Waiting for Service
105 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 2 years ago - ★★★★★ - 19 ratingsYou hate waiting in line or on the phone for customer service. There have been plenty of shows about customer service, that all seem to offer "secrets" to improve customer service. This is not that show. Amas Tenumah focuses on Why customer Service is so broken and gives you the secrets to get around it.
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Episodes
#56 - What Leadership looks like w/Darren Ford
November 22, 2019 00:26 - 26 minutes - 35.7 MBLeadership lessons and career Mistakes How do you continue to grow in your career Bad bosses What makes a good boss Servant leadership in practice
#55: Is Empathy a skill or an Emotion (With Bob Furniss)
October 26, 2019 20:14 - 16 minutes - 23.2 MBEffort vs Delight Is effort sexy? Is empathy a skill or an Emotion What happens when you have to show empathy 27 times in a row What happens when the company sucks but the agents are good. Favorite customer survey question @bobfurniss
#53 What Leadership looks like with Bob
September 27, 2019 13:47 - 40 minutes - 55.6 MBTell stories to be effective 6:00 Why it is a tough gig 7:29 Agents picks their own supervisors 9:00 Recognize good agents 9:37 What do you read 11:00 Are you a traffic cop or a leader 13:32 Tips for gaming the stats system 19:28 The YMCA coaching method Attached is a must read list
#52 - The most Honest Resume w/ Bob Furniss
September 15, 2019 13:19 - 33 minutes - 45.5 MBShow Notes: I start the show talking about my biggest career regret Bob shares his opportunity to be one of the first Fedex employees Interviewing for a job is like dating - everyone lies on the first date. Find a way to find out who your future boss is, pick the wrong one and you are screwed. At any stage in your career you are, find a wave and ride it. Bob found Salesforce a decade ago before it became big in the service world. I ask Bob about how he got comfortable bringing h...
Episode 51- The formula for Perfect Customer Service
September 05, 2019 16:00 - 36 minutes - 49.5 MBBob Furniss is a 40 Year veteran of the space Customer Service Agent and Supervisor are the toughest jobs in the space Human emotion has a formula that is changing in real time As you improve Self Service the CS job gets harder Level 1 customer Service is going out of business Best Practices/Benchmarking should be you comparing customer's latest expectations with your level of service Focus on getting a little better every day Employees over Customers
Episode 50 - Your CRM implementation will fail
August 30, 2019 16:00 - 6 minutes - 8.24 MB- Odds are against you - Why are the odds against you? - What can you do?
Episode 49 - The next Generation of Employees
August 23, 2019 16:00 - 7 minutes - 9.9 MB-Explore gen 1, gen 2 and gen 3 service employees -What skills do you need now
Episode 48 - Stop Promoting your best employees
August 16, 2019 16:00 - 7 minutes - 10.7 MB- Leading people is hard - It is for the select few - You do not and should not promote your best people
Episode 47 - Contact Center Outsourcing is a jungle
August 11, 2019 16:00 - 7 minutes - 6.8 MB- Listen to Outsourcing is broken - Things haven't gotten much better - We have answers
Episode 46 - You are not Ready for AI - Part 2
August 04, 2019 13:04 - 7 minutes - 6.94 MBAi in service has plenty of promise and it will be a game changer. - You are not ready - Let us show you why
Episode 45 - You are not Ready for AI in service - Part I
May 24, 2019 03:46 - 6 minutes - 6.15 MBAi is coming in customer Service is your contact center ready? We can help this is a short 2-part episode
Episode 44 - Remembering Herb Kelleher
April 21, 2019 23:41 - 5 minutes - 5.04 MBEmployees over customers. Do you have to pick? What is the pecking order? Where do shareholders rank?
Episode - 43 - The customer Service False Choice
March 14, 2019 16:50 - 4 minutes - 4.16 MB- Customer Service still Matters - Everyone still claims they care about it - There is a false choice
Episode 42 - How AI can transform the Agent Experience
January 27, 2019 00:57 - 6 minutes - 6.11 MBFor all the hype around the AI one of the immediate places of
Episode 41 - Is great Service Born or Made?
January 18, 2019 14:16 - 8 minutes - 7.82 MBClose your eyes and imagine the best service organizations how many of them are born that way and how many are made?
Episode 40 - Fixing Customer Relationship conundrum part 2
December 06, 2018 17:00 - 34 minutes - 31.2 MBNothing more central to running a company than the Relationship you have with customers. Most companies get the customer relationship wrong.
Episode 39 - Fixing the Customer Relationship Management conundrum (w Jamie Ham)
December 02, 2018 21:09 - 26 minutes - 24.7 MBNothing more central to running a company than the Relationship you have with customers. Most companies get the customer relationship wrong.
