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The Coach’s Playbook
My ultimate goal is to write useful and relevant content about everything related to creating success and getting you to the next level.
Sometimes however, I do find myself just blogging about things that need to be talked about, so don’t be surprised by what you find popping up here. I always welcome all useful comments, suggestions and critiques. So come often, bring a friend, and stay as long as you’d like!
Let's face it, being an IT technician can sometimes feel like you're trapped in a never-ending game of whack-a-mole. The tickets pile up, the phone rings off the hook, and just when you think you're making progress, another urgent issue pops up. It's stressful, it's exhausting, and it can leave...
I’ve spent a lifetime immersed in the service industry, from the trenches of service to the executive suites. And what I’ve learned is this: too many businesses are driving aimlessly.
I started my working life as a paperboy, a humble beginning that instilled in me a deep-rooted...
I had a client ask me why they shouldn't be using Kill Rate as a daily driver of tech performance. It occurred to me I should turn the question and the answer into a blog, so here you go.
Email from client:
I was talking with Bruce yesterday about how we should be tracking lead time and cycle...
I don't really get into reviewing or showcasing the tools I use to run my business, but there is one I have to share because of how much it means to me. It's a WordPress® plugin called Easy Digital Downloads (EDD), and it is what I use to run all of my product sales and funnels. I selected it...
Below are the threads of a chapter for my upcoming book Agile Service Delivery – The Ultimate Secret to Making Work Flow, spawned from an email sent to me asking for clarification on service boards/queues.
I was recently asked what it is that I recommend for how to set up service boards or...
We live in an experience economy, and this means that the customer has a significantly different idea of what their customer experience (CEX) should be than ever before, regardless of what business you're in.
So I ask you, if you're not talking about CEX with your customers, who is?
The most...
For any software development or IT company, technical debt is always accruing, and that debt is forever mounting interest. Technical debt means something a little different for IT service providers than it does for software developers, but it's largely the same thing. If you want to know if...
It's time we had the talk. The talk about CEX - Customer Experience! Although it's now easier than ever to get the customer feedback and gauge customer satisfaction (CSat), it's just not enough. We live in an experience economy, and it's becoming more and more apparent that, to the consumer of...
At almost every event where I present for the IT service provider industry, I hear someone asking the question, "How should I be pricing, and how do I keep from changing my offerings up too frequently?" And I always say, "You price on value and you change as often as needed!" The responses I...
From a post on Facebook comes this case study in customer service on the company Meineke and more specifically the local shop run by one Tyler @ 2436 Gulf to Bay Blvd, Clearwater, FL 33765.
I'm going to follow the story in my blogging and see where it leads.
You've heard stories like this. Here's...
One of my favorite things to say is, "You have to know the next five people you're going to hire or steal." By this, I simply mean that you must know who your next hire is. Ideally, the next front line money-making tech or engineer, but this can apply to the sales team, admin, or any other...
What are the values you and your team actually live by in your business? To ask it another way, are the values you and your team live by the ones you've called out in your vision statement? It matters because these are two very different things. We have "these" values called out but "these" are...