What would you rather do than call customer support?

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an article by Shep Hyken at Medium on April 2, 2025 titled Your Call Is Very Important to Us which also appeared at Advisorpedia on April 14, 2025. As shown above in a bar chart, he found in surveys that, rather than call customer support, 53% would have dinner with in-laws, 39% would clean a toilet, 34% would visit the dentist, and 26% would speak in front of an audience of a thousand people. These results previously appeared in his 2025 The State of Customer Service and CX study on page 22. In his 2026 study 36% would rather clean a toilet. And in his 2022 study 46% would rather visit the dentist while 42% would rather clean a toilet.

 

 

Use a glitch report to keep mistakes or failures from recurring

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have been skimming through a useful 2026 book by Jessica Weiss titled Happiness Works: The science of thriving at work. There is a preview at Google Books. Chapter 5, starting on page 85, is titled Trust and Happiness and subtitled An unbeatable team formula. An article by Julia Korn in Forbes on November 12, 2025 titled A Practical Guide to Being Happier At Work (From a Workplace Happiness Expert) discusses it as follows:

 

“Run a regular ‘Glitch Report’ with your team

 

Borrowed from the Four Seasons hotel, this simple ritual turns everyday frustrations into learning moments. A ‘glitch’ is any situation that didn’t go as planned – a missed deadline, a miscommunication or even a small annoyance. The goal isn’t to assign blame or complain, but to find solutions together.

 

Here’s how it works: each team member shares what went wrong during the previous day, week, or month – depending on cadence – and the steps that have been taken to fix it. The result? Everyone’s aligned, informed, and empowered to help address the glitch further.

 

Weiss says this practice builds:

   Transparency

   A focus on learning and improvement

   Inclusive participation

   Collaboration, particularly when problems surface

   Timely and constructive feedback.

 

In short, the glitch report creates a culture of psychological safety, where team members can speak up, take risks, and own mistakes without fear. This counts: when people feel psychologically safe, they’re far more resilient to burnout, even when their work environment isn’t perfect.

 

Try this practice with your team to see how problems turn into solutions.”  

 

The first note in the book for this chapter references a post by John Caddell in the FutureLab blog on January 10, 2015 titled Four Season Hotels Review a Daily Glitch Report:

 

“Next up [in our daily review] is a review of the previous day’s mistakes in something we call the Glitch Report. Every department in the hotel is represented at the morning meeting, and each has a printout detailing what has gone wrong and what steps may already have been taken to correct course. The Glitch Report ensures that every hotel department knows what happened and which guest it affected.

We might have missed a guest with something as simple as turndown service, and everybody listens to the department head responsible as he or she articulates what went wrong. That person will go to the root cause of the problem and tell everyone what will be done to fix it in that guest’s eyes. Whatever the issue, making it right starts with a sincere apology. It can also mean trying to do something else for them later on in their visit. It can mean an amenity such as flowers or fresh fruit skewers or a bottle of wine. It could mean an appropriate adjustment or consideration on their bill. For each guest, we strive to find the right approach in the apology.”

 

The cartoon was modified from this one at OpenClipArt.

 

 

What four things would you rather do than call customer support?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an article by Shep Hyken on April 1, 2025 titled Your Call Is Very Important to Us. In it he discusses some results from surveys titled The State of Customer Service and CX 2025. There were two online surveys of 2,119 U. S. adults done between January 8 and 13 of 2025.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As shown above via a bar chart, 53% would rather have dinner with in-laws. 39% would rather clean a toilet, 34% would rather visit the dentist, and 26% would rather speak in front of an audience of 1,000! There is a brief Instagram video too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some of these situations also were covered in his previous Achieving Customer Amazement (ACA) surveys. As shown above, percentages who would rather clean a toilet were quite similar: 43% in 2024, 38% in 2023, and 42% in 2022. Percentages who would rather visit the dentist were 46% in 2022 and 48% in 2021.    

 

An image of brushing a toilet came from Wikimedia Commons.