Episode 38 - How to reduce the cognitive load on an Agent
November 19, 2018 17:26 - 9 minutes - 8.24 MBThe pressing issue for contact center agents is their cognitive load, we can fix this. Here are 3 places to start
Episode 37 - The 3 Imperatives for Contact center Leaders
November 10, 2018 15:48 - 8 minutes - 7.45 MBYour mission as a leader of a contact center is pretty simple. Make work more meaningful for your employees to do that do these 3 things.
Episode 36 - Why you need to be a Persuasion Expert in CX w Jeff
September 20, 2018 17:23 - 16 minutes - 15.3 MBWhy is persuasion in such a high demand from a business perspective? Jeff says that we all live or die based on our ability to persuade. That's a bold statement! If you think about Customer Service, the vast majority of interactions start with the premises that something has gone wrong, which is why customers call. How the Support Agents should deliver the news that the solution the customer is calling for won't be delivered today? How to say "no" to a customer or deliver bad news?
Episode 35 - Why we need to rethink QA
September 20, 2018 17:17 - 8 minutes - 7.77 MBI want to talk about Quality Assurance specifically in contact centers. I want to give you 3 reasons to rethink QA. 1. Sample size. You'll be making a conclusion over a small size of data, and you might be biased on the interactions you decide to listen to. 2. The entire premise of QA was created several decades ago. Is it still relevant today? 3. If you cannot link directly QA efforts to the ROI you're looking for, you have to rethink it Quality Assurance.
Episode 34 - Stop Telling Call Center Agents when to use the Bathroom
September 02, 2018 16:00 - 9 minutes - 8.59 MBI want to talk about the call center agent because I have a passion for improving the agent experience. Being a contact center agent sucks because of the leadership in the organization, but it does not have to be this way. Let me focus on one particular area. We schedule, regulate and punish agents for going to the bathrooms at the wrong times. Most of the managers speak to me about the needs of the business and that if bathroom breaks were not scheduled the agents would go whenever they wa...
Episode 33 - 3 Strategies for Dealing with difficult customers
August 28, 2018 16:19 - 7 minutes - 6.46 MBI want to discuss why we have difficult customers and what to do with them. 1. You are creating difficult customers. So do a self-evaluation on why customers are "difficult." Identify these frequent accidents with the customers, address the issues and solve them. 2. Fire some of your customers. Sometimes you just don't need certain people to be your customers, particularly when there isn't a match with what they are looking for and what you've taken a strategic decision to offer. 3. Ups...
Episode 32 - Why Benchmarking is a waste of Time
May 20, 2018 21:35 - 6 minutes - 6.07 MBCustomer Experience needs to be personal and copying other crappy industries isn't the way to go.
Episode 31 - What call center leadership looks like after AI eliminates jobs (w/Darren Ford)
February 20, 2018 04:09 - 24 minutes - 22 MB- Remember the paper- less office - How will we screw up this whole AI thing in service - What happens when all the humans in the contact center get eliminated - What happens when every call in the contact center is a tough one - Federal prisoners have more freedom than call center agents -Healthy culture - who do we hire is the most important decision to make - People in HR will be super busy -Value people
Episode 30 - The Service Industry Is Still Measuring The Wrong Things
February 02, 2018 06:05 - 12 minutes - 11.1 MBI had an interesting conversation with a colleague about analytics a few weeks ago about analytics software. We talked about AI and advanced analytics but I digress. I want to talk about what service leaders measure, particularly in the contact center or service centers. What are you measuring? Do me a favor, bring out your scorecards and lets evaluate what you are measurin. I will wait. Let us start at the top of the organization. Most of your metrics tend to be financial, then it filters do...
Episode 29 - Why you can't listen to the experts
January 13, 2018 22:37 - 7 minutes - 7.24 MBWe worked in 70 year old company, I wanted to run customer service like a start up right after a B round. He ran IT like the KGB. We were a match made in hell. I had a running list of initiatives in customer service and he always said no or it will happen some day. So I found the cloud, I didn't have his patience. He hated the cloud because he read somewhere that the Cloud will never be good enough for enterprises. "I will chain myself to the servers before we ever move to the cloud". He had ...
Episode 28 - Customers don't trust you
October 23, 2017 01:35 - 8 minutes - 7.38 MBI got a check in the mail, it was from my cable company, they reimbursed me (without my asking) for all the times my service went out. I was happy they did this until of course I woke up and realized it was a dream. Getting customers to a place where there is emotional trust doesn't happen by accident, there is a way to begin building trust.
