Name: Seth Brickner

Web Site: http://about.me/sethbrickner

Bio: Seth Brickner is a Developer and Facilitator with Impact Learning Systems International. In addition to training and development, his background includes education, technical support and customer service. When not traveling or in front of a computer monitor, Seth can be found running, cooking, playing guitar, reading, convincing himself he can sing, or enjoying the hiking trails of Colorado.

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Loyalty: The Currency of Customer Satisfaction — Part 2

March 30th, 2012

Cus­tomer loy­alty is the golden ticket to long term com­pany suc­cess. Loyal cus­tomers pro­vide repeat busi­ness and rec­om­mend prod­ucts and ser­vices to friends and fam­ily. It is com­mon knowl­edge that acquir­ing a new cus­tomer costs at least five times more than retain­ing an exist­ing cus­tomer. What can your com­pany do to “prove itself” and earn the respect and loy­alty of customers?

Treat Your Cur­rent Cus­tomers Like Gold

In terms of mar­ket­ing and refer­rals, loyal cus­tomers equal dol­lar signs.  It’s not enough to meet their needs by pro­vid­ing ade­quate ser­vice; to gain the loy­alty of cur­rent cus­tomers and a rep­u­ta­tion among prospec­tive cus­tomers, the ser­vice offered by all the client-facing depart­ments of your orga­ni­za­tion has to be excep­tional.  Even com­pa­nies with very good rep­u­ta­tions for cus­tomer ser­vice don’t rest on their lau­rels; they con­tinue to pro­vide train­ing and coach­ing for their client-facing representatives.

Watch Your Commitments

In the process of secur­ing a sale, make sure not to promise any­thing your orga­ni­za­tion can’t deliver.  The long term effects are dev­as­tat­ing and will come back to haunt even the most expe­ri­enced sales pro­fes­sional.  Noth­ing under­mines loy­alty faster than a loss of credibility.

Make It Easy For New Cus­tomers to Love You


There’s a say­ing among ad agen­cies: “The day you sign a new client is the day you begin los­ing them.”  The sad truth is that many times we put our best resources into the acqui­si­tion of new clients, some­times at the expense of what we need to do to retain them.  Since loyal cus­tomers are our best form adver­tis­ing, and because it’s at least five-to-ten times more costly to acquire a new cus­tomer than to retain one, think about all you can do to wel­come new cus­tomers.  Con­sider video tuto­ri­als, toll free num­bers, sur­veys to see if they are using your prod­uct or ser­vice as eas­ily and as often as antic­i­pated, call backs to ensure they had an easy sales process and that any unex­pected issues were resolved to their satisfaction.

Make It Easy For Cus­tomers to Com­plain


Robert Stephens, founder of The Geek Squad, believes that it’s impor­tant to make it easy for cus­tomers to com­plain.  Com­plaints are an essen­tial part of cus­tomer feed­back; if there’s some­thing wrong, we want peo­ple to tell us.   The eas­ier you make it for cus­tomers to com­plain, the more likely they will be to give you a chance to save them as cus­tomers.  It’s been shown that cus­tomers who have had their prob­lems resolved quickly and pro­fes­sion­ally are more loyal than cus­tomers who have never had a problem.

Lis­ten and Act 

It’s one thing to give peo­ple an oppor­tu­nity to offer their com­ments; it’s another to take action on it.  This is one of the prin­ci­ples that Microsoft lever­aged in their recent Win­dows 7 cam­paign with the state­ment “Win­dows 7 was my idea.”  Cus­tomers feel val­i­dated when the com­pa­nies with whom they do busi­ness take their sug­ges­tions seri­ously enough to incor­po­rate them into their prod­ucts.  You want more cus­tomer loy­alty?  Lis­ten to them, and act on what they tell you when­ever possible!

These are some ways to earn more of the cur­rency that is cus­tomer loy­alty. How is your com­pany keep­ing cus­tomers loyal?

Click here to read Loy­alty: The Cur­rency of Cus­tomer Sat­is­fac­tion — Part 1.

 

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Loyalty: The Currency of Customer Satisfaction — Part 1

March 23rd, 2012

Check out any online com­mu­nity that deals with cus­tomer ser­vice (and believe me, I’ve checked out my share) and before long you’ll find a post­ing on “loy­alty.”  The top­ics are var­ied: “Loy­alty and Cus­tomer Sat­is­fac­tion;”  “Does qual­ity ser­vice always equal loy­alty?” etc.  The desire to under­stand loy­alty is sim­ple:  cus­tomer loy­alty is the “cur­rency” we use to mea­sure our cus­tomers’ satisfaction.

