Customer Service Information


Become a Customer Enthusiasm-Guru!


One thing all successful small business owners have in common is the knowledge that their business is based on enthusiastic customers. Despite their multi-tasking titles of bookkeeper, service provider and sales-manager, their most important title is Customer-Enthusiasm Guru.

How to Easily Increase Your Profits


Do you remember the last time you went into a shop and the person 'serving' raced over to you, greeted you with a lovely smile, heaps of enthusiasm and said, "Welcome to our store, what can I help you with today?" And then listened attentively to what you had to say?Doesn't happen very often does it? In fact, while I was writing this, I couldn't recall when I had experienced it. I'm sure I must have yet it would have been so long ago, I can't remember.

Over Delivering Provides Big Results


Over promising is a problem only when you under deliver. There are a number of ways that you can overdeliver to your customers or prospects, and as a result create a win-win situation for you both.

How to Keep Customers


Who was it that said - "The customer is always right"? Wellfor those of you who can't get through the day withoutknowing, it was H Gordon Selfridge, the founder ofSelfridges's department store in London.The question I want answered is; did he ever work withcustomers on day-to-day basis and if so, was he some kind ofsaint?Let's face it; customers can be a real pain in the neck.

DONT Give Your Customers What They Want!


One of the mantras we hear repeatedly in business is "The customer is always right." I'm here to tell you that if you want to build a thriving business you need to forget that saying, and take note of Payne's Law #1 "The customer is always right- some of the time.

10 Customer Service Quality Statements to Measure up Against


It might sound quick and simple, to say how well your business does in satisfying it's customers. Hearing such as:-"We're increasing our turnover by 14% year to date""Our customer complaints are now less than 4% or our transactions".

5 Ways Customer Service Managers are Implementing to Increase Customer Focus


According to a Forum Corporation survey of commercial customers lost by 14 major service and manufacturing companies:15% found a better service/product15% found a cheaper service/product20% cited "lack of contact and individual attention from the company"50% said; "contact from old suppliers" personnel was poor in quality"These days, it seems that everyone from dog walkers to dotcoms is making "customer service" their mission. Department, discount and convenience stores have all transformed the workers who used to be known as "sales clerks" into "customer service associates"- in theory at least.

Minimize The Pain of Check Recovery


$350 million in bad checks are written each and every week. That fact alone makes bad checks a serious problem for American businesses.

One Critical Question to Ask Yourself Every Day


What happened to the old saying, the customer is always right? I'll bet every one of you reading this article has a "customer service nightmare" story to tell. My most recent nightmare experience took place recently when my business partner and I went in to a wireless phone store to purchase two new pda wireless phones.

You MUST Sweat the Small Stuff


It's The Little Things That Make or Break a Small BusinessIf you make a poor impression in small things, why should customers trust you with larger ones like buying your product regularly or giving you a big order? In the last two days, I've seen this simple fact proved three times.I ordered software from Company A.

The Logic of Emotion!


Homebuyers are an interesting study. Watching people make their home buying decisions has brought me to the conclusion that every decision that every one of us makes is based in emotion.

How CRM Software Works -- Creating Customer Satisfaction with a Click


When people ask, "What is CRM?" the literal answer is, "Customer Relationship Management," but that doesn't really convey much in terms of what all CRM does for a business. This CRM definition is too narrow to really explain everything the system does if it is working to its fullest potential and is user-friendly enough to expand and grow as a customer-client relationship changes and grows.

The History of CRM -- Moving Beyond the Customer Database


Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is one of those magnificent concepts that swept the business world in the 1990's with the promise of forever changing the way businesses small and large interacted with their customer bases. In the short term, however, it proved to be an unwieldy process that was better in theory than in practice for a variety of reasons.

Customer Service: Why Bears Make Bad Customers


Every business owner should have a picture of his or her ideal customer. When I picture my ideal customer, I see a business owner struggling to find time for all that needs to be done, someone passionate about what they do, someone striving to find answers to make their business run better.

Customer Conversion Mistakes That Will Cost You


The following are common mistakes that Sales Managers and Owners make in the sales process which could be costing you thousands or even hundreds of thousands in lost revenue.- No system to capture and log prospect information/contact data on incoming ad calls.

Clients... and 38 ways to communicate with them


As Alan Weiss (guru to the savvy consultant) says: "It is actually difficult to contact clients too much. It is easy to fail to contact them frequently enough.

Customer Service - Winning Customer Experiences


Winning Customer ExperiencesMuch research has been done on what the makes a winning customer experience. What is it that makes customers come back to your business instead of going to someone else's? If your repeat business is low, what is it that you are doing to drive your customers away? There is a consistent theme that emerges across the research - winning customer experiences are built on consistency.

Get Customers to Stop Calling You--12 Easy Ways to Save Money with Online Customer Support


Despite rumors to the contrary, the Web is not dead. More people are using it, they have faster bandwidth, and in many cases Net-time is taking over TV-time.

The 3 Rs of Customer Service


What I am about to tell you may seem very obvious - you may even say DUH!!! but the fact is, - many company's forget the 3 R's of good customer service- Respect your Customer, Take Responsibility for Your Actions and Products and give your Customers a Full REFUND when it just isn't right. I promise you that if you follow these 3 simple rules you will never have to run after the same customer again!Respect the customer! Just about as plain as the nose on your face Right? Wrong!How many times have you been greeted in a less than courteous manner or worse yet- not at all!! Never lose the opportunity to make a great first impression- very rarely do you have a second chance to undo the damage done by that first encounter.

