Improve Customer Service

Learn how to improve your customer service with these free articles, tool-kits and other training resources.

Thoughts on leadership, teamwork and managing change

April 8, 2012

One of my favorite movies is Coach Carter. It’s based on the true story of a high school star basketball player who comes back to coach at his old school. The team was on a losing streak with few prospects for improvement. Coach Carter steps in and makes some radical changes to help the players [...]

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Customer Service Conference to Focus on Loyalty and Retention

February 7, 2012

In March, the Multi-Channel Virtual Contact Center Conference will be held. As a virtual conference it will enable people from all over the world to participate without incurring travel costs or time. The conference, presented by CRMXchange, Yankee Group and Vanguard Communications, will focus largely on best practices in improving customer loyalty as well as [...]

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Five Ways to Improve Customer Service Starting Today

February 11, 2011

There are substantial benefits for companies that improve their customer service. The good news is you don’t need to spend a lot of money to start making improvements in your customer service. You can make customer service improvements starting today. Here are some specific suggestions to get you started. 1. Improve People Skills To deliver [...]

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Gitomer tells how to attract and keep customers with value

October 27, 2010

Jeff Gitomer is best known to many as a sales guru but his message is equally important to anyone who wants to keep their customers coming back. In this short video he offers some platinum advice on attracting the right customers by offering them more value than anyone else. This is important because the more [...]

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Use Trust to increase customer loyalty

October 18, 2010

Over 9 million times every month, someone does a Google search on the word “trust”. Google Trends shows a steady upward trend in the word “trust” used in media stories since 2004. We hear the word every day. Many of of use the term daily. Some more than others. “Trust me, I wouldn’t even offer [...]

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Be an expert for your customer

October 15, 2010

There’s an old funny accurate cartoon that shows a king sending away a salesman because the king is facing an invading army. His focus needs to be on defeating his enemy, not on spending time talk to a “crazy salesman”, as he puts it. The king’s purpose at that moment is to beat this enemy [...]

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Is self service good for customer service?

October 14, 2010

Over the past few decades we have seen technology replace more and more people as we buy and use the things that keep us going. From the ubiquitous self-service gas station to self-service check-in at airports, we have more opportunities than ever to deal with machines rather than people. Is this good for customer service? [...]

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Referrals increased by over 100%

May 25, 2010

The headline of this post comes from a blog post by my friend Brian Carroll. His post describes a conversation he had with a client where they discussed how lead generation often ignores current customers. As a result of the discussion, one CEO decided his company would begin focusing more on current customers. He even [...]

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Make it easy for customers to leave and more will stay

May 18, 2010

A few years ago AOL became the poster child for a special kind of customer abuse when a customer recorded his phone call to them as he tried to cancel his account. All he wanted to do was leave. All they wanted to do was prevent him from leaving. But they had his credit card [...]

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Improve customer service by paying attention

May 10, 2010

Recently I was at a youth mentoring conference. One of the topics we found ourselves discussing was how challenging it is for many adults to relate to kids. This is a major obstacle to recruiting mentors for kids. After thinking about how I interact with kids (of all ages) I concluded the best way to [...]

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The link between customer service and customer loyalty

April 28, 2010

It seems natural customer loyalty would follow good service. If you get what you want and you are treated right, why would you not return to a business? But sometimes it’s useful to have more than an intuitive argument. So I have done a bit of research and I have found two statistics that tell [...]

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Enough about me, let’s talk about me.

April 26, 2010

Several times a year I get a CD from a well-known PR consultant. She is a very aggressive and consistent promoter of her business. She has done a good job making herself well-known in her niche. But, when I listen to her CD I often resist her message. Not because of its quality. She has [...]

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Understand what your customers want from you

April 23, 2010

Every business exists to help people accomplish something. If we fail at that then our business will not be sustainable. But to help our customers really get what they want, we need to know what that is. We do that by having conversations with them. Ask questions and listen to the answers. Get in the [...]

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Here’s how to have real customer loyalty

April 22, 2010

Just about every company wants more loyal customers. Many think the way to increase loyalty is with bribes. Not real bribes of course – bribes are bonus points, frequent flier miles, and any other program that pays customers to continue doing business with a company. These programs seem to work because people use them. But there’s [...]

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Use faith and frustration to improve

April 21, 2010

The biggest reason we don’t accomplish what we want in our businesses (and, in our personal lives) is we’re not always willing to change when we should. It’s easy for us to keep doing what we’re doing. It’s habit. It’s comfortable. It’s known. Our brains are hardwired this way for some very good reasons. But [...]

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Here’s what real customers say about customer service.

April 12, 2010

Every company is (or should be) concerned about how they serve their customers. But many company leaders and managers have no idea what their customers want from them. They don’t know what customer consider good or bad) customer service. And it can be hard to really, truly know what your customers want. Until now. Below [...]

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