What are some of the major fac­tors that impact cus­tomer loyalty?

• Exclu­siv­ity (“oblig­a­tory loy­alty”):  If a com­pany pro­duces a unique prod­uct or is the only ser­vice provider in a cer­tain area, the loy­alty of their cus­tomers is oblig­a­tory.  This doesn’t mean that they don’t also earntheir customer’s loy­alty; it sim­ply means that it’s hard to gauge loy­alty sim­ply by look­ing at the cus­tomer base.Exam­ple:  Sev­eral years ago I lived in the moun­tains, and there was only one wire­less ser­vice provider for our area.  If I wanted to make wire­less phone calls from my home, I had to use that com­pany.  As it turns out, their cus­tomer ser­vice was excel­lent, and when I later moved to the city I con­tin­ued to use this com­pany, although slightly more expen­sive than their com­peti­tors, because they had always treated me so well.
• Rep­u­ta­tion: Some com­pa­nies have gained the loy­alty of their cus­tomers due to their rep­u­ta­tion.  Whether it is the size of the com­pany, their rel­a­tive mar­ket share, how long they have been in busi­ness or the num­ber of sat­is­fied cus­tomers who have advo­cated for the com­pany, it’s prob­a­bly fair to say that most peo­ple like to do busi­ness with com­pa­nies that have a good reputation.

Exam­ple: Aside from file servers, most of us who use com­put­ers in our daily work rou­tines are run­ning those com­put­ers on oper­at­ing sys­tems from one of two major com­pa­nies.  The rea­sons for this are many-fold and include the abil­ity to obtain timely sup­port, the wide vari­ety of appli­ca­tions sup­ported by these sys­tems, the like­li­hood these com­pa­nies will remain in busi­ness dur­ing our tenure with their prod­ucts, and our belief that they have too much to lose by not stand­ing by their prod­ucts.  In other words, their depth and breadth of mar­ket are pos­i­tive attrib­utes that make us want to do busi­ness with them.

• Iner­tia:  Some busi­nesses achieve the “loy­alty” of their cus­tomers sim­ply because it becomes too hard for their cus­tomers to switch to a com­peti­tor.Exam­ples:  It’s eas­ier for many peo­ple to stick with the same soft­ware appli­ca­tions they are used to, even when they know bet­ter appli­ca­tions are out there, sim­ply because they fear the learn­ing curve of adopt­ing a new program.Likewise, a per­son may not trade in her car for a bet­ter vehi­cle, even one that is safer, gets bet­ter gas mileage, is less expen­sive and whose aes­thet­ics hap­pen to appeal to her more, because of the has­sle involved with ter­mi­nat­ing her cur­rent lease.
• Proven track record:  Those com­pa­nies that have “proven” them­selves to their cus­tomers enjoy the deep­est type of loy­alty.  These are the com­pa­nies that:
  • Have had their prod­ucts used suc­cess­fully by many people;
  • Pro­vide excel­lent ser­vice in all the depart­ments with whom their cus­tomers inter­act; and
  • Stand by their com­mit­ment to ser­vice when sup­port is needed.

These com­pa­nies have earned the loy­alty of their cus­tomers in an impor­tant way: they have “lived the promise” they made back when the cus­tomer was still a “prospect.”  They have shown they can deliver and now cus­tomers trust them.

This type of loy­alty is the most highly regarded because it tends to have the strongest impact on cus­tomer reten­tion.  Cus­tomers often stick with com­pa­nies with a proven track record even if they are not the cheap­est, offer the most con­ve­nience or have the most fea­tures in their prod­ucts.  It is also more likely that if some­thing goes wrong, cus­tomers of com­pa­nies with proven track records will be more for­giv­ing of the issue and more patient while a fix is put in place.

Click here to read Loy­alty: The Cur­rency of Cus­tomer Sat­is­fac­tion — Part 2 and learn how your com­pany can "prove itself" and earn the respect and loy­alty of customers.

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Positive Service Language for “Are You Sure?”

May 9th, 2011

Sales lore is filled with slo­gans, and you've prob­a­bly heard this one a mil­lion times: it's not what you say but how you say it.  Do you believe that's true?

When it comes to sales, I believe it's both what you say and how you say it.  The best-worded mes­sage can lack authen­tic­ity if it's deliv­ered with­out con­vic­tion, and the most earnestly expressed sen­ti­ment falls short when we don't choose the right words.

