Your Source for Providing a Better Customer Service and Customer Support Experience

Webinar: Getting Your Worst Customers to Love You

Most customer support teams are good at handling routine transactions. But what about a customer who is threatening to sue you? Or asks to have you fired? Or an employee who got so fed up with IT support that he smashed his laptop and then ran over it?

All of these are real situations that support professionals reported in a recent survey sponsored by Supportindustry.com and Parature. This interactive webinar, teaming communications skills expert and bestselling author Rich Gallagher with Parature’s VP of Marketing Gary McNeil, looks at how to handle situations like these and more. The open panel discussion format will examine the best practices, tools and technology behind handling your worst-case scenarios. Read more »

"Best Practices in Customer Service" Webinar Series

Delivered by the industry’s leading minds, this thought leadership series is designed to serve as a valuable resource to provide insight into customer service best practices and industry trends. The webinars in this series are ‘must attend’ events for any organization committed to improving the customer experience. We invite you to register for one or register for all depending on the topics that interest you.

Customer service industry experts, Robert Spector – bestselling author, Rich Gallagher of Point of Contact Group, Paige Newcombe of Coremetrics, John Ragsdale of Technology Services Industry Association (TSIA), Dr. Natalie Petouhoff of Forrester Research, Jay Topper of Rosetta Stone, Sahar Hashemi of Coffee Republic, Lorraine Grubbs-West of Lessons in Loyalty and Southwest Airlines, and Lisa Ford – customer service expert will focus on current industry technologies, best practices and trends that are key for organizations to improve their support processes to improve the customer experience. Read more »

Watch the webinar "The Nordstrom Way to Customer Service Excellence"

“The Nordstrom Way to Customer Service Excellence” webinar offers organizations insight into the inner workings of the Nordstrom customer service culture.

Outstanding customer service – the key to successful organizations, a competitive differentiator and a facilitator of customer loyalty – is synonymous with one of the nation’s leading fashion specialty retailers. Nordstrom, known for providing the ultimate customer service experience, has become the national standard for customer service. How did they earn this reputation? What is their philosophy? The Nordstrom Way to Customer Service Excellence will feature Robert Spector, bestselling author of The Nordstrom Way to Customer Service Excellence. Mr. Spector will break down the elements of the Nordstrom philosophy and explain how they can be adapted for virtually every kind of organization by detailing the nine management principles that have made them the gold standard for customer service. Read more »

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The customer experience has never been more important than it is in today’s service environment. Customer service is driven by the customer experience and the people inside a company provide that experience – whatever employees experience on the ‘inside’ is similar to what customers will experience ‘on the outside.’ This thought provoking white paper will compel you to ask the following:

• Is my company in alignment?
• Does every employee understand the vision?
• Do our employees love their jobs?

The Cult of the Customer explores concepts, lessons and strategies that will show you how to build a customer service culture that will make your customers and employees ‘amazing.’ Read this white paper to discover powerful customer service and experience concepts that can help increase: Read more »

Download the White Paper

In today’s environment, the customer has never been more important - customer satisfaction and retention are critical to any organization’s success, and customer service is essential to that end. The most efficient and successful customer support departments are versatile; providing their customers with a preferred method of support. Today’s customers are tech-savvy and require so much more than simple phone support. Integrated multi-channel service options, such as self-service via knowledgebases and downloads, live chat sessions, mobile applications, ticket systems, social networks, and easy issue escalation paths via the Web must be implemented to empower support teams to provide the level of service that customers expect. 

The white paper entitled “Multi-Channel Service: Enhancing the Customer Experience” is available for download now.

The webinar features John Ragsdale, vice president of technology research for the Technology Services Industry Association (TSIA). His area of expertise is in creating strategies for improving the overall customer experience and services operation through technology.

If you missed the webinar, the recorded version is available here. Share your thoughts and continue the discussion here.

A copy of this presentation is available in our SlideShare profile.

Watch the recorded version here

In this recession-driven environment, companies are clamoring to increase revenue and save costs; customer retention has never been more important.  Oddly enough, most organizations spend more on marketing to gain customers rather than to retain them.  A published study by the American Society of Quality Control asked the question “Why do customers leave companies?”  Sixty-eight percent of the respondents answered the question with the following “because of the company’s indifferent attitude to the customer.”  So how can organizations change this apathetic attitude and improve customer retention? The white paper “How to Improve Customer Retention by Building Emotionally Engaging Customer Experiences“explores building an emotional connection with your customers to not only retain them, but have them become customer advocates, recommending and staying loyal to the organization. Read more »

The fun and unique Zappos office environment

Discover how customer phenom Zappos.com grew their gross merchandise sales from $1.6M in 2000 to over $1 billion in 2008 by focusing relentlessly on customer service.

Rob Siefker of the Zappos Customer Loyalty Team discusses the Zappos commitment to WOWing their customers through service, how they retain repeat customers, and what they do internally to inspire the Zappos culture & core values. Read more »

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Those who manage people know that it is often challenging to provide ‘constructive criticism’ or feedback without causing their employees to become defensive. All too often human nature and an instinctive need to defend ourselves takes over, resulting in resentment or resistance to suggestions for change.

This webinar features Rich Gallagher - Author of What to Say to a Porcupine & How to Tell Anyone Anything: Breakthrough Techniques for Handling Difficult Conversations a Work – exploring a fresh new approach to coaching customer service professionals. An approach based on recent developments in the psychology of how we communicate with each other focusing on strength-based coaching versus deficit-based coaching. Read more »

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iWin, leading online developer, publisher and distributor of casual games for the mass market, enabled on-demand customer service software to empower their players with self-service support, 24/7 from anywhere in the world; providing efficient and effective support through targeted knowledgebase articles and the use of video.

In the webinar David Schroeder, Director of Customer Care discussed:

• How to persuade users to try self-help options before contacting your support staff
• How to use video to increase support portal adoption rates and reduce operating costs
• How to make your support portal easy to understand through the use of video Read more »

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With the downturn in the economy, should companies be spending on Customer Service? Unequivocally, yes. It’s the number one initiative that directly affects a company’s most valuable asset: customers.

What should companies invest in? Customer Service Social Media – It reduces operational costs and improves first call resolution, customer loyalty as well as provides a host of other benefits to marketing, sales, product development, and other critical departments. Companies that want to transform their relationships with customers need to move Social Media to the top of their priority list. It should be the number one customer service initiative in 2009. Read more »