Tag: Seth Godin

When customer service succeeds (and a pause)

As more of my writing energy flows toward work (82,000 words on our internal blogs this year) I find less for these posts. I have a half dozen drafts, but each resists my attempt to create better shape and quality. So rather than send half-baked ideas I’m going to pause my bi-weekly schedule of posts. Call it a summer vacation of sorts.

This week, instead of a post, I’d encourage you to read this Seth Godin post from 2015. It remains one of my absolute favorites about customer support. The core of his idea is that:

Customer service succeeds when it accomplishes what the organization sets out to accomplish.

This also means that when we do something new we have to think about how it supports our organization’s goal. Impact comes when new ideas match a company’s definition of customer support. This is as true in strategy as it is in individual support replies. No matter our role, our work is better when we connect it to what our organization sets out to accomplish.

No tactic, approach, or strategy is true for all (or even most!) teams. But that also means we can learn from organizations that take steps we would not. Instead of brushing off an inapplicable idea, learn to ask why it works for some other company. If it won’t work for your team, try to figure out why it’s successful for another.

What is customer service for?

Customer service is difficult, expensive and unpredictable. But it’s a mistake to assume that any particular example is automatically either good or bad. A company might spend almost nothing on customer service but still succeed in reaching its goals.

Customer service succeeds when it accomplishes what the organization sets out to accomplish.

What is customer service for? – Seth Godin.

Be human

When in doubt, be human.

Seth Godin – Two purposes of user feedback.

I didn’t have time:

This actually means, “it wasn’t important enough.” It wasn’t a high priority, fun, distracting, profitable or urgent enough to make it to the top of the list.

Measuring without measuring:

Measurement is fabulous. Unless you’re busy measuring what’s easy to measure as opposed to what’s important.

The extraordinary revolution of media choice

The idea that someone can program our consumption is becoming obsolete, and fast. The front page of the paper disappears in a digital world, where there is no front page–merely the page I got to by clicking on a link from a friend.

Seth Godin – The extraordinary revolution of media choice.

Skinnier

A newspaper can happily support a few reporters and an ad guy if it gives up the paper, the offices and the rest of the trappings.

Too often, we look at the new thing and demand to know how it supports the old thing. Perhaps, though, the question is, how does the new thing allow us to think skinnier.

Seth Godin – Skinnier.

First, make rice. Before you move on, it’s crucial to really understand and master the basics. Sometimes it’s those basic tasks that are really the most important.

Just a myth

The key word, I think, is spiritual. Mythological brands make a spiritual connection with the user, delivering something that we can’t find on our own… or, at the very least, giving us a slate we can use to write our own spirituality on.

People use a Dell. They are an Apple.

Seth Godin – Just a myth.

The game theory of discovery and the birth of the free-gap

As we’ve made it easier for ideas to spread digitally, we’ve actually amplified the gap between free and paid. It turns out that there’s a huge cohort that’s just not going to pay for anything if they can possibly avoid it.

Seth Godin – The game theory of discovery and the birth of the free-gap