The coronavirus pandemic has thrown public finances into turmoil. Legislators and city councils are wrestling with what services to cut—health care, education, public safety. They're also starting to look at what taxes to increase. Universities and many private sector industries are facing similar fiscal crises. Meanwhile, regulated electric utilities are in pretty good financial shape, but this isn't because their businesses have been insulated from the pandemic.
Utilities have had to adopt more expensive operational practices to keep workers safe, more customers aren't able to pay their bills, and electricity sales have dropped. The Energy Information Administration projects that electricity consumption will drop by 4% from 2019 to 2020. That would be the biggest annual percentage drop in electricity sales in over 20 years. The commercial sector demand is forecasted to drop 7%.
Not to change the topic here:
Coronavirus: Staples customers required to wear masks
Officials with office supply chain Staples have announced that customers will be required to wear masks in store beginning Monday.
"Today, we are asking our customers to help protect themselves and those around them so that we can continue to provide these essential products and services," Staples US Retail CEO Mike Motz said Friday in a news release. "Staples will continue to ensure we are in stock on necessary PPE while maintaining a clean and healthy shopping experience, no matter how you choose to shop."
Training Customer Service Employees To Make A Positive Difference (Because There Is No CX Middle
And there, in the public view, in direct contact with their customers, they're either improving the customer experience or diminishing it; either making things better for customers or making things worse: bringing thoughtfulness to the interaction or showing disregard or even rudeness; displaying empathy or implying antipathy.
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Here are five principles that you should be included in your customer service training. Each is essential in allowing employees to improve the customer experience:
Walmart Customers Wearing Nazi Face Masks? America's Next Fight Over Face Coverings
A viral video of customers shopping at Walmart while wearing face masks with Nazi swastikas sparked outrage this weekend, resulting in the shoppers being banned from the national chain for a year. Just as troubling, however, is what the incident may foreshadow about America's next battle over face masks.
The police were called to respond to the incident, and on Sunday a Walmart spokesperson issued the following statement:
Not to change the topic here:
Walmart Employees Will Not Turn Away Mask-Less Customers
These videos have raised questions about who is "responsible" for enforcing such policies and how strictly they should be enforced. President of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union Stuart Appelbaum told CNN that it should be up to security or management to handle enforcing the requirement.
"It's no different than wearing shoes or a shirt," he said, in part, but went on to say that if no one enforces these new requirements, stores "never had a requirement. All they had was a public relations stunt."
Alabaster's Golden Rule BBQ reopens to customers - Shelby County Reporter | Shelby County Reporter
ALABASTER – After temporarily closing its doors due to financial impact caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Golden Rule BBQ reopened its doors for customers in Alabaster on Monday, July 27.
Owner Paul Curcio explained the restaurant had only been open for about five months when he had to make the decision to temporarily shut the doors because of slowed traffic to the barbecue joint. But the community has been very supportive, which allowed him to get back to this point.
Businesses, customers adjust to governor’s mask mandate – WPTA21
It's another example of how folks are having to make adjustments to deal with the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Lots of people have been wearing face coverings for weeks, but now for the first time in Indiana, if you want to enter a public building like Citizens Square in Fort Wayne or any number of businesses, you have to have a mask on.
If you try to get into the Allen County Courthouse under the governor's order you won't even get past the metal detector security station inside the front door.
How Starbucks Came a Long Way on Customer Centricity - Knowledge@Wharton
In this excerpt, adapted from the new edition's preface, Fader describes how Starbucks has pivoted to become a more customer-centric company in the eight years since the book was first published.
Starbucks, I wrote, "makes almost no effort to learn anything about its customers." I pilloried the company for gathering virtually no data about its customers. I said it was "leaving huge amounts of money on the table by failing to take advantage of the deeply ingrained buying habits that many of its customers have established over the years."
Happening on Twitter
Struggling to articulate how nuts this case is. The FBI alleges that FirstEnergy—a Fortune 500 electric utility wit… https://t.co/FFZSOsnH2i yayitsrob (from Washington, DC) Tue Jul 21 18:31:11 +0000 2020
I don't know what the solution is, but it's screwed up that society has placed the burden of public health enforcem… https://t.co/CXZo2yNSg9 mtracey (from NYC) Sun Jul 19 18:21:35 +0000 2020
The results are in! A new #undergrid #minigrid pilot in Mokoloki, Nigeria saves customers N20/kWh, reduces utility… https://t.co/KCVBumEC8I RockyMtnInst (from International) Tue Jul 21 12:22:04 +0000 2020
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