A Book, 3 Blogs, And A Podcast That Contribute To The Customer Service Experience

The customer service experience involves more than just what a sales rep says to a customer. It's more about the environment in which the relationship is nurtured and the transaction takes place. Just as baking a cake requires many ingredients, so does building a legendary customer service experience that turns your customers into evangelists.

My fellow bloggers at Allbusiness.com can help you with the various ingredients. Rather than list each one of them here, check out our metablog which lists all of them. Many of the topics they write about are also crucial to the customer service experience.

There are several other blogs, a podcast, and a book I recommend.Tim, at Customer Service What? The best customer service blog (Umm, Tim, we need to talk about that second sentence in your blog's title:-) covers a variety of topics and he often leaves comments on this blog. His posts benefit people working in both business-to-business and business-to-consumer environments.

Doug, at Service Untitled, regularly gives how-to tips and suggestions. He has some excellent multi-part series that are well worth your time.

Joe, at Return Customer, always has good insights, and is very succinct in his writing.

As I mentioned above, there's more to the customer service experience than just customer service. Very high up on the priority list is the necessity to hire, train, and motivate your employees. Michael Auzenne and Mark Horstman are the guys on Manager Tools, a weekly podcast that is a "must listen" if you manage even one employee. They give practical suggestions on various management topics. (Full disclosure, I knew Mark about 10 years ago when he was a volunteer (and a very good one) for the American Cancer Society's Relay For Life.)

In last week's Managers Tools podcast, Michael and Mark referred to Peter Drucker's book, The Effective Executive. I realized I hadn't read it so I bought a copy and read it in one day. Ladies, the book was written in 1967 so don't be put off by his constant reference to men. The principles and suggestions he espouses will work for small businesses as well as the corporations he mentions.

Knowledge is power, so keep on reading, listening, watching, and learning. Then act on what you learn. To fail to do so wastes your time.

Regards,

Glenn

Spread The Word: Do you have a family member or friend diagnosed with cancer who lives in another (US) community? Does that person need some type of assistance? If so, contact the American Cancer Society at 1-800-ACS-2345 or go to www.cancer.org/ You can key in any US ZIP code and search for resources available in any community.