Whether you’re giving a presentation, training or sharing information in weekly meetings, avoid these phrases. A CareerBuilder survey found these buzzwords drive employees nuts and have little or no meaning anymore.

• Outside the box
• Low-hanging fruit
• Synergy
• Loop me in
• Best of breed
• Incentivize
• Mission critical
• Bring to the table
• Value added
• Elevator pitch

Better bet: Give it to your agents straight. If you avoid jargon you build credibility with agents and customers.

Netflix raised prices, divided services and confused customers in the last year. Then the company’s customer satisfaction dropped 14% — a decline that influenced this quarter’s American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), which was released today.

The ACSI, which studies certain industries each quarter, overall score went up just 0.1% this quarter to 75.8 on the 100-point scale, despite a growing economy.

Researchers looked at e-commerce closely, and Netflix’s huge drop to 74 held back the industry as a whole as far as customer satisfaction ratings. Amazon topped the e-commerce companies rated with an 86. Other strongholds, such as Overstock, E*TRADE Financial Corp., The Charles Schwab Corp. and eBay held their usual scores near 80.

Netflix was tied at the top with Amazon last year. To avoid a drop in satisfaction like Netflix faced, try talking to customers in focus groups, surveys and casual conversations with agents to find out what they think of proposed changes before making them.

These tips from Your Best Just Got Better author Jason Womack, help everyone cut the number of distractions and interruptions:

• Purge and unsubscribe. Go through all the newsletters (hard copy and online) and get rid of what you don’t read.
• Block your time. Set time each day for checking email and making a to-do list. Create more blocks (even 10 extra minutes) for actually doing what needs to be done.
• Break your inertia. If you’re having an unproductive morning, do some small, tedious things (such as filing or recycling) to get your engine running for the bigger tasks at hand.
• Shorten meetings. If you have the option, reduce every meeting by 15 minutes, or tell those in attendance that you need to leave 15 minutes earlier than the usual end time. Chances almost always are that everything will be accomplished in the shortened time.
• Find your distractions. Do you respond to the “ding” of an arriving email? Do you say yes to everyone who needs “just a minute?” Once you find what distracts you most, you can make adjustments to better use your time.

Customers are turned off in a big way when they witness bosses berate employees or co-workers  arguing amongst themselves. They may never come back, according to a study by Georgetown University and University of Southern California researchers.

When customers witness employees being rude or disrespectful to one another – yelling, cursing or criticizing – they get angry and want to punish the company for allowing that. The punishment they often give: Take their business elsewhere.

Bottom line: It’s not just important for agents and supervisors to treat customers with respect. It’s vital that they treat each other that way, too.

Your contact center might want to establish workplace guidelines for etiquette, courtesy and respectful behavior. Include them in the personnel handbook and have agents sign off those guidelines and the consequences – including termination – for not adhering to them.

Discounts may sound like a good thing to offer customers, but some may actually undermine relationships. Here’s why.

These discounts have the potential to devalue customers’ experiences, according to service expert Brian Cantor.

• First-time customer promotions. When companies and their contact center agents offer discounts or promotions in an attempt to gain new customers, they alienate long-time customers, who’d like those deals for their loyalty. Fix: Extend first-time customer deals to loyal customers.
• Limited-time offers. These make customers feel rushed to make decisions on something that’s important to them. Fix: If customers ask for a discount that’s been discontinued, extend it to them.
• Limited exposure discounts. Businesses sometimes offer sales or discounts that are only available if customers are in the store, calling or checking online on a certain day or week. Problem is, if they’re special only because customers dropped in, customers may start to wonder if they’re overpaying at other times. Fix: Limit these kinds of discounts to few and far between.
• Value-added discounts. When an agent offers an upgrade or add-on at a discounted price, loyal customers may start to feel as if they aren’t getting what they deserve from the “base model” product or service. Fix: Try a combination of including extra values in products and services and offering some upgrades on occasion.

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Teacher Tammy Roberts is teaching students at West Nassau High School in Callahan, FL, the finer points of business – and customer service is at the top of her lesson plan.

She emphasizes the importance of doing the little things for fellow students, teachers and the school environment in her elective course, Customer Assistance Technology. The focus of the course is on business marketing, business finances and the finer points of interacting one-on-one with others professionally and personally, Roberts tells 1to1media.com.

Is the first-year program effective, helping kids get jobs in customer service? Roberts reported that three students were invited to second interviews with customer service icon Ritz-Carlton.

An idea for your contact center: Look into a partnership with a local school that offers career training courses. You might be able to volunteer to help with the course. In return, you might find ideal, well-trained candidates.

Click here to read the free whitepaper!   

The good news is many online businesses did a great job helping customers over the phone and through email or chat during the recent holiday season. And many did a fine job providing an effective website for customers.

Problem is, 60% couldn’t get great scores on both fronts, a STELLAService and Compuware study just found. As much as they tried to meet customer demands in one area, many customer service operations let other areas slip.

Many retailers “risked lost revenue opportunities by not meeting shoppers’ website performance satisfaction demands or customer service expectations,”  said Jonathan Ranger, Gomez Benchmark Practice Director at Compuware. Now they “need to develop clear strategies to provide fast and reliable website performance and effective customer service for customers across all channels.”

Customers want the whole package – great service over the phone and an effective, friendly website. Contact center agents can help with both by:

• Navigating sites with customers on the phone as they ask questions and look for the right products.
• Giving regular feedback to website designers on what customers tell them about the site – where they became confused, what they liked, what they found easy, etc.

Even better, these are ways to show your appreciation every day, not just on Valentine’s Day.

1. Send a note. No need to send a heart-decorated card with corny sentiments of love. A handwritten note on company letterhead, thanking customers for their loyalty, speaks volumes. Agents can probably write a few each day.
2. Reward referrals. Ask customers to pass along the word about your great service to friends and family. When those people become new customers, reward the referring customers with discounts or a free product.
3. Be flexible. Give customers options whenever possible, or invite them to set terms so they feel more comfortable with your organization.
4. Get personal. Agents can ask about the things that are important to them – family, hobbies, business interests – when there’s a wait for information to be retrieved during conversations. Even better, agents can share common interests to build a stronger bond.
5. Stay connected. Regularly check on customers‘ history of contacting you. When there are long lapses, reach out to them, asking if they’ve had a change in status and if there’s anything you can do.