Con­sider this sce­nario: You've pro­vided a cus­tomer or prospect with a few options and the cus­tomer chooses one which you don't per­son­ally see as the best choice.  What do you say?

"Are you sure?" might be the first thing that comes to mind, and like so many of the first things that come to our minds, we can prob­a­bly do bet­ter by tak­ing a moment to think about how this sounds from the customer's perspective.

By ask­ing our cus­tomers if they are sure of their selec­tions, aren't we call­ing their judg­ment into ques­tion?  The implicit mes­sage appears to be, "Really?  I wouldn't have cho­sen that one."  If we are seek­ing a part­ner­ship or trusted advi­sor rela­tion­ship with our cus­tomers (and I main­tain that this should be a goal of any sales con­ver­sa­tion), we want to acknowl­edge the valid­ity of their choices while mak­ing sure they are aware of all the con­se­quences asso­ci­ated with those choices.

Con­sider a cou­ple alternatives:

• "When I was think­ing about that option I was won­der­ing about [what­ever your con­cern is regard­ing this option]. Is that some­thing that we need to consider?"
• "OK, good. And just to make sure I've/we've con­sid­ered every­thing here, will [what­ever your con­cern is regard­ing this option] be a fac­tor for us?"

The idea behind each of these alter­na­tive responses is that we want to val­i­date the customer's choice and at the same time make sure all our con­cerns are addressed.

Our cus­tomers might be aware of other busi­ness con­sid­er­a­tions on their end that make their choice the most rea­son­able selec­tion. Our goal as sales­peo­ple should always be to under­stand those con­sid­er­a­tions so that we can offer the best pos­si­ble advice, ser­vice and rec­om­men­da­tions going forward.

In this way, we can turn an off-hand com­ment like "Are you sure?" into an oppor­tu­nity to "sync up" with our cus­tomers, at the same time learn­ing more about their needs and values.

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Is Outsourcing Your Help Desk A Good Idea?

February 9th, 2011

For decades, the deci­sion of whether or not to out­source your company's help desk has boiled down to a few sim­ple questions:

1. Do you want to con­trol expenses?
2. Can you find another entity, off-shore or domes­ti­cally, that will do the work for less than your in-house sup­port staff?
3. Do they have the nec­es­sary tech­ni­cal and lan­guage skills to sup­port your cus­tomer base?

Answer­ing "yes" to all three ques­tions meant you were a good can­di­date for out­sourc­ing.  For years this prac­tice has helped com­pa­nies con­trol costs, main­tain 24×7 cus­tomer sup­port and pro­vide jobs to many lower wage earners.



Why, then, are some com­pa­nies bring­ing their help desks back under their own roofs?  One rea­son: a back­lash from cus­tomers to being sup­ported by peo­ple who can't go "off script."  You know exactly the type of per­son I'm talk­ing about: they're kind and help­ful if your issue is one of the many for which they have a pre­pared response.  If your issue isn't one of those, these out­sourced employ­ees are at a loss for how to sup­port you because they lack a shared expe­ri­ence, either cul­tur­ally or through a lack of under­stand­ing about the busi­ness envi­ron­ments in which these prod­ucts are used.

I want to be clear about some­thing: these out­sourced employ­ees are typ­i­cally intel­li­gent, artic­u­late, friendly peo­ple.  There may dif­fi­cul­ties under­stand­ing cer­tain accents but their lan­guage skills are usu­ally not the issue; I've been sup­ported by peo­ple from other coun­tries who speak bet­ter Eng­lish than I do.  The prob­lem is they can't relate to what I'm try­ing to do and hence to my level of frus­tra­tion.  This is what dri­ves cus­tomers into the arms of com­peti­tors with "local" sup­port: they tend to be bet­ter able to relate to the customer's needs, a fun­da­men­tal and pre­vi­ously under-valued com­po­nent of cus­tomer satisfaction.

As more and more com­pa­nies seek to dis­tin­guish them­selves on the ser­vice they pro­vide (as noted by the every-increasing num­ber of com­pa­nies pur­su­ing ser­vice awards and indus­try recog­ni­tion), are we approach­ing the end of the out­sourc­ing era?  Is out­sourc­ing still a viable option for your organization?

