky McCray

Macy's Make it easy for your people to serve customers.

They shouldn’t have to say, “Don’t tell anyone I did this for you.”

Instead, be the Ritz-Carlton. Each employee is given an individual, daily budget to create a wow experience for a customer, or for “service recovery.” (That’s to fix, or even over-fix, an error or problem for a customer.)

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About Becky McCray

Becky started Small Biz Survival in 2006 to share rural business and community building stories and ideas with other small town business people. She and her husband have a small cattle ranch and are lifelong entrepreneurs. Becky is an international speaker on small business and rural topics.
  • Zoom Towns: attracting and supporting remote workers in rural small towns - December 10, 2020
  • In an economic crisis, spend your brainpower before your dollars - November 25, 2020
  • Video: How to fill empty car dealership buildings for the holidays - November 6, 2020
  • How has 2020 changed the challenges rural small towns face? Tell us here - October 20, 2020
  • The Idea Friendly Method to surviving a business crisis - October 6, 2020
  • Join me for the Rural Renewal Symposium online Oct 13 - September 26, 2020
  • Cheap placemaking idea: instant murals - September 11, 2020
  • Refilling the rural business pipeline - July 7, 2020
  • Huge vacant buildings: grants to renovate? - June 9, 2020
  • Economic self defense for small towns  - June 7, 2020

May 9, 2009 Filed Under: customer service

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Comments

  1. Daria Steigman says

    May 10, 2009 at 5:44 pm

    Hi Becky,

    Great advice. Simple, succinct and right on target. Plus you brought back memories, because much of my early understanding of what makes great customer service came from a one-month (temporary) stint at a Ritz Carlton hotel. From how to answer the telephone to closing the loop on every customer request, the Ritz Carlton way gave me a deep awareness of what it means and what it takes to do customer service right.

    Hope you’re having a great weekend,
    Daria

  2. Becky McCray says

    May 10, 2009 at 5:54 pm

    Daria, I’m so glad you shared your experience with Ritz Carlton. More of us need to take action on these ideas!

  3. Becky McCray says

    May 10, 2009 at 6:10 pm

    Daria added another thought on Twitter:
    “I had to learn that it’s OK from customer service POV to check that task was done. Instinct was to assume it was… but if it isn’t, the customer’s unhappy and the brand suffers. It required culture change for me to recog. okay to verify.”

  4. Ari Herzog says

    May 11, 2009 at 5:47 am

    As a former waiter in a 3-star restaurant chain called Papa Razzi, I remember when the manager grouped us one morning for a pow-wow.

    To paraphrase:

    “The customer is always right. Anything the customer asks for, the customer gets unless we can’t do it. You can yell at the chef, you can yell at me, but never yell at the customer.”

    Something like that. It stuck with me. Easy customer service.

  5. Becky McCray says

    May 11, 2009 at 1:52 pm

    Ari, I love the part about “Never yell at the customer.” I’ve known some folks who need to learn that particular lesson.

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