Chicomm Blog

Nordstrom, the Seattle-based retailer with legendary customer service, is known for the effectiveness of its Employee Handbook and its “One Rule”: “Use good judgment in all situations.”

Nordstrom knows that hiring the right employees is the first step. Once that's in place, the company needs to give those employees the autonomy to create exceptional customer experiences in their own way. You can instill that sense of autonomy in employees by letting them know that you’re confident they’ll treat customers the way that they would want to be treated.

And it’s good to keep in mind that even the best customer service practitioners need resources for developing their customer service skills. If you’re looking for good customer service training ideas, have your staff pair off and role-play challenging customer service situations. Assign the one in the staff role to use just one rule in determining how to respond: use good judgment.

When London-based bank HSBC was looking at sophisticated business alarm systems for a 200,000-square-foot Data Center, its key considerations included automation, 24-hour coverage, safety and security, along with compatibility with Motorola MOTOTRBO radios. With all of that in mind, the Teldio Alarm Control System (ACS) was the clear choice.

The Teldio ACS integrates into existing building management and network systems to monitor for a range of alarms – including environmental emissions, fire, maintenance, security and technical maintenance –  and when an alert is raised, alarms are sent simultaneously via text or audio to MOTOTRBO devices (for more on using MOTOTRBO in manufacturing, check out our Motorola dealer case study on working with Aux Sable.).

In addition to audio and text, notifications and job tickets can be sent by phone call, Android App and Windows alert.

As you’re honing the great customer service skills that will make you and your business stand out, one to keep near the top of your list is also one of the easiest to practice: Be responsive. Customers who have become accustomed to the immediacy of the internet have little patience for companies or representatives who don’t respond quickly. Being responsive and accessible is key when you want to be known for excellent customer service.

Facebook is even awarding a "responsiveness badge" to businesses that have a response rate of 90% and a response time of 15 minutes over a seven-day period. To ensure that you and your team build responsiveness into your customer service strategy, make it a rule to respond to customers within a preset amount of time, say, no more than 2-4 hours.

While the healthcare industry refers to the people it serves as patients, the customer service mentality is key. When people feel they've gotten excellent customer service in healthcare systems, that often means they got excellent medical care.

At Chicago-based Presence Health system, Corporate Security Director Nick Kowal says the top customer service skills that set their health system apart are  addressing patient complaints quickly and being sensitive to their needs, from the time they’re admitted to after they return home.

Great customer service - in healthcare and in every industry - isn’t just about how you and your staff behave when things are going smoothly, it’s also about how you face challenges and complaints. Employees should acknowledge complaints immediately, keep customers frequently updated about the status of the issue and, perhaps most importantly, be empowered to resolve situations.

It's a question pondered by job seekers, trainees, and seasoned businesspeople alike—not to mention customers themselves: "What does customer service mean to you?"

At Chicago Communications, we're in a good position to define great customer service skills, because our clients work in some of the most high-pressure customer service situations: they're first responders, educators, manufacturers, hotel and hospital workers, and more.

For many of them, providing good customer service means making a critical difference when it matters most, whether they're saving a life, teaching a child to read, building a product that consumers can depend on, or providing a weary traveler with comfortable accommodations.

If you're looking for customer service training ideas, consider having your team watch, discuss, and write about "The Diamond Story" video, described below. It's a sure-fire way to build your team's customer service skills. But beware—it's a tear jerker, so have tissues handy in the training room.

While hurriedly trying on clothes at her local Nordstrom store in North Carolina, long-time customer Lisa McIntire Shaw lost the diamond from her wedding ring and didn’t realize it was gone until she got home. 

She rushed back to the store to look for it. When Nordstrom loss prevention manager Eric Wilson spotted her looking for the ring – on her hands and knees in a dress, no less – he took up the search himself. When he couldn’t find it, he enlisted the help of two building services staffers to sift through packed vacuum cleaner bags until they unearthed the "diamond in the rough."

Calvert County in southern Maryland has a dubious distinction: Its five-site, five-channel analog 800 megahertz (MHz) public safety system is the oldest of its kind in the entire state.

Constructed in the mid-1990s, the system no longer meets the needs of the public safety agencies that serve the county’s growing population of more than 90,000 people.

Officials knew they needed a state-of-the-art solution that would provide unparalleled reliability, interoperability and efficiency – both now and into the future.

In Chicago, logistics professional training is set to get a big boost with construction of a high-tech transportation, logistics and distribution (TDL) center at Olive-Harvey College. Work on the $45 million facility recently restarted after stalling last year amid Illinois state budget woes.

Industry Partnership to Fill Surge of TDL Jobs

The center is designed to help prepare students for 110,000 TDL jobs that are expected to come to the region in the next 10 years. The project was 60 percent done when work halted, and officials are hoping to finish construction in time for the Fall 2017 semester.

The facility is the first of its kind in Illinois and is a significant step forward for Olive-Harvey’s TDL programs, which focus on air, rail and road transportation. With a commitment to hands-on training, the program’s curriculum is being developed with industry partners and will serve an estimated 3,000 students.

We all know Next Generation 9-1-1 (NG911) is the future of public safety communications, and a diverse coalition of national 9-1-1 stakeholders is pushing to make that future a reality sooner rather than later.

The newly formed NG911 NOW Coalition has announced a national push to ensure that “by the end of the year 2020, all 9-1-1 systems and call centers in all 56 states and territories will have sufficiently funded, standards-based, end-to-end IP-based 9-1-1 capabilities, and have retired legacy 911 systems, without any degradation in service.”

There’s exciting technology news from Down Under: A newly announced pilot program in Australia by Motorola Solutions and Ericsson is looking to bring next-generation push-to-talk communications to mobile radios, starting with the quickly evolving public safety market. The project builds on the major role Motorola mobile radios and Ericsson communications technology have played in the communications marketplace.

The trial technology is a key to forging a way for traditional radio voice communications to integrate and expand via mobile broadband.

Ericsson and Motorola are working alongside Telstra, the leading telecom and information services company in Australia with nearly 17 million mobile subscribers. The trio is also collaborating on creating global standards for a solution that would meet the unique needs and requirements of public safety users.