Reducing your customer defection rate by 5% can increase your profitability by 25 to 125%. (source) Advice from Jennifer Blackmon, Corporate Director, Culture Transformation at The Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center: Many organizations dedicate significant resources to effective problem resolution training when they could be training their employees on how to avoid the same incidents altogether. Most of us understand this logic but fail to completely refocus the energy. Knowing the difference between a one-time mistake and a recurring issue is a great place to begin. Effectively tracking defects gives you the ability to view the scope of your customer incidents and identify those that will make the biggest impact when resolved. The good news is, once you understand the causes and consequences of the breakdown, many of the answers are most likely right in your building. Leverage your employees’ expertise and creativity to solve the problem and improve your customers’ experiences. At The Ritz-Carlton, we understand that the best ideas come from the people actually doing the work. When employees have the opportunity to submit ideas or be involved in root cause analysis, then processes are in a state of continuous improvement and breakdowns have a way of disappearing. ∞ Join us for a one-day symposium on November 12th. The day includes a Ritz-Carlton executive panel with Herve Humler, president & chief operations officer of The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, L.L.C. The Blog Post Significant Stat: Reduce Customer Defection, Grow Profits appeared first on The Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center.

While thinking about this blog, I turned to the best source for advice to young girls - other young girls who are happy and thriving - so I asked my granddaughters and the daughters of one of our leaders here at Fierce what advice they would give a freshman girl in high school.Clara, 15: "Do not judge someone until you know them well enough, talk to as many people as possible, wear things that make you love your body and make you feel beautiful, attend as many sports games as you can, join clubs or sports, go to homecoming because there are only 4 in your life! Don’t be afraid to ask your teachers questions if you are confused, be nice to everyone."Maizy, 17: "Be nice. To everyone. People aren’t as scary as you imagine and making someone’s day is so worth it. I would agree with Clara on joining sports/clubs. It’s a great way to make new friends, immerse yourself in something that keeps you grounded throughout high school, and to meet upper classmen who can answer questions and help mentor/guide you. Do your homework and respect your teachers! As a senior, you’ll have to ask for teacher recommendation letters for college applications and it’s a lot easier if you have a bunch of teachers who like you to choose from ;). Cheesy, but be yourself and love it. Experiment - find things you like, things you don’t, find yourself. And don’t worry if you aren’t totally sure of yourself your first year of high school. I’m a senior and just now beginning to be comfortable with myself/figure myself out! But there will always be someone who will appreciate you for you; I don’t know anyone at my high school who doesn’t have friends."Teagan, 17 & Kira, 14: "Trust your instincts about people and situations. If you feel good in your friends’ company, it most likely means they treat you well. If you feel uncomfortable or bad when you interact with your friends, it is most likely not you, but them. Hang out with people who treat you well. Get help when you need it. Don’t be afraid to ask adults for help. Your counselors at school are there to support you! Don’t be afraid to be weird. Hang out with people who get you and appreciate your weirdness. Don’t do something you don’t want to do just because someone else thinks it’s a good idea or will be fun. Don’t let someone pressure you. Find something you love to do and pour your heart into it. You don’t have to have it all figured out. The journey lasts a lifetime. Enjoy it!I will add: Navigate your life one conversation at a time. You already are, whether you realize it or not. Your time in school, your eventual career, your relationships and your life will succeed or fail, gradually then suddenly, one conversation at a time.The post Advice to Young Girls appeared first on Fierce, Inc..

This week’s Fierce resource was originally published on Harvard Business Review and explores why women are often labeled "too emotional" in the workplace.Even with gender equality initiatives, women are still underrepresented in most senior leadership positions across corporate America. Women account for less than 5% of Fortune 500 CEOs, less than 15% of executive officers at those companies, and only 6% of partners in venture capital firms.Why does gender imbalance still exist?It’s partially due to the way women are misinterpreted at work. According to How Women Can Show Passion at Work Without Seeming "Emotional", certain gender biases lead to women being labeled "too emotional" in the workplace. Studies have shown that when women passionately argue against the consensus, their male colleagues view them as "emotional" rather than credible.How do we make sure communication isn’t lost in translation?"Combining passion with logic, specificity, creativity, and experience can be more effective than relying on passion alone. If some colleagues, male or female, don’t respond to passionate appeals, they may respond more favorably to a different tactic. In addition, the versatility signals that you are in control of your emotions and able to switch gears in order to effectively make a point."Read the article.The post Fierce Resource: How Women Can Show Passion at Work Without Seeming "Emotional" appeared first on Fierce, Inc..

Facilitators make the difference between a mere "boss" and a true leader.