It can be, pro­vided you fol­low a few guide­lines to set up your out­sourced peo­ple for success:

• As part of their ini­tial train­ing, out­sourced teams need to learn how peo­ple use the prod­ucts that the help desk sup­ports. They need to under­stand the per­sonal or busi­ness impact of prod­uct fail­ure, and how to gen­uinely empathize with cus­tomers expe­ri­enc­ing problems.
• Pro­vide the peo­ple on the out­sourced help desk with plenty of recorded exam­ples or doc­u­men­ta­tion demon­strat­ing how an in-house sup­port per­son suc­cess­fully han­dles sim­i­lar issues.
• Rather than rely­ing on scripted responses, focus on sit­u­a­tional dia­logues. Role plays are a good train­ing tool for this; cre­ate real life sce­nar­ios typ­i­cal of those that are likely to be encoun­tered, and have the sup­port mem­bers prac­tice their responses. Com­pare their responses with best-practice exam­ples to make sure they are on the right track.
• Finally, mon­i­tor and pro­vide con­stant feed­back to employ­ees on an out­sourced help desk.  They deserve to know what they're doing right as well as the areas in which they can improve.  Don't assume that a lack of cus­tomer com­plaints means that every­thing is going fine; you sel­dom hear from cus­tomers who have defected to your com­pe­ti­tion in search of more under­stand­ing, empa­thetic sup­port staff.

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Show that You Value Your Customer!

February 7th, 2011

Sev­eral years ago I was on a flight to Syd­ney, Aus­tralia, seated next to a preg­nant woman and her hus­band.  The woman was around five or six months into her preg­nancy, and notice­ably quiet.

When the flight atten­dant asked if we wanted some­thing to drink, the hus­band ordered for his wife: "Can you just bring some ice for my wife to chew on?  She has a bit of an upset stom­ach."  The flight atten­dant returned shortly with a cup of ice, a cool com­press for the woman's head and some gen­uine con­cern.  "Honey, do you want some soda water to set­tle your stom­ach?  When was the last time you ate?"

Again the hus­band answered for his wife; "She didn't really eat her din­ner last night and she didn't feel like break­fast today, but really, she's fine with just the ice."

I was curi­ous as to why the hus­band did all the talk­ing, until I finally over­heard the woman speak­ing to her hus­band and imme­di­ately under­stood her ret­i­cence: she had a ter­ri­ble, almost debil­i­tat­ing stut­ter and wanted to avoid draw­ing atten­tion to her­self at all costs.

The flight atten­dant, how­ever, would not be deterred. "Tell you what; let me bring you some oxy­gen to suck on.  We have a lit­tle portable tank, it will make you feel much bet­ter and it's com­pletely safe for the baby." The expec­tant mother wanted noth­ing to do with this of course, as it would only draw more atten­tion to her.  She emphat­i­cally sig­naled she did not want the oxygen.

"Lis­ten, woman-to-woman and mother-to-mother, this isn't about you.  This is some­thing you should do for the child."  When this still didn't con­vince her, the flight atten­dant told me and the hus­band to get out of our seats. He and I stood there, in the aisle, while the flight atten­dant sat down next to the preg­nant woman and qui­etly spoke to her for 5 — 10 min­utes, ulti­mately con­vinc­ing her to use the oxy­gen.  It helped; just as the flight atten­dant had pre­dicted, she appeared to feel notice­ably bet­ter in around 30 minutes.

Before we landed the flight atten­dant returned and said qui­etly to her new friend "Lis­ten, I've called ahead for a wheel­chair to meet you at the gate when we arrive.  Feel free to use it if you like, or not," and then low­er­ing her voice and smil­ing, added "but I'll tell you what: it's the quick­est way to get through cus­toms, and I'd use it if I were you."

There are sev­eral rea­sons this expe­ri­ence stands out to me five-plus years after it happened:

• We were not in First Class or even Busi­ness Class; we were just some reg­u­lar folks in the Econ­omy cabin. These peo­ple were not fre­quent fly­ers, so it was unlikely that this great exam­ple of cus­tomer ser­vice would result in more busi­ness for the airline.
• The flight atten­dant did exactly what we sug­gest in our cus­tomer ser­vice train­ing classes, and that is to take a step back to under­stand not just what the per­son has requested, but what the cus­tomer needs.
• This was more than an exam­ple of an air­line employee help­ing her cus­tomer. All the flight atten­dant had to do ful­fill that oblig­a­tion was to get the lady a cup of ice as orig­i­nally requested. This went beyond any­thing the flight atten­dant would have learned in her job train­ing; this was a per­son con­nect­ing with another per­son at a human level: expe­ri­enced mother to first-time mother.

