Bacal & Associates - Meeting your customer service needs for almost two decades
Welcome To The Customer Service Zone
The Customer Service Zone was created to provide practical information
to help companies, organizations and employees provide more effective
customer service. Regardless of type of business, or sector you'll find
valuable, and often free information here.
You will be able to join our Customer
Service Discussion List where you can share your expertise about
customer service, or get your own questions answered. And of course, you
can browse the annotated customer service material listed below.
Customer Service Resource Categories:
Anger Management(38) Staying calm and in control with difficult clients is essential. In this section you'll find help with anger management techniques you can use to help you keep your cool with difficult and even insulting customers. (Suggested Books)
Best Practices In Customer Service(104) Find best practices in customer service, examples of company successes and how they did it, and related customer service case studies.
Bullying and Verbal Abuse(23) Bullying and verbal abuse at work are disturbing for everyone. These actions affect the target and the organization in negative ways. Learn more about bullying, the effects of verbal abuse, management responsibilities and options, and get help with dealing with bullies and verbal abuse in your life. (Books)
CRM Customer Relationship Management(51) CRM or customer relationship management means: CRM is an industry term for software solutions that help enterprise businesses manage customer relationships in an organized way. Learn how technology can help improve customer service and customer contact.
Communicating With Customers(27) Communication with customers and marketing often overlap since the same strategies for communicating effectively with customers also result in good marketing. Here you'll find material to help you use information about your customers to communicate effectively.
Complaint Handling(39)new Things don't always go smoothly and customers complain, sometimes for good reason, and sometimes for no reason. Learn how to handle complaints professionally and smoothly to increase customer loyalty and retention.
Conflict(38) Conflicts occur as a result of human interaction, where people CARE about what they do. Improve your ability to manage and harness conflict to improve relationships, improve business productivity, and success. Topics include mediation and ADR.
Creating A Customer Service Culture(56)new How can companies create a customer service culture internally that reflects customer service values and principles? Find out about customer service culture initiatives here.
Customer Engagement(15) Customer engagement (CE) refers to the engagement of customers with one another, with a company or a brand. The initiative for engagement can be either consumer- or company-led and the medium of engagement can be on or offline.(Wikiepedia)
Customer Experience(6) A newer phrase regarding customer service that encompasses the entire...experience for the customer when he or she deals with your company. Makes sense to look at things broadly in a competitive world where success if often based on perception.
Customer Loyalty and Retention Strategies(22) It's much less costly to generate customer loyalty and RETAIN customers than to spend marketing money to attract new customers. Here you'll find discussions of approaches to customer retention and customer loyalty.
Customer Satisfaction Issues and Strategies(18) Customer satisfaction is the key to customer loyalty and retention. Here you will find tips, hints, techniques, etc to increase customer satisfaction and evaluate your customers' levels of satisfaction.
Customer Service(82)new Excellent customer service is the key to gaining new customers and customer retention. Learn to create a customer service oriented organization, even when dealing with difficult, angry or frustrating clientele. (Suggested Books)
Customer Service - Airline Industry(17) Customer service in the airline industry is critical for the survival of air carriers around the world. Whether you're interested in airline sales personnel, airline and flight attendents, or pilots, you'll find information about airline customer service, and how to improve it here.
Customer Service - Call Centers(49)new Call centers are often under-staffed and employees are over-worked. Learn about how to improve customer service within the call center environments.
Customer Service - Education Sector(14) We don't usually consider teachers, school principals, and school trustees to be in the business of customer service but we should. Parents and children deserve to be treated as customers. Learn how to deal with parents and tax payers within a school or educational setting.
Customer Service - Financial Sector(32) Investor confidence in banking and other financial institutions comes from offering top quality customer service. Learn about customer service within the financial sector here.
Customer Service - Government and Public Sector(13) Government and public sector organizations need to view customer service differently than for-profit organizations. Learn the importance of effective customer service in the public sector from these resources.
Customer Service - Health Sector(22) Doctors, nurses, and those that work in health care settings (including HMO's) deal with people who are often stressed and need special care. Learn how customer service applies to those that work in the health sector, and with people with health problems.
Customer Service - Hospitality Industry(32) There's no industry that DEMANDS customer service more than the hospitality industry -- hotels, restaurants and related sectors. Learn how to provide effective customer service in the hospitality industry.