 

 

Great customer service

Two decades ago I had my employer buy a Macroscope 25 from RF Interscience Company. That’s a very useful 25X portable microscope for looking at small objects like weld imperfections, paint problems, documents, or insects. It’s just nine inches tall, and the eyepiece has a 5-mm reticle for measuring things. They sell a penlight holder for lighting the area you’re looking at. There also is a camera adapter that screws on threads under the rubber eyepiece cup so you can take pictures of what you see. 

Better yet,  you also can remove the  the top part and use it as an 8X monocular for watching birds. I missed having a Macroscope 25. 

Last month on eBay I say a couple of used Macroscopes for sale. I got outbid on the first one, but won the second one on a Friday evening for less than $25 including shipping. (Right now a new one is $140). When it arrived I was disappointed to find that the knurled ring on the eyepiece didn’t move properly, so I couldn’t focus to see the image or reticle clearly.

I called up RF Interscience, and they said to send it in for service. Then they would look at it and tell me if it could be fixed. So, I sent it off via USPS Priority Mail on August 1st.

Monday morning  I realized that I hadn’t heard back from them, and I was considering calling to check where it was. That afternoon a UPS package arrived containing the repaired Macroscope. They had cleaned the lenses, and tightened the loose setscrews on the eyepiece. There was no charge, and they had sent it back on August 3rd, the very same day they got it. That’s great service! 

All the delay just was from shipping it back via UPS Ground. The invoice also said that this was a first edition Macroscope 25 made for them in Japan. Small specks in the image resulted from aging of the cement used to bond the reticle to the window. If that bothered me, they could replace the reticle assembly.    

This early Macroscope doesn’t have threads on the eyepiece for a camera adapter. Otherwise it was a great buy at eBay, the garage sale for the world. 

Why is your conference audience frowning? Perhaps they just lost at travel roulette

Suppose that you were going to speak at the evening opening session of a conference. You planned ahead, got there the day before, and rehearsed your speech repeatedly. But, when you went to give it you noticed a whole bunch of frowning faces in the audience. Were they upset because your content and delivery were terrible? Perhaps not.

Back in 1975 I attended an international technical conference that was held at a lovely resort location - Jackson Lake Lodge, in Grand Teton National Park. To get there you probably had to fly to Jackson, Wyoming via Frontier Airlines, whose nearest hub airports were in Denver and Salt Lake City. Back then they flew Convair 580 turboprop airliners that only held fifty people.

The conference had been organized by a pair of university professors. They’d warned Frontier not to overbook flights to Jackson by their usual percentages on the day and evening when the conference opened. Of course Frontier ignored them, and everybody with reservations showed up at the counters in their two hubs. Some people had to take later flights. Others missed the opening session.

At the conference one disgruntled traveler told me he’d had to take a later flight. John worked in market development for a huge international metals company. The person behind the counter also told him that his baggage might not fly with him, and might not even arrive until the next morning. When he asked if the airline could be more specific, the counter person just snidely replied:

“That’s what we call Frontier roulette!”

John spent most of his work week traveling around the U.S. visiting customers. I wonder how many business travelers he told that customer disservice punch line, and how many million dollars of lost business it eventually cost Frontier, who went bankrupt in 1986.  
    
The roulette cartoon came from an old Puck magazine. This post was inspired by Lisa Braithwaite’s Speak Schmeak blog post yesterday on why I’m my own worst audience member.

Watching a pro work (5) - Mark Sanborn, CSP

Watch Mark Sanborn discuss How to provide extraordinary service: The Fred Factor, and How to Lead without a Title: Creating Leaders at Every Level. Mark was the 2003-2004 president of the National Speakers Association. These videos discuss ideas described in more detail in his concise books The Fred Factor and You Don’t Need a Title to be a Leader.

In television comedies employees of the US Postal Service like Cliff Clavin on Cheers and Newman on Seinfeld are portrayed as incompetent or malevolent. Fred is a great counterexample. Mark tells great stories, with amusing details like at 5:15 in the second video when he comments that:

“I like USA Today. It’s the adult coloring book of newspapers.”

Mark has both a web site and a leadership blog.

