Support Channel Survey by John Moore
We invite you to help our friend John Moore with his survey of customer support preferences and usage patterns. John will be running this survey – hosted on his blog Random Thoughts of a Boston-Based CTO: John Moore’s Weblog – through the end of March and will share his results once all the survey data is complete.
Please take the survey and invite your communities to do the same.
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 »
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 »
When You Can't Say "Yes"...There is Opportunity for Success
Customers are the backbone of every business. Yet, there are times when you simply cannot give them what they want, because a customer may not always be fully aware of a company’s financial status, product development ability, or the majority of a company’s feedback. So, what do you do when you have a demanding customer whose needs you cannot meet? Start by getting into the mindset of what the customer is really looking to accomplish:
Challenged by managing & motivating a culturally diverse customer service team a continent away?
I am a customer service manager at Voice123.com, and a challenge I face is managing the staff we employ in Bogota, Colombia from the offices we have in New York City, NY. When I took this job as Customer Service/Quality Assurance/Blogger/Public Relations manager at Voice123, I understood ahead of time what challenges were ahead of me. I was not told what the challenges were, but my past experience in traveling to other countries filled me with the knowledge of how businesses in the United States were viewed internationally. I also understood that there are countries that view the United States as ‘1st World’, as if to say that their own country must be ‘3rd World’ by comparison. Luckily, traveling has also taught me that many times people who believe their country is inferior to the United States, may simply need to be reminded as to how the world is pretty much the same no matter where you go. Back in 1992, I read a book called ‘Think and Grow Rich’ by Napoleon Hill. In this book, he describes very basic needs shared by all human beings, or at least, that is my interpretation of his writing behind his Philosophy of Success: Read more »
Download the IGN success story
In the U.S. alone, computer and videogame software sales topped $11.7 billion in 2008. In this hot market, millions of devoted gaming fans are online looking for the latest content, news and tips to enrich the gaming experience – and many of them are going to IGN Entertainment sites.
A unit of Fox Interactive Media, Inc., IGN is a leading Internet media and services provider, bringing news, reviews, videos, previews and forums to videogame and entertainment enthusiasts. In fact, IGN sites attract one of the largest concentrated audiences of young males online.
In a given month, tens of millions of unique users visit one of IGN’s targeted sites, which include IGN.com, GameSpy.com, Direct2Drive.com and AskMen.com. Across all sites, the company’s customer service department fields 12,000 support inquiries every month, from login questions to help finding specific content.
Download this customer success story and learn how leading Internet media and services provider IGN maintains a high level of service without costly staff additions.
Download this customer success story
In today’s medical environment, physicians are pressed to see as many patients as possible. Often, that means staying late to catch up on paperwork accumulated throughout the day.
Technology from e-MDs is changing that. The company’s electronic health record (EHR) software allows physicians and their staffs to document patient visits electronically with just a few clicks – saving time and improving documentation.
EHRs also allow practices to eliminate cumbersome paper charts – a huge time saver for staff and a critical customer service tool since patient information is now available from any computer with the EHR software. It is a true mission-critical application.
That’s why e-MDs’ customer support response times are so vital.
“If a doctor has an issue with his computer, he needs help immediately to access patient records or chart information,” said James Foster, client data operations manager at e-MDs.
Download this customer success story and discover how electronic health record (EHR) software provider e-MDs empowered their customers to help themselves and reduced critical issue resolution times by 80%.
Is Twitter Part of Your Customer Service Strategy?
Popular social media channel – Twitter – provides an open forum for customers to air their grievances, give praise or simply inquire about an organization’s products, services or support. These customer sentiments and inquiries are valuable sources of information and smart companies will take the opportunity to collect, measure and act upon this knowledge.
Insight into the perception of your brand, products, or services provides the ideal opportunity for customer service teams to step up their service techniques. In a Mashable’s article “HOW TO: Use Twitter for Customer Service” they nicely articulate the major tenants of customer service and how they relate to Twitter: problem resolution – it’s the main goal of customer service and Twitter provides a platform for a fast, easy response possibly in a single tweet; Read more »
Watch the recorded version here
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:
Heavy support traffic
Support traffic can spike for any number of reasons: a less-than-perfect launch or an unexpected bug in a product is discovered, a new ad campaign takes off, or maybe a hot new product is released.
That’s what Chris Henderson, Senior Manager – Customer Service for IGN Network faced. IGN is an online entertainment community of Web sites all centered around the busy world of video games. And in Chris’ case, last September three of IGN’s most popular games all went live in the same month. Her challenge — how to help all these customers at once, without driving up wait times. Read more »