Imagine if every person acted like a lady or gentleman….. Engagement Tip: Ladies and gentlemen are polished in their professional appearance. Depending on your business, "polished" may not be a word you immediately think of. You may think, "I work in a diner," or "I work in an office where no customers ever see me." No matter your work situation, customers and colleagues will always appreciate it when you appear fresh and groomed. Put simply, it’s polite to look put-together. It’s what one might call a "hygiene factor" (literally) in business and employee engagement. When you are polished, you seem prepared to provide excellent work and service for your customers and colleagues. Even if your dress code is shorts and a t-shirt, you can look stylish simply by ensuring your clothes are clean, unwrinkled and appropriate in nature; i.e., nothing offensive and no tears, etc. Like it or not - your customers are judging you. You could provide the finest personal service, but if your appearance is untidy, you will leave your customers with a memory of the wrinkles in your shirt or stains on your pants. Also, your clothing will be the first impression customers have of your organization and your competency. You want your appearance to help establish confidence. At The Ritz-Carlton, our Credo specifies that we provide "a warm, relaxed, yet refined ambience." One of the ways this is fulfilled is through our commitment to looking polished, which is articulated through this Service Value: "I am proud of my professional appearance, language and behavior." ∞ The motto of The Ritz-Carlton is "We are Ladies and Gentlemen serving Ladies and Gentlemen." This motto sets a tone of goodwill and grace for all. The Blog Post Etiquette & Engagement: Polished appeared first on The Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center.

Here at TalentLMS headquarters, building a great LMS platform is not just a business for us — it’s also our passion. Like modern-day craftsmen we take pride in our products and in how well our customers and the market at large has embraced them. And today, we have a special reason to be proud of, as GetApp -the premiere Cloud-based business apps marketplace — has just been named TalentLMS as the #1 LMS solution in its Q3 GetRank listing of the top 25 LMS apps. GetRank is GetApp’s quarterly ranking of the top 25 Cloud-based business apps across different enterprise-focused product categories (CRM, LMS, HR, etc). GetApp uses a variety of publicly available, in-house, and third-party data to calculate each apps GetRank scores, and applies its unique in the industry methodology to weight multiple factors such us user generated reviews, integrations, mobile platforms, media presence, and security. You can read GetApp’s Q3 LMS ranking in full here. We started working on TalentLMS with the aim to build the best and easiest-to-use Cloud-based eLearning platform, and our market success along with GetApp’s ranking us as the #1 Cloud LMS is a vindication of our vision and hard work. That said, we’re also especially happy for the glowing reviews TalentLMS has received all these years from our customers at GetApps’ TalentLMS review page, and elsewhere. Save for our Support team, which will stay put to provide you with the best support this side of the galaxy, the rest of us will now go and celebrate our victory with some champagne and M&Ms. Then, starting again tomorrow, we’ll get back to working on making TalentLMS even better — as we don’t plan on leaving that #1 spot anytime soon. The post #1! TalentLMS tops the GetApp best LMS rankings for Q3 2015! appeared first on TalentLMS Blog.

Attempting to cover all the integration options offered by TalentLMS is like playing a game of whack-a-mole. Just as soon as you’ve covered a few (like we did here, here and here), several more pop up in some new update release. Never ones to give up easily, in this post we’re gonna have a look at how you can integrate TalentLMS with Zopim. Zopim, in case you didn’t know, is a popular Live Chat service created by Zendesk (the company behind the cloud-based customer service platform of the same name). In other words, Zopim is a Javascript "widget" (programming speak for "a webpage control that you can visually interact with"), that lets you chat with your users. Zendesk intends for Zopim to be primarily used for customer support, so their marketing copy (and help pages) go on about using Zopim to chat with "customers". Don’t be confused by that - in TalentLMS you’ll be using it to communicate with your learners (which, depending on whether you offer paid courses or not, may or may not also be your customers). Installing Zopim So how should you go about integrating Zopim? As is the case with most of TalentLMS’ integration options, it couldn’t be easier. Zopim, is essentially a third-party Javascript, err, script, that TalentLMS needs to load along with its own scripts in order to enable the Chat service. To add it into TalentLMS, you first need to get a code snippet from your Zopim account page. Confused? Don’t be. We’ll break the whole process down for you, step by step: (1) Go to the Zopim website and log in to your Zopim account (if you don’t already have one, you’ll need to sign up first). (2) After you’ve logged in to Zopim, you should be able to get the required snippet by visiting the "Widget" page (its entry appears somewhere near the bottom of the left sidebar). (3) Select it with the mouse and copy the script that you see at point 1 in the image above. Copy that snippet to your clipboard (Control-C or Cmd-C on a Mac), and keep it there, as you’ll need to paste into TalentLMS in the next steps. (4) Log in to your TalentLMS administrative account (you need to be an admin; instructor or student won’t do), and go the Themes tab of the Settings page. (5) On the "Update Theme" dropdown menu, click on the downward arrow at the right and select the "Additional Javascript" option. (6) On the window that pops up, paste the code snipped you copied from Zopim in the third step and click save. And that’s it. A chat window should now immediately appear in the right corner of your panel. If you don’t see it, do a full page reload (Control-R or Cmd-R on the Mac). If it’s still missing, check that you’ve copied correctly the code snippet as provided by Zopim and repeat the process. Now you should be all set to start communicating with your learners using your fancy new Zopim chat from inside TalentLMS. Conclusion In this post we looked into how you can integrate Zendesk’s popular Zopim real-time chat service into TalentLMS. Such a service can be handy not just for offering customer support to your students, but also as part of your Instructor-Led Training sessions. If you want to know more about TalentLMS and its numerous integration options, why don’t you simply sign up for free and take it for a drive? The post Integrate all the things! Hooking up TalentLMS with Zopim appeared first on TalentLMS Blog.