Episode 27 - What Elon Musk Gets About Customer Feedback
October 03, 2017 15:51 - 7 minutes - 7.13 MBI have said it before, most customer surveys are a waste of time. I had a bad experience at Best Buy, so I decided to share some free feedback with their CEO - didn't ask for anything, just wanted to share my suggestions as a customer. My email got forwarded to someone, who proceeded to offer me a gift card to Best Buy - I was offended, and hurt that they think I am so easily bought. Then I got over my hurt feelings and used the gift card to buy a new headset. This is a short episode, listen,...
Episode 26 - "You Must Consider Your Customers Whores" w Jamie Ham
August 29, 2017 15:13 - 28 minutes - 26.1 MB7:11 the problem with NPS is that it is antiquated. 8:00 Lack of imagination. Ingenuity is lagging behind: you already know your customer better than you think. 9:10 do you have a loyalty card? 9:27 I have no fucking idea what it does<--hilarious 9:45 If you pay for loyalty, you consider customers prostitutes?<---YES! 10:12 - i have never sent any of my friends an NPS survey
Episode 25 - The Tyranny Of Incrementalism w Jamie Ham
August 29, 2017 15:11 - 13 minutes - 12.3 MB8:17 Customer experience is a product 11:11 nuke the competition 12:05 CSAT, NPS is no longer cutting edge
Episode 24 - We Are So Disconnected w Jamie Ham
August 29, 2017 15:09 - 15 minutes - 14.3 MBWhy we are so disconnected in the age of Facebook and why it matters
Episode 23 - Why You Can't Trust Customers
June 12, 2017 03:28 - 10 minutes - 9.54 MBIt's never been a better time to have opinions - especially if you are a customer, everyone wants your opinion. How do you feel about the delayed flight? Give us your ideas on how to improve our clusterfuck of a service. On and on. The idea is you create a "Voice of the Customer" program that will inform how a company might improve it's experience. Problem is the "Voice" you are hearing from the customer is uninformed and misleading.
Episode 22 - Customer Service is harder than Rocket Science pt 2 (w Luke Anderson)
April 10, 2017 02:13 - 32 minutes - 30 MB"If I can only clone my best employees". Think about your best employee - the one you are always creepily talking about cloning. The one who seems to connect emotionally with customers, says the right things and customers love. Instead of cloning, the goal should be thinking about how to influence their thinking.
Episode 21 - Customer Service is harder than Rocket Science pt1 (w Luke Anderson)
April 04, 2017 16:52 - 29 minutes - 27.3 MBI got to stop watching the news, it is messing with my worldview - I am pro-human being, I am decidedly optimistic about the inherent goodness of humans. Whether you are bullish or bearish on the goodness of humanity is beside the point. The thing is at some point in your business you have to put two human beings in a room or on the phone who have never met each other - correctly predicting how well that ends is nearly impossible. This is why I was pretty stoked to talk to Luke, he is focusi...
Episode 20 - Jumping Over The Dollars Of Tomorrow For Cents Of Today
March 25, 2017 00:10 - 18 minutes - 16.8 MB"Jumping over the dollars of tomorrow for pennies of today" concludes our guest Michael Furman. Customers are not loyal to the best product, so what are they loyal to? Even though the price point is important what customers care above all, is a great experience. One of the main mistakes companies make is believing that customers think the same the company managers think. Listen to the whole (very insightful) episode to hear the essential takeaways Michael shares from his 30-year-long expe...
Episode 19 - Stop Blaming Training for your customer Service problems
February 28, 2017 16:46 - 6 minutes - 5.5 MBYou don't need more training. Training is not the reason your experience stinks. Most training programs and processes are awful. But if you've had a great training program, it's still not equipped with what it takes to help you build an emotional connection with your customers. You need more contextual coaching to learn how to say "No" to a customer or to say bad news to a customer.
Episode 18 - What A Customer Service Clusterf*** Looks Like
February 17, 2017 18:41 - 21 minutes - 19.7 MBThis is an episode about the anatomy of a painful customer experience. We have a real end consumer on this episode who shares his experience with one of the leading phone companies. There's all of this effort to wow people when people just don't want to go through all the hassle. As a customer I just want you to take care of my problem and make me spend 30 mins on the phone and put me through all of your departments. In the episode, we discuss how all this process can be re-engineered.
Episode 17 - I should be fired w Amayea
November 12, 2016 05:50 - 20 minutes - 18.6 MB"Leadership is the art of disappointing people at a rate they can stand". I hated my boss, I thought he was an a$$hole. I couldn’t afford to quit, I had an addiction to working electricity and a roof over my head. So I did next best thing, I left at exactly 5pm every day to register my protest. There are many things about those days working with him that stuck with me, he loved quotes - some of them were more confusing than profound but they all had one theme - leadership is about getting pe...
