At the end of a conference I attended, buses lined up to take conference-goers to the airport. Anticipating long lines at the airport, I raced to the first bus, leaping over luggage and zigzagging around people. I handed over my luggage to be stowed in the baggage compartment, hopped on the bus, and began to mentally pace.

Time passed, but the bus didn’t depart. I realized that I should have taken a cab, but my suitcase was buried under heaps of luggage. I had no choice but to sit tight.

When things go awry, it’s easy to slip into a Fault-Finding, Finger-Pointing (FFFP) frame of mind. After all, if everyone else did what they were supposed to, the situation you’re now facing wouldn’t have happened. But before concluding that someone else is to blame, it might pay to ask: Could there be a reasonable explanation for this situation — one that would cause me to see this situation in a positive light?

When an organization with disgruntled customers takes major steps to improve service delivery, customers ought to be happy. Often, however, they continue to grumble and grouse because of what I’ve dubbed the perceptual lag. That is, the perception of an improvement often lags far behind the implementation of that improvement.

When I experienced a technical problem and sent an email message to the online support address, I received an immediate automated acknowledgement giving me a ticket number and advising me that I’d be contacted within 48 hours with a response to my problem.

During a break at a conference, a woman named Marge told me about an experience she recently had at another conference. It seems that she'd been talking to the keynote speaker when he abruptly turned away and started talking to someone else.....

When your department runs into snag in working with other departments, how do you resolve the situation? Getting together to talk can help not only to rectify the current problem, but also to minimize future problems. Consider, for example....

One component of providing superior service is managing the customer’s perception of the service. I heard about a medical office study that supports this view. The study found that if, upon entering the examining room, the doctor smiled, exhibited a friendly manner, and made immediate eye contact....

Service businesses that really care about their customers don’t boast about how much they care. They don’t need to. They simply deliver. Caring about customers is part of their service philosophy and it shows in the way they treat their customers. Conversely....

Do you expect the people you interact with most often to know what you’re thinking? If so, watch out, because....

We spend 34% of our time waiting. Waiting in traffic. Waiting in lines. Waiting on hold. Waiting for tech support. Waiting for information.