As this expe­ri­ence points out, some­times the best way to show you value your cus­tomer is not to treat them like a cus­tomer, but first-and-foremost as a human being.  That's what this flight atten­dant did, and I have been a devoted cus­tomer of United Air­lines ever since.

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The Easiest Sale in the World?

January 14th, 2011

What's the eas­i­est thing in the world to sell?

One could make a good case for insur­ance.  If that wasn't that the first thing that popped into your mind, con­sider the uni­ver­sal val­ues to which insur­ance appeals:

• We want to feel secure, and insur­ance helps pro­vide us with secu­rity. Even before we need to use it, we ben­e­fit from the feel­ing of secu­rity that sim­ply own­ing insur­ance provides.
• We want to enhance and pro­tect our wealth, and insur­ance is designed to do exactly that.
• We want things that are con­ve­nient and easy to use, and what could be eas­ier to use than insur­ance? Buy it and the hard part's over; all you have to do after that is go about your daily life.
• We like to feel good about our­selves. When we make intel­li­gent choices that lever­age our cur­rent assets to pro­tect our future, we get a lit­tle boost to our esteem by hav­ing done some proac­tive planning.



If you're not ready to quit your day job and start sell­ing insur­ance, don't worry: you're in good com­pany. My guess is that all but the best insur­ance sales­peo­ple would beg to dif­fer with the idea that sell­ing insur­ance is a slam dunk.  If it was so easy, why wouldn't every­one choose to do it?  Ask your typ­i­cal insur­ance sales­per­son if what they do is easy and you prob­a­bly won't hear many of them say "absolutely."  Why is that?

One rea­son: these uni­ver­sal val­ues that we have as humans and to which insur­ance appeals are so fun­da­men­tal, we don't give them a lot of con­scious atten­tion.  Instead of look­ing at insur­ance as a solu­tion, we tend to think of it as "over­head," some­thing we have to buy to be in com­pli­ance with the law, or because the fail­ure to do so would be short-sided and finan­cially risky.

Sell­ing insur­ance requires you to con­nect your prod­ucts to the val­ues and needs of your cus­tomers.  When done in a pos­i­tive, col­lab­o­ra­tive way, insur­ance sell­ers become solu­tion providers.

Here are some tips for keep­ing the sales process both pos­i­tive and collaborative:

• Ask: Eval­u­at­ing the val­ues and needs of your cus­tomers requires you to under­stand their busi­ness and fam­ily sit­u­a­tions, their finan­cial objec­tives, their tol­er­ance of or aver­sion to risk, their plans for the future and a whole pro­file of other qual­i­ties unique to the type of insur­ance you sell. The best way to learn about these needs is to start with some open ques­tions (those ques­tions that solicit an expla­na­tion rather than a "yes," "no" or other short answer response).

Exam­ples:

• Why do you want/need insurance?
• What's the most impor­tant thing to you when it comes to buy­ing insurance?
• Where do want to be finan­cially in five years? Ten years? At retirement?
• How does this fit in with your other business/household objectives?
• Lis­ten: After solic­it­ing the customer's input, lis­ten with­out inter­rupt­ing. Pay just as much atten­tion to what's not said: What top­ics make them uncom­fort­able? How well do they under­stand the specifics of this type of insur­ance? Are they fol­low­ing you, or are they just nod­ding in agree­ment so as not to appear ignorant?Remember that peo­ple don't tend to shop for insur­ance very often, so they may be less famil­iar with the process, fea­tures and ben­e­fits of your prod­ucts than with those things they buy more fre­quently. Make it easy for peo­ple to ask ques­tions; the more com­fort­able you make the sales process, the bet­ter your col­lab­o­ra­tion and the sooner you'll estab­lish trust.
• Sug­gest: Once you under­stand the val­ues and needs of your cus­tomer, sug­gest only those poli­cies and options that make sense for their unique sit­u­a­tion. The way in which you sug­gest these are key to clos­ing the sale. Remem­ber that buy­ing insur­ance from you is ulti­mately the customer's deci­sion. By sug­gest­ing rather than direct­ing a course of action you main­tain a col­lab­o­ra­tive rela­tion­ship with the cus­tomer, that essen­tial com­po­nent wherein the cus­tomer shares both respon­si­bil­ity and reward for the deci­sions you make together.
• Refrain: Avoid over­selling the cus­tomer. Over­selling is a short-sighted view, par­tic­u­larly when it comes to insur­ance; at some point cus­tomers will be lured away by lower pre­mi­ums which are more in-line with their actual needs. Take the long view; build a rela­tion­ship based on trust and you'll earn more  through repeat busi­ness and refer­rals than you'll make on any one sales prospect.