Customer Service - Information Technology(24) Most companies have information technology (IT) departments that are critical to the success of the business. They provide services primarily to internal customers. Find information here about how IT and IT employees can improve the service they provide to customers. Of interest to those involved in computer hardware, programming and systems analysis.
Customer Service - Insurance Industry(15)new While insurance is a price competetive arena, trust and customer service play huge roles in attracting and retaining customers. Learn more about best practices, customer service approaches in car, house, business insurance.
Customer Service - Internal Customers(21) Many people deal with customers WITHIN their own companies. Internal customers are those people and employees who might use your services and products, who reside in the same company. For example the computer department, and human resources department serve internal needs. Learn how important internal customer service is to success.
Customer Service - Legal Sector(20) Lawyers, those in legal offices and those in the court system often deal with difficult, challenging situations with clientele. Learn more about providing effective customer service in legal and court situation.
Customer Service - Manufacturing Sector(7) Manufacturers tend not to deal with the end consumer of their products, but customer service is probably even more important, since poor customer service even to a single distributor or retailer can mean losses of millions of dollars. Learn more here.
Customer Service - Real Estate(21) Huge amounts of money are on the line when people buy real estate and houses. Buyers and sellers need to trust real estate agents, and customer service is the key to generating trust and sales in real estate. Learn about customer service and real estate agents.
Customer Service - Retail Sector(33) Customer expectations in the retail sector require top notch customer service for companies to remain competitive. Learn how effective customer service contributes to the bottom line, and how to provide it.
Customer Service - Small Business(17) Small businesses live and breathe through providing top quality customer service, but may not have the huge resources of corporation. Learn how to leverage customer service to improve small business.
Customer Service Excellence Case Studies(26) Here you can learn from companies who have established a reputation for top quality customer service. How did they earn customer service excellence respect and recognition? Learn from the best with these case studies.
Difficult People(32) Difficult people make difficult customers. Learn about what makes difficult people tick, and methods to deal with them. (Suggested Books)
E - Customer Service - Customer Service Via The Internet(39)new More and more customer contact occurs through the Internet, via websites and email. Learn more about how companies are delivering top quality service through the Internet.
Lessons From Poor Customer Service Examples(13) We can learn a lot about improving customer service by looking at what NOT to do, and examples of customer service that has gone awry. Here you'll find examples and analyses of poor customer service situations.
Mystery Shoppers(10) A number of businesses hire "mystery shoppers" to evaluate the quality and levels of customer service in their stores and outlets. Learn more about mystery shoppers, their use and how they can best be used.
Negotiating And Negotiation(36) Negotiation skills are important for workplace success, for dealing with conflict, for making business deals, and creating win-win situations. Learn new negotiating skills and models you can use at work and at home.
Outsourcing Contact Centers and Customer Service(15) More and more companies are outsourcing their customer service process and their call and contact centers. Learn about the pros and cons, dangers and successes.
Privacy Issues and Customer Service(14) Protecting customer information (privacy issues) has become much more important as a part of customer service, due to the huge amounts of data now stored on computers. Learn more about the importance of guarding customer data, and informing customers of privacy protection.
Recovering When Things Go Wrong(21) Perhaps the most important aspect of customer service is how the customer is handled when things go wrong. How you recover with a customer is critical to building customer loyalty and customer retention. Learn how here.
Research Articles For Customer Service(13) Here, you'll find research findings and results about customer service techniques, return on investment and related topics.
Research Methods For Customer Service(13) Understanding your customers is a critical element of providing customer service. That means communication and data gathering. Find information and methods about how to gather and make sense of customer information - satisfaction levels, use of focus groups, surveys.
Self-Service Customer Service Issues(12) More companies are moving towards supplying self-service to customers to replace face-to-face-contact. Here, you will find more information about the challenges, successes, problems and failures with self-service systems.
Social CRM(9) With the emergence of social networking and the use of social media platforms for customer service, there is now a discussion of customer relationship management via social network channels.
Social Networks and Customer Service(15)new There's a move to use social networks as contact methods to improve customer service. That's what is in this section - details, hints, case studies.
What Do Customers Want(7) It's kind of an important question, but it isn't one that has received a lot of discussion or actual action, oddly enough. We will explore research and discussion of what customers really want and expect.
Workplace Violence(41)new There's always a possibility that customer interactions can "go bad" and escalate to workplace violence. While it doesn't happen often you should know what to do to handle and prevent escalation to violence. You'll find general information on this topic here.
