Here’s a web resource that has useful customer service information, and a whole lot more. Actually it has over 6,000 articles and other resources for small businesses.

It’s called WBSOnline.com and it’s a free service of Winmark Business Solutions. Winmark is a Minnesota company that offers franchise, leasing and other services to their small business clients. They’ve been doing it for many years and they’ve developed a solid reputation.

About 15 years ago a bright guy from Minnesota started building a website to help people manage their organizations better. Carter McNamara, of Authenticity Consulting, LLC, had the idea long before most of us even knew what the Internet was. Even better, he stuck with it and built a popular and useful resource that is completely free.

It’s called: ManagementHelp.org

I don’t know many people who enjoy customer complaints. But more of us should because they offer us wonderful opportunities to improve how we do our jobs and keep more customers coming back.

Today’s podcast is all about how to handle customer complaints and turn them into more loyal customers. We talk about 5 steps anyone can use when dealing with complaints. And we review several quick tips to impress our customers.

Enjoy the show!

This is the first in a regular series of Top 10 lists. Every month I’ll present my top 10 list of resources that can help you improve customer service and increase customer loyalty.

To keep the lists readable I won’t go into a lot of detail on each item. But each resource listed will have a link to more information.

This week’s Amazing Customer Service Resource is as useful as it is fun.  It’s the brainchild of Guy Kawsaki and it keeps getting better:

Alltop – Customer Service

Alltop’s reason for being is best explained by this quote:

“It’s not information overload. It’s filter failure.” – Clay Shirky

As the economy improves (and it really IS improving!) you can position your business for greater success by making sure your customer service is Amazing. The challenge is knowing how you’re doing. There are a lot of ways to evaluate the quality of your service. Now you have one more. It’s called the:

Amazing Service Assessment Tool

Last week Dennis Snow and I sat down to talk about customer service.

Dennis is a highly regarded customer service expert, having cut his teeth with the Disney Corporation. Dennis also has  a popular customer service blog and he has written several well-received books on customer service.

So I was thrilled when he asked me to join him on his customer service podcast. And he was kind enough to let me repost the interview here, on AmazingServiceGuy.com.

We all have a variety of customer service experiences. Some are amazing. Some are lousy. Many are somewhere in between. And we all have opinions about customer service.

So now is the time to share yours. Tell us what you think about the state of customer service. This short survey helps us capture your opinions. Then, later this year, we will put them together in a fancy report that you can have for free. (And you can pat yourself on the back, knowing you made the world a little better for customers everywhere!)

Sometimes things happen just as we want them to. But often we get better results if we plan the changes we want. It doesn’t mean we’ll get exactly what we plan for. But we’re more likely to get what works than if we leave it to chance. So my message today is simply that we should all plan our customer service improvement for next year.

Here are some ideas that might help:

There are many ways any business can (and should) improve customer service. Here are a couple that stand out and can be done without spending a ton of money.

1. Make service a priority

This means your reason for being in business is to help your customers. So everything you do needs to be held up against this standard. Your actions decisions, policies and procedures need to show this. This creates a culture of service in your company. (Your customers know if you DON’T operate this way!)

Last weekend I spoke at the Ensemble Travel Group 2009 International Conference. It was held at the Fairmont Banff Springs hotel in Banff, Alberta. This week I will be sharing some of my experiences there and using them as examples of how we can all increase customer loyalty by improving customer service.

For now, I’ll start with a short video. This was an interview we did before I spoke. The Ensemble Team made wonderful use of technology to capture and deliver learning throughout the conference.

A lot of companies make their employees use scripts as they work with their customers. This is a major pet peeve of mine. Rather than keeping customers I believe it drives them away. When I know the person I’m talking with is working from a script, I question how able they are to help me. Because life does not conform to a script.

So if you use scripts and your customer deviates from it, then your employee is