Although every organization is striving to deliver perfect customer service, not all of your customer interactions will be home runs. Physician Brian Goldman points out in a TEDx Talk that a good batting average is .300—and that means a baseball player has only hit the ball three out of 10 times. A player who hits the ball four out of 10 times is considered legendary. In customer service, when we swing and miss, it’s important to know how to quickly rectify the situation. One of the most important steps we can take is to set appropriate customer expectations, and this can begin before we even meet our customer. Every interaction with a customer—on a website, over the phone or in person—is an opportunity to set realistic expectations and prevent future disappointments. The following DO’s and DON’Ts share specific ways organizations can better manage customer expectations. DO Value Your Customer’s Trust When your customers are upset, their frustrations extend beyond a specific incident. They’re also upset because you have violated their trust. They may be saying to you, "I’m upset because you promised me a free toaster and instead you gave me a flashlight." However, what they are really thinking is, "You’ve let me down, and I’m worried I won’t be able to continue trusting you." Everyone in your organization must contribute to earning customer loyalty by endeavoring to establish and restore a customer’s faith in your services. One of the Service Values at The Ritz-Carlton states "I build strong relationships and create Ritz-Carlton guests for life." Lifelong relationships tend to include an occasional disappointment. However, when relationships are built on a foundation of trust, you have more understanding and goodwill as you work through any difficulties. You want to do everything possible to earn and maintain your customers’ confidence, and managing customer expectations will help preserve trust. DON’T Oversell Your Products or Services Everyone wants to be the best. If you’re a diner, you may want to claim you serve the best waffles in the country—or even on the planet! The problem with claiming to be the best is that you immediately set yourself up for comparisons and disappointments. Your customers may try your waffles, and they may really like them. However, liking them is no longer enough. Your waffles have to be the best waffles in the world! Your customers will be dissatisfied if your waffles aren’t far and above any other waffles they’ve ever eaten. Are you losing customers by setting the bar too high? When you inflate customers’ expectations, you’re making it more difficult for your organization to achieve success. DO Pay Special Attention to Time Frames Organizations often make promises related to time. "Someone will be with you in a moment," "You’ll have the shipment by Thursday," or the ever-so-vague "This won’t take long at all." When time is part of the expectation, you’re in greater danger of losing trust if you get it wrong. If that shipment does not arrive on Thursday, your customer will be understandably upset. Depending on how you handle the situation, you may lose the customer’s trust altogether. If your organization is proactive in their communication, quick to look for solutions and rectify any difficulties and is apologetic, then you have the opportunity to restore faith. However, if your organization fails to communicate with the customer and maintains an indifferent, "win some, lose some" attitude, you will most likely lose future business. The healthcare industry has one of the toughest challenges in regard to setting time frames. Doctors and nurses are in a difficult position because patients—and their families—want to know when they can expect to be well. It’s important to give patients hope; however, because doctors and nurses are also dealing with people when they are the most vulnerable, it’s important not to set expectations too high. If patients think they can expect to be up and waltzing next week, it will be hugely disappointing if they’re still confined to a sickbed. Healthcare professionals risk not only losing the trust of their patients, but also diminishing the spirits of their patients and their families. DON’T Make Impossible Promises Sometimes organizations make promises that seem possible when they’re being concocted in a boardroom with a group of passionate and committed executives. However, your staff—the people who will be fulfilling the promises—must buy-in and agree on the feasibility of the promises as well. At The Ritz-Carlton, one of our Service Values ensures that our employees—known as our Ladies and Gentlemen—are "involved in the planning of the work that affects [them.]" Your organization can make promises to your customer—as long as the promises are truly executable.  Back in the 1960s, Avis rental car launched the tagline and brand promise, "We try Harder." They maintained that promise for five decades, and according to AdAge, the "campaign reversed the company’s fortunes, helping it to go from losing $3.2 million to turning a profit of $1.2 million for the first time in 13 years." DO Practice Seamless Communication Customers may contact your organization through email, text, social media, phone or in person, and it is your organization’s responsibility to record and transmit any communications appropriately. Your customer does not realize the complexities of your organization. Your customers want to believe that they can send one communication, and they will be heard. That is their expectation. When there are communication breakdowns, customers often become frustrated. Think about the customer who calls your establishment to make a special request and is told everything is set, but finds out later that the request was never passed along. Or the customer who finds a coupon for your store on the Web, but when the customer arrives at the store, he or she finds out that none of your employees know how to process the coupon. Worst of all is when a customer is handed-off from one employee to another and each employee tells the customer a different story. When customers are forced to sort through confusion and have to fight to be heard, they will lose confidence and faith in your organization. If your customers must be handed-off to another employee or if customers will need to reiterate their needs to another department, be sure to communicate the process to your customers. Good communications can deflate frustration and is a cornerstone of trust. Don’t Forget to Value Your Customers Your customers have more power than ever. They can shop anywhere. Even if you’re the only retail store on an island, you’re still competing with E-tail. If your customers are unhappy with your product or service, they don’t just tell their neighbor or friends. They tell the Internet and share their opinion around the world. Your customers expect to be valued. They expect to be cared for. When they don’t feel appreciated, they can easily carry through on the threat, "I will take my business elsewhere!" If your organization isn’t willing to make extra efforts and show customers that they’re valued, your customers will probably find a competitor who is willing to earn their business. Again, small gestures can make a small impact. Saying "thank you" and "we appreciate your business" are easy, cost-free and express your gratitude. Focusing on Expectations It’s important to meet the expressed and unexpressed needs of your customers, but at the same time, make sure you set realistic expectations. If you’re resolving an issue, be sure you direct your customers through any process and communicate regularly, thanking them for their patience along the way. Building relationships with your customers and managing their expectations takes extra time and effort, but it is rewarded by positive word-of-mouth and customer loyalty.∞ The Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center offers advisory services, courses and presentations to organizations that wish to benchmark the award-winning business practices of The Ritz-Carlton. Your organization can learn about The Ritz-Carlton methodology for customer service, employee engagement and leadership development. We also guide organizations through a multi-step process in order to achieve sustainable culture transformation. The Blog Post DOs & DON’Ts of Setting Customer Expectations appeared first on The Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center.

