Issue No. 210 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting introduces a new book on customer service with 34 made-to-order staff meeting topics. And this reminder: check out my Management Buckets website with dozens of resources and downloadable worksheets for your staff meetings.
No Nibbling!
What’s not to like about a book with 34 short chapters on customer service? Leverage 10, 20 or all 34 topics and you have a ready-made talk and discussion for your next 10, 20 or 34 weekly staff meetings with your department or your entire team.
Here’s a pop quiz for your managers. Just two questions:
1) How many of our team members and volunteers need improved customer service skills?
2) How much money will we invest this year in improving our customer service—and what’s the downside if we don’t invest any funds?
This quick-reading book might be your launching pad for improving the way you serve your customers, clients, donors and volunteers. The author won the World Championship of Public Speaking for Toastmasters International (out-talking 150,000 Toastmasters from 65 countries). So if his book is only one-tenth as good as his platform skills, it’s still a winner.
Once I scanned a few chapters, I was hooked—then I went back and read the first chapter and…oh-my-goodness…you have to read Michael Aun’s horror story at the grocery store that rhymes with “ogre.” (He’s repeated the story on hundreds of platforms since. And that could happen to your brand—if you don’t buy the book and implement his customer service ideas.)
Take a look:
--Chapter 1: Unhappy Customers Will Not Only Fire You But They Will Tell Others
--Chapter 3: Fix the Problem; Don’t Fix the Blame
--Chapter 4: Always Give Them a Baker’s Dozen
--Chapter 17: Find Out What the Customers Need and Give It to Them
--Chapter 19: Become a Mentor to Your Client; Coach and Counsel!
--Chapter 22: If You Pay Peanuts, You Get Monkeys!
--Chapter 25: The Old Way Is Rarely the Best Way Because Change Is Constant
--Chapter 27: Bad News Travels at the Speed of Light
And then this gem: Chapter 15: Nibble Away at Customer Solutions. His point is: DON’T nibble—solve the problem. Aun writes, “It’s not surgery that kills, it’s delayed surgery. This is a favorite saying of mine. What it means: more often than not, when you address a problem early on, it won’t fester into an unsolvable dilemma. Address the problem before it becomes a catastrophe.”
If your organization is strong in casting the vision, but soft in the Customer Bucket, add this practical primer to your resource shelf.
To order this book from Amazon, click on the graphic below for It’s the Customer, Stupid! 34 Wake-up Calls to Help You Stay Client-Focused, by Michael A. Aun.
Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
1) In the chapter, “Winning Is Never Final and Losing Is Never Fatal,” the author says that “stuff is going to go wrong, so get over it. Fix it and move on, and above all, be thankful. This is a gift that keeps on giving. The key is to get people to fail faster.” What do you think he means by that?
2) How much formal customer service training have you had? Do you need more? What would you recommend as a first step?
The 4 Parts of Volunteerism - Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit
One of the big ideas for nonprofit organizations and churches in the Volunteer Bucket, Chapter 12, in Mastering the Management Buckets is to treat volunteers and paid staff with equal intentionality. Read the core competency for this bucket: “We reject the notion of a two-tiered Kingdom workforce. Instead, we seek to treat our paid volunteers (staff) and our unpaid volunteers with equal passion and intentionality. We will never have enough paid staff to accomplish our Kingdom assignments, so we continually hone our skills in volunteer cultivation, recruitment, orientation and engagement.”
When you assess your effectiveness in the four parts of volunteer leadership (cultivation, recruitment, orientation and engagement), what do you do well and what needs work?
For more ideas and resources on volunteerism, visit the Volunteer Bucket.
JOIN US! March 15, 2011 – ECFA FORUMS 2011: “Board Governance Essentials for Ministries” with John Pearson, Wes Willmer and Dan Busby at The Hope Center, Plano, Texas (Dallas area). Register at ECFA.
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