“Bills, sadly, are not an ignore-it-and-it-goes-away problem. If you’ve been getting an overdue notice from the cable company every two weeks for the last three months, and all of a sudden it stops coming, that does not mean that they’ve gotten over you and moved on to someone else. Big companies are like the mob - they never forget, they never give up, and they always get their money. Get them before they get you: Pay up, and pay on time.”
“A very important tidbit about customer service: just apologize to people. Even if it’s not your fault, they’ve been disappointed by the company you work for and it’s your job to empathize with them. Though you may be paid minimum wage, to the customers you are the face of the entire company. It’s this kind of accountability that gets people raises, promotions, and eventually careers.”
“You must fire bad customers just as you would fire a bad employee. If you do not get rid of your bad employees, the good employees will leave. If I do not fire bad customers, not only will my good customers leave but many of my good employees will leave as well.”
“For companies that operate like a family: Sometimes the commitment to being a family gets interpreted in two destructive ways that often remain unspoken. The first one is that ‘we will put up with you no matter how you perform, and you will always have a place here.’ Second, in these companies, it can also be implied that ‘if you give yourself to us, we will take care of you, almost for life.‘”
“The responsibility for finding and fixing problems should be assigned to every employee, from the most senior manager to the lowliest person on the production line.”
“Try to create an environment where people want to hear each other’s notes even when those notes are challenging, and where everyone has a vested interest in one another’s success.”
“Resilient companies may come out the other end of upheaval entirely different than they were when they went in (and are often grateful for the transformation).”