Although every organization is striving to deliver perfect customer service, not all of your customer interactions will be home runs. Physician Brian Goldman points out in a TEDx Talk that a good batting average is .300—and that means a baseball player has only hit the ball three out of 10 times. A player who hits the ball four out of 10 times is considered legendary. In customer service, when we swing and miss, it’s important to know how to quickly rectify the situation. One of the most important steps we can take is to set appropriate customer expectations, and this can begin before we even meet our customer. Every interaction with a customer—on a website, over the phone or in person—is an opportunity to set realistic expectations and prevent future disappointments. The following DO’s and DON’Ts share specific ways organizations can better manage customer expectations. DO Value Your Customer’s Trust When your customers are upset, their frustrations extend beyond a specific incident. They’re also upset because you have violated their trust. They may be saying to you, "I’m upset because you promised me a free toaster and instead you gave me a flashlight." However, what they are really thinking is, "You’ve let me down, and I’m worried I won’t be able to continue trusting you." Everyone in your organization must contribute to earning customer loyalty by endeavoring to establish and restore a customer’s faith in your services. One of the Service Values at The Ritz-Carlton states "I build strong relationships and create Ritz-Carlton guests for life." Lifelong relationships tend to include an occasional disappointment. However, when relationships are built on a foundation of trust, you have more understanding and goodwill as you work through any difficulties. You want to do everything possible to earn and maintain your customers’ confidence, and managing customer expectations will help preserve trust. DON’T Oversell Your Products or Services Everyone wants to be the best. If you’re a diner, you may want to claim you serve the best waffles in the country—or even on the planet! The problem with claiming to be the best is that you immediately set yourself up for comparisons and disappointments. Your customers may try your waffles, and they may really like them. However, liking them is no longer enough. Your waffles have to be the best waffles in the world! Your customers will be dissatisfied if your waffles aren’t far and above any other waffles they’ve ever eaten. Are you losing customers by setting the bar too high? When you inflate customers’ expectations, you’re making it more difficult for your organization to achieve success. DO Pay Special Attention to Time Frames Organizations often make promises related to time. "Someone will be with you in a moment," "You’ll have the shipment by Thursday," or the ever-so-vague "This won’t take long at all." When time is part of the expectation, you’re in greater danger of losing trust if you get it wrong. If that shipment does not arrive on Thursday, your customer will be understandably upset. Depending on how you handle the situation, you may lose the customer’s trust altogether. If your organization is proactive in their communication, quick to look for solutions and rectify any difficulties and is apologetic, then you have the opportunity to restore faith. However, if your organization fails to communicate with the customer and maintains an indifferent, "win some, lose some" attitude, you will most likely lose future business. The healthcare industry has one of the toughest challenges in regard to setting time frames. Doctors and nurses are in a difficult position because patients—and their families—want to know when they can expect to be well. It’s important to give patients hope; however, because doctors and nurses are also dealing with people when they are the most vulnerable, it’s important not to set expectations too high. If patients think they can expect to be up and waltzing next week, it will be hugely disappointing if they’re still confined to a sickbed. Healthcare professionals risk not only losing the trust of their patients, but also diminishing the spirits of their patients and their families. DON’T Make Impossible Promises Sometimes organizations make promises that seem possible when they’re being concocted in a boardroom with a group of passionate and committed executives. However, your staff—the people who will be fulfilling the promises—must buy-in and agree on the feasibility of the promises as well. At The Ritz-Carlton, one of our Service Values ensures that our employees—known as our Ladies and Gentlemen—are "involved in the planning of the work that affects [them.]" Your organization can make promises to your customer—as long as the promises are truly executable.  