Cheryl Hanna

It’s the Disney Institute’s 16th birthday, and as with all Sweet Sixteen parties, it’s a chance to celebrate successes and see how the pixie dust of enchantment mixes so effectively with the success of one man’s dream. Walt Disney stated,  “You can dream, create, design and build the most wonderful place in the world, but it requires people to make the dream a reality.”

The Disney Institute originally began in 1986 in Orlando offering “leisure learning” which entailed courses on fun topics like cooking and landscaping classes. By 1996 the organization offered business programs and currently sends representatives all over the world teaching Disney’s best practices of leadership, management, customer service, and loyalty. What the visiting families and tourist perceive as effortless daily operations...

Mother’s Day is coming, and with that comes the busiest day of the year for florists. Many of us order our flowers over the phone or the Internet, and since holidays are a one shot deal when it comes to flowers being at their required destination on time, we as consumers hold florists to a high level of “flower” responsibility.

This past Valentine’s Day, Washington Post’s Melissa Bell stated, “Love hath no fury like a flower customer scoffed.” It seems a popular wire service 1-800-Flowers failed to deliver bouquets for many customers creating a plethora of Twitter and Facebook complaints with the fervor of an inevitable doom. Boyfriends, husbands, and significant others complained about flowers not arriving, damaged products, hundreds of botched deliveries, and an acute shortage of customer...

In the midst of arguments on the Affordable Health Care programs, it is interesting to delve into this year’s Medicare push for improved customer service in the hospital venue. Beginning in October, Medicare will hold one percent of their regular reimbursements based on performance. With payments that will total more than $50 million, United States health-care is being forced to improve the quality of their care.

The survey is called Hospital Consumer Assessment of Health-care Providers and Services (HCAHPS) and contains 27 pertinent questions about a patient’s hospital experience. Here is just a sampling of what patients are asked:

Even nice customers get angry. It can happen to any organization, and figuring out the best ways to respond and satisfy your customers can mean loyalty and continued business. One of the common problems however, is getting a complaint satisfactorily resolved with the least amount of frustration, anger, and time.

Traditionally large companies do not pay their first line of customer service representatives high salaries. Many new employees read from scripts and seldom deviate from the question and answer page. Where the run-of-the-mill problems might be easy to solve according to the prepared customer service “cliff notes,” what happens when a customer’s problem or service complaint isn’t in the “one-size-fits-all” category?

Let’s begin with having all of the pertinent information on hand before making any inquiries to the...