I’ve had fun dredging through YouTube for these examples of five excellent public speakers amid acres of drivel.

Watching a pro work (3) - Phillip Van Hooser, CSP

Watch Phillip Van Hooser discuss Exceptional Customer Service Strategies from Willie’s Way and The Fear of Failure. Although the video quality is marginal, his storytelling shines through.

He wrote a long article about How to Manage Fear, Embrace Change & Lead Employees in an Uncertain Economy. Willie’s Way was a book and you can read an excerpt. Mr. Van Hooser has a website and a blog. He was president of the National Speakers Association in 2009-2010. Ian Griffin interviewed him then.

What can we learn about speechwriting from two cartoons about customer service?

How a speech gets written will differ depending on the intended audience. Last month I found a pair of cartoons with very different approaches to the same topic. Both talked about navigating the customer service maze, but otherwise they were wildly different.

One cartoon was in Dave Kellett’s Sheldon: It’s Time to Play the Customer Service Call Center Game. The other was in Matthew Inman’s Oatmeal: Why I’d Rather Be Punched in the Testicles than Call Customer Service.

Dave’s cartoon is light hearted and brief. If it were a movie, it would have a G (General audiences, all ages) rating. Matthew’s is serious and lengthy; he doesn’t suffer fools gladly. If it were a movie, it would have an R (Restricted, children under 17 must be accompanied by a parent) rating. Perhaps some of the difference in attitude is that Dave lives in sunny Los Angeles, while Matthew lives in gray, rainy Seattle.

Another difference between Dave’s and Matthew’s cartoons is that Dave just takes you around a circle, but Matthew eventually gets his problem resolved. He has to put up with a lot of crap first though, like being asked:

“...Can I get your
first name
phone number
address
date of birth
favorite planet in the solar system
and least favorite African mammal.
I won’t actually log this information,
mind you, so you’ll have to repeat it
to every other operator I forward you to.”

There’s another Oatmeal cartoon on How to Make Your Shopping Cart Suck Less.

The board image originally was titled Game of the District Messenger Boy.

Does your organization give off a negative vibe?

Recently I read Ralph Heath’s 2009 book on Celebrating Failure. He opened chapter 23 by telling a story about investigating rental of a local meeting room.

First, the customer service representative in the corner ignored him. Second, when he said he’d like to book it from 8:00 AM to 11:00 AM she replied that no one was there before 9:00 AM. Third, she added that they were closed on Mondays, although Ralph hadn’t even mentioned Monday. He found another venue, and then mused that a leader might have helped her to quit being completely negative (and win him as a customer).

 

When I walk to the main public library, I cross the Boise River Greenbelt, which has paved trails on both sides of the river. As shown above, the sign on the south trail communicates that people should both enjoy themselves and behave responsibly. It says both what to do and what not to do. (There is a similar National Forest sign here).

Less than a hundred feet away is the old Eighth Street Pedestrian Bridge. Look at the sign mounted on the left side at the south entrance, which says that six different activities all are prohibited. I’m still puzzling over how you could surf on a bridge with a wooden deck, and what was changed before adding the last two items.

Civility is not dead

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Despite all the current high-profile misbehavior by sports stars, music stars, and Congressmen who all seem bent on being our Grossest National Product there are still decent people out there. Civility is not really dead.

One of my favorite gadgets is this little, digital, combination 4-event timer, and clock. The timer can either count up or down. The clip on the back also opens a half-inch, and then a wire frame falls down so the timer neatly stands up on a desk or counter. To change the button battery you put a coin in a slot on a little circular door (red arrow). When you turn it counterclockwise, two little tabs disengage slots to let the door open. One tab on the original door had broken (orange arrow), so I held the broken door on with a piece of duct tape.

I finally got tired of the broken door, and tried looking up the supplier. They seemed to be Component Design Northwest, Inc. (CDN) over in Portland, Oregon. See their PT1A, which you can buy for $20 from Kitchen Kaboodle. When I called CDN last week to ask how to order a replacement door, they took my address, and said they would mail me one for free. Actually they sent two. No more duct tape!