Maybe sell­ing insur­ance isn't the eas­i­est thing in the world, but it can be one of the most reward­ing and prof­itable if you keep the focus on what's of value to your customers.

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I’m Sorry: I’m Saving It for a Special Occasion

September 10th, 2010

The recent arti­cle You Messed Up-Admit It in the Gallup Man­age­ment Jour­nal focuses on rebuild­ing trust and cred­i­bil­ity when an orga­ni­za­tion has made a mis­take.  The author makes the impor­tant point that, just as in suc­cess­ful inter­per­sonal rela­tion­ships, busi­nesses need to take own­er­ship of their mis­takes, accept the respon­si­bil­ity asso­ci­ated with those mis­takes and take mean­ing­ful action to cor­rect them.

We'd all agree that tak­ing respon­si­bil­ity for our actions is the right thing to do.  Does it make sense to shoul­der the blame for prob­lems that aren't ours? Why then, do you sup­pose, we allow our employ­ees to do this hun­dred, or even thou­sands of times each day, by need­lessly say­ing "I'm sorry?"

Don't get me wrong: when some­thing is gen­uinely our fault or the fault of the team or orga­ni­za­tion we rep­re­sent, it's appro­pri­ate to apol­o­gize.  The prob­lem I see in so many of the orga­ni­za­tions with whom I work is that the words "I'm sorry" have become syn­ony­mous in our cul­ture with attempts to express empa­thy.  This is a shame, and poten­tially dan­ger­ous, for sev­eral reasons:

• Whether or not you intend it to sound this way, "I'm sorry" tends to be inter­preted as "I'm guilty" by the cus­tomer. In the customer's mind, you wouldn't be apol­o­giz­ing for some­thing if it wasn't your fault, so you must be admit­ting you're to blame if you're apol­o­giz­ing for it.
• There are more effec­tive ways of con­vey­ing empa­thy than say­ing "I'm sorry." Your tone of voice, choos­ing words that show your under­stand­ing of the sit­u­a­tion, your patience and an atti­tude of ser­vice are all key com­po­nents of empathiz­ing with your customer.
• The more a cus­tomer hears you say "I'm sorry," the less impact it has. When you gen­uinely owe an apol­ogy, you want it to come across as effec­tively as pos­si­ble; the more you dilute it with a his­tory of "I'm sor­rys," the less sin­cere the apol­ogy sounds.

What can one do instead of say­ing "I'm sorry" to show empa­thy with a customer's situation?

• Use phrases like "Yes, I see the issue here…," or "I don't blame you; I'd be frus­trated too. Let's see how to take care of that for you as quickly as possible."
• Be care­ful using phrases like "I under­stand how you feel." Unless the cus­tomer knows that you've had a direct and sim­i­lar expe­ri­ence to the cur­rent issue, this sort of generic state­ment of empa­thy could back­fire, mak­ing the cus­tomer angrier and ele­vate her/his frus­tra­tion (e.g. "Oh yes? You know what it's like to pay 120 peo­ple to stand around and watch a dead­line go by because the #$%^& pro­gram they're sup­posed to be using has crashed for the sixth time this year? I don't think you do know what that's like!!")
• Let your voice con­vey your empa­thy. This is not the time to have a smile on your face when talk­ing to the cus­tomer; it's time to lower both the pitch and vol­ume of your voice and let your cus­tomer see that you take this kind of issue seriously.
• Most impor­tantly, as the above men­tioned arti­cle sug­gests, align your words and your actions. It's not enough to acknowl­edge that this has been an issue for the cus­tomer; tell the cus­tomer what steps you'll take to cor­rect the sit­u­a­tion or pre­vent it from hap­pen­ing again, and then fol­low through on what you've said.

Occa­sion­ally an apol­ogy is war­ranted; save these, though, for those spe­cial (and hope­fully rare) occa­sions where you've made a mis­take, or there has been a gen­uine mis­un­der­stand­ing which may be due in part to some­one from your organization.

Fol­low these sug­ges­tions and you'll likely see a more con­fi­dent cus­tomer base, a more effec­tive staff of employ­ees and more effec­tive apolo­gies, when they're warranted.

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