Be the Customer: See Yourself as Your Customers Do


What do your customers experience when they interact with your business? As a mystery shopper, I help businesses see themselves through the eyes of their customers by posing as a typical customer and evaluating their service, quality and cleanliness. Was it easy to find what I needed? Were the employees polite and helpful? Was everything neat and clean? Was I thanked for my business? What happened when I made a return?Whether your business is an international retailer or a small one-person shop, what you don't know about your customers' perceptions of your quality and service can hurt you.


More Resources

Unable to open RSS Feed $XMLfilename with error HTTP ERROR: 404, exiting

More Customer Service Information:

Related Articles


Minimize The Pain of Check Recovery
$350 million in bad checks are written each and every week. That fact alone makes bad checks a serious problem for American businesses.
Whatever Happened To Customer Service?
Do you remember the last time you went into a shop and the person 'serving' raced over to you, greeted you with a lovely smile, heaps of enthusiasm and said, "Welcome to our store, what can I help you with today?" And then listened attentively to what you had to say?Doesn't happen very often does it? In fact, while I was writing this, I couldn't recall when I had experienced it. I'm sure I must have yet it would have been so long ago, I can't remember.
How To Handle Customer Billing Snafus
Q: I just discovered that for the past six months I have been billing a client half of what I should have been. Should I just include the total of the past due balance on his next bill or contact him first to let him know that it's coming? This client has been difficult in the past, so I'd rather not deal with him until I absolutely have to.
Becoming A Solution To Your Customers Problems
Those of us in home based and small businesses are in effect selling our product. So becoming an effective salesperson is very important.
Profit from a Customer Service Recovery Program
A client recently said to me: "Most days things seem to run smoothly; but whenever we have a customer complaint, we seem to collapse. Where are we going wrong?"How you handle and solve customer concerns and complaints is a measure of your standing in the "excellent", "bad", or "mediocre" category of customer service.
It Is All About Customer Service!
In this day of terrible customer service, it should come as no surprise that serving your customers, also known as visitors to your web site, must be a top priority. Forget about return on your investment, how your site looks, keywords, meta tags, and the like.
What Do Your Clients REALLY Think of You?
Know Thyself - Socrates. I'd like to start this article with a test. What do you get when you cross a Northern Canadian male, a 4x4 truck and heavy rain?You guessed it! ? Mud Bogging!!!!That is how I spent my morning. My husband's new truck was too shinny, so he felt he had to get it dirty again just so he could wash it for the fourth time this week.
Why Communication Skills Dont Work In Customer Service
Every time my firm conducts communication skills training, we know someone is going to object."That doesn't work.
Stand Out in Business the Write Way
When was the last time you received a handwritten note from a business associate? It may be that it was too long ago for you to remember. On the other hand, if you have gotten one lately, you know exactly who sent it and when.
Customer Service Consultants
When all else fails in your company to meet the needs of your customer consider a customer service consultant. If you find that agents in your company are constantly having misunderstanding that result in loss of customers bring in a consultant.
Poor Customer Service - Are Your Customers Driving Away Other Customers
Every customer you have is a word-of-mouthadvertiser for you. Unfortunately 90% of this freeadvertising is negative.
When the Customer Demands: Give a Discount or Lose the Order
Periodically every sales person encounters the customer who refuses to buy unless they receive a discount. Sometimes this is driven by the organization's culture or the buyer wanting to look good to their boss and sometimes it is simply the mindset of the individual buyer them self.
Automating Your Help Desk Workflow
Do you know you can open, answer, close and report help desk information without human intervention?Automation is a powerful feature provided by most enterprise level help desk products; however, most organizations rarely take advantage of these features. Based on a survey conducted by RightStar Systems, only 5% of the help desk managers interviewed were using automation to its fullest capacity.
Basic Levels of Consumer Integrity that Presently Permeates Society
Reality is not always pretty. But here is a tad bit of it for you today.
Customer Service - A Lost Art?
Is customer service a lost art? Before you answer that question, take a moment and think about the last few times you have gone shopping or out to dinner. Okay, now that you have really thought about it, is your answer any different? Why is it that when we actually DO receive excellent customer service that it makes such an impression on us that we usually choose to go back? Why - because the occurrences are so few and far between!!! As a home business owner, it is imperative to my business that customer service is ALWAYS a top priority.
A White Paper: Profiting with Kindness
In 2002, there wasn't much interest for Kindness in business, and some business people would question, "What does kindness have to do with business, anyway?" Is this a for real question or just to prove a point? Or perhaps they couldn't figure out what being kind really had to do with business. Or perhaps the word was a jargon word, an unfamiliar language.
The Dissatisfied Customer
We, as small business people, naturally dislike complaints from our clients and customers. Because we're intimately involved with our home businesses, small businesses, or freelance careers, any complaint takes on a personal commentator.
Oil Change Customer from Hell or Hoax; You Decide
Evacuation, "E-Vac" Oil System for Oil ChangingHow do most mobile oil change companies remove the used motor oil from the crank case? Well they "Evacuate it" or in the industry we call it "E-VAC" and this means we suck it out of the dip stick tube with a thin tube which is pushed into the crankcase. Many wonder will this get all the oil out? The answer is not all the oil.
Customer Service - A Sweet Essence
First let us specifically define customer service. It is the performance of a duty or responsibility due to a customer as a result of selling them a product or service.
How to Walk the Floor and Talk to Customers
This may seem a strange topic to introduce. Yet, it is the most under-used skill by many retail managers, but one of the most important roles in their supervision.