Back in the 1960s, Avis rental car launched the tagline and brand promise, "We try Harder." They maintained that promise for five decades, and according to AdAge, the "campaign reversed the company’s fortunes, helping it to go from losing $3.2 million to turning a profit of $1.2 million for the first time in 13 years." DO Practice Seamless Communication Customers may contact your organization through email, text, social media, phone or in person, and it is your organization’s responsibility to record and transmit any communications appropriately. Your customer does not realize the complexities of your organization. Your customers want to believe that they can send one communication, and they will be heard. That is their expectation. When there are communication breakdowns, customers often become frustrated. Think about the customer who calls your establishment to make a special request and is told everything is set, but finds out later that the request was never passed along. Or the customer who finds a coupon for your store on the Web, but when the customer arrives at the store, he or she finds out that none of your employees know how to process the coupon. Worst of all is when a customer is handed-off from one employee to another and each employee tells the customer a different story. When customers are forced to sort through confusion and have to fight to be heard, they will lose confidence and faith in your organization. If your customers must be handed-off to another employee or if customers will need to reiterate their needs to another department, be sure to communicate the process to your customers. Good communications can deflate frustration and is a cornerstone of trust. Don’t Forget to Value Your Customers Your customers have more power than ever. They can shop anywhere. Even if you’re the only retail store on an island, you’re still competing with E-tail. If your customers are unhappy with your product or service, they don’t just tell their neighbor or friends. They tell the Internet and share their opinion around the world. Your customers expect to be valued. They expect to be cared for. When they don’t feel appreciated, they can easily carry through on the threat, "I will take my business elsewhere!" If your organization isn’t willing to make extra efforts and show customers that they’re valued, your customers will probably find a competitor who is willing to earn their business. Again, small gestures can make a small impact. Saying "thank you" and "we appreciate your business" are easy, cost-free and express your gratitude. Focusing on Expectations It’s important to meet the expressed and unexpressed needs of your customers, but at the same time, make sure you set realistic expectations. If you’re resolving an issue, be sure you direct your customers through any process and communicate regularly, thanking them for their patience along the way. Building relationships with your customers and managing their expectations takes extra time and effort, but it is rewarded by positive word-of-mouth and customer loyalty.∞ The Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center offers advisory services, courses and presentations to organizations that wish to benchmark the award-winning business practices of The Ritz-Carlton. Your organization can learn about The Ritz-Carlton methodology for customer service, employee engagement and leadership development. We also guide organizations through a multi-step process in order to achieve sustainable culture transformation. The Blog Post DO’s & DON’Ts of Setting Customer Expectations appeared first on The Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center.

Robotisation is going to demand a lot of change from businesses, not just structurally but emotionally.