Overview: Perfect Phrases For Customer Service By Robert Bacal (McGraw-Hill)
Learn about an innovative and unique way to learn to improve your customer service skills and those of your colleagues and managers.
This is the second edition released in 2010, and it’s even better than the original. Updated according to reader input, this little, low cost book contains a powerhouse of techniques, phrases strategies and techniques any customer service representative can benefit from. Improve customer service skills, no matter what sector you work in. It is ideal for both customer service personnel, and for use in training, because it’s practical, useful, and is short and to the point. Here’s how it’s set up (see bottom of this article to browse sample chapters, excerpts, preface and table of contents).
Rationale
People don’t learn customer service skills through talking about abstract situations. They learn by seeing, reading and hearing how tough customer service situations are handled PROPERLY. That’s the core content of this book — sixty dialogues that show readers exactly what to say, and what to do in various customer service situations.
The book opens with a very brief summary of “customer psychology”, and what customers want and need from customer service staff. This provides a basis for understanding the customer, and the customer service role, so the examples and techniques will make sense.
Here’s what Lucinda Smith said about this book on amazon. “This was a gift for someone that teaches customer service. She cannot say enough about the information in this author’s books.
The second section contains explanations of dozens of customer service techniques and tricks. It is these techniques that will be presented and portrayed in the next section.
The third section contains sixty customer service dialogues that demonstrate to readers exactly how to handle various customer service situations, ranging from the straight-forward (putting someone on hold on the phone) through to much more complex and difficult situations (e.g. what to do if a customer accuses you of racism, or makes repeated phone calls, or wants to return an item that is not returnable).
Mary Skiller writes about the first edition:
The book begins with a section outlining some sixty specific customer service techniques, and describes each of them. Some are very basic, and some are more advanced, particularly those that deal with dealing with angry customers, or preventing problems with customers from escalating and becoming time consuming.
But that’s not the meat of the book, or what makes the book so useful.
The rest of the book contains about sixty vignettes or dialogues between customers and staff, showing how the various situations SHOULD be handled. Each vignette is short, and to the point and the information for each one can be assimilated and learned from in a very few minutes.
I like this book because it can be used in so many ways. You can sit and read it through. You can browse it and just read the parts that you want help with.
You can read one or two vignettes, and learn one or two skills a day, since each segment really stands on its own. It’s a great source book to use in customer service training, because it’s all there — techniques, and how to use them.
It’s low priced. It’s quick to learn from. And it’s real. Most of the vignettes struck home with me. I bet I’ve had most of these situations.
If there’s a better, faster book to learn how to deal with customers (especially the difficult customers), I haven’t found it yet.
Each dialogue contains a brief opening explanation, and then readers will see what conversation looked like, with the employee demonstrating specific learnable customer service skills.
Each dialogue is explained so that the reader can learn how to use the techniques him or herself in similar situations. Finally, each dialogue/chapter contains some specific hints and tips.
Before you go on to the links below, where you can find out more, here’s why this book is different.
- short, to the point
- concrete, but with enough theory to help people use the techniques effectively
- applicable to all sectors, government, health, retail, service
- low cost, and high effectiveness value, a great tool for use in training
- browsable. People can choose to read it through, or simply choose what’s relevant to them
Katie G. from Florida, on amazon, said: This book was exactly what I expected it to be. I love that it not only gives you ideas for how to respond, it also breaks it down to what skills are used in the wording (such as empathy). My customer service agents are utilizing this book to help improve their quality of customer service. A lot can be learned from this book.
More Information
Access All Book InformationTable of Contents (view skills covered)
Table of Contents (view customer situations covered)
Free Excerpt – Book Preface
Free Excerpt – Situation #1
Free Excerpt – Situation #2
This book is available at your local bookstore, or through amazon.com and other booksellers. At this writing, it’s selling for $7.26 U.S. which is an amazing price. Here’s the info:
Perfect Phrases For Customer Service, By Robert Bacal
Paperback: 175 pages
Publisher: McGraw-Hill; 2 edition (December 24, 2010)
ISBN-13: 978-0071745062