Episode 16 - Stop putting Customers First
October 06, 2016 19:00 - 12 minutes - 17.7 MBIf you want great customer experience, stop putting customers first. Think about your organization. Who your company exists to serve? This is about who comes first for you. Is it the end consumer, the vendors, the shareholders, the team? There are trade-offs you have to make once you have clarity on this topic. Hear the story of South West Airline and who they put first.
Episode 15 - What helping to discover Lady Gaga can teach in CX with Louie Lavella
September 21, 2016 18:37 - 24 minutes - 22 MBmaster promoter Louie Lavella is on the issue to talk about social media and CX. The experiences translate from hollywood to wall street
Episode 14 - In Defense of Stupid Questions
August 10, 2016 01:37 - 7 minutes - 8.31 MBI was held at customs for about 30 minutes for being smart ass, I thought the customs agent and I were bonding over our respective jobs. Turns out I crossed the line, he didn't find any humor in me asking him why he has to ask every traveller a set of stupid questions. File that under "doesn't follow rules". No one is required to ask more stupid questions than people with customer facing jobs. They know the questions are stupid, so do their bosses but day after day this harmful practice cont...
Episode 13 - What to do with Millennials in CX
July 21, 2016 00:51 - 19 minutes - 18.1 MBHow can Millennials help or hurt the Customer Experience? They are called the "Control-Alt-Delete" generation because whenever something is not working for them, they reboot and start all over. We have to be very intentional to get the best out of the Millennial workforce and keep in mind that technology has changed the way we can approach work. How to combine technology, Millenials mindset and flexibility search with the needs of the CX departments of companies? We discuss trends and p...
Episode 12 - Your Call May be Recorded for our comic relief
June 23, 2016 14:02 - 19 minutes - 18.3 MBManually pecking around looking for random calls to listen to does little for the customer experience and it’s the financial equivalent of using your 401K to buy lotto tickets. Virtually every 1800# you dial has an ominous warning - “Your call may be recorded for quality purposes.” The net is there are now billions of interactions recorded, yet the quality of interactions have largely stalled.
Episode 11 - The Damn Millennials are killing the Customer Experience
May 19, 2016 02:13 - 19 minutes - 18.1 MBOne of my clients used to brag about his refusal to hire any more young people - his argument was "the damn millennials were too entitled." He would constantly hold up his attrition over the last 5 years as proof. He was in online retail and his margins couldn't handle the abnormally high turnover. So I was hired to bring back a strategy to change the make up of his workforce that was at the time 80% millennials. The data notwithstanding the millennial hypothesis rang like bullshit to me but...
Episode 10 - Evolution of International Contact Center Outsourcing
May 14, 2016 13:39 - 20 minutes - 11.7 MBAdrian joins the show to talk about the evolution of international outsourcing in the contact center space. I would like to take some of the emotion out of it and focus on the facts. Back in the early 2000's when companies started outsourcing in India, the US customers were quite unhappy, but more and more companies invested in outsourcing mainly because of the decrease in costs and the improvement of processes/efficiency. So how it all involved since then?
Episode 9 - Omni Channel Is Bulls***t
May 09, 2016 01:50 - 10 minutes - 13.9 MBCustomers have lots of legitimate complaints about customer service - automated systems that seems to have been designed by sadist. They are constantly punted from one department to the next, and they have to repeat their problem over and over as they are punted from one person to the next like a football on 4th and 25. prioritizing where to focus can be challenging but for heaven’s sake we shouldn’t be focusing on a unicorn like omni-Channel
Episode 8 - The Place For Humans In the Customer Experience with Jamie Ham
March 19, 2016 03:40 - 17 minutes - 24.6 MBTechnology is changing the landscape of the customer experience. On today's show Jamie Ham discusses what the future might look like, why you should fire customers and how humans thrive in this equation.
Episode 7 - Being a Call Center Agent Sucks and how we can fix it
February 22, 2016 01:44 - 32 minutes - 44.4 MBI asked an executive if his son would be considering a job in his own call center and you would think I was suggesting his son take a job with ISIS! He was completely disgusted with the question. I don't blame him, the job sucks. It doesn't have to be this way. The thing is, it's not just because of screaming customers, it's largely because of the environment we have created for people in these jobs. For starters, many organizations treat the roles like prostitution with patronizing policies...
Episode 6 - Why car dealerships are going extinct with Jake Ramstack
February 12, 2016 02:42 - 22 minutes - 20.8 MBYou are not supposed to be able to buy a house or a car without a middleman - whose value is dubious at best. The customer experience can definitely improve but what role will the actual dealers play? Nowadays people need the middleman less each day. But what about if, instead just pushing for a sale, they delivered real expertise and provided a great Customer Experience to help you make the best choice for you. Listen to our chat and the specific cases and topics we tackle. We also discu...