Great Customer Service = Profits

HOT READS FOR THE PRACTITIONER

Title: Round’um up!  Bring’um in!  Keep’um Happy!

Competencies: customer service, sales

Who benefits: anyone in customer service or sales; however most articles are written for senior management

Consultant Usage: good read for sales and customer service consultants

What’s it about?  Today’s post is brief.  Harvard Business Review published an anthology on customer service.  It contains 9 articles previously published in HBR.  If you are in the customer service business, you will benefit greatly from some if not all of the articles.  If you are not in the customer service business, please return to this site next week.

The anthology is about best practices in customer service. The theme is “How do you keep your customers coming back-and get them to bring others?”  It promises to show you how to:

– Turn angry customers into loyal advocates
– Get more people to recommend you
– Boost customer satisfaction by satisfying your employees
– Focus on profitable customers–whether they’re loyal or not
– Invest in the right CRM technology for your business
– Mine customer data for more effective marketing
– Increase your customers’ lifetime value

If you like positive cost/benefit outcomes, here is an interesting tidbit.  The book costs under $16.  If the articles were purchased separately, the cost would be close to $75.  Great bargain if you are interested in the topic.

While researching this post I stumbled across a related book: Exceptional Service, Exceptional Profit: The Secrets of Building a Five-Star Customer Service Organization.  I have not read the book.  What attracted me to look at the book summary was the high number of positive reviews posted along with it.  It received a 4.8 out of 5 on 46 ratings.  If you are a regular Amazon visitor, I think you recognize that it exceptionally difficult to reach that score with that number of reviewers.  Also big names like Ken Blanchard (who endorses a little too easily for my taste, but not to be totally discounted), Daniel Pink (brilliant and colorful) and Horst Schulze, Founding President and COO, The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company (now him you can take to the bank).  My hunch is the book has something important to offer those in customer service.

Catch you later.

Bill Bradley

Bill Bradley (mostly) retired after 35 years in organizational consulting, training and management development. During those years he worked internally with seven organizations and trained and consulted externally with more than 90 large and small businesses, government agencies, hospitals and schools.