CWL Publishing Enterprises

Best Practices in Customer Service
Ron Zemke and John A. Woods, Editors
HRD Press, 1998

This book was developed by Ron Zemke (of the "Knock Your Socks Off" customer service series of books from AMACOM) and John Woods for HRD Press. It contains 35 articles, all but one of which were written specifically for this book. The contributors are all leading consultants and practitioners in the field of customer service.

The book is divided into 8 parts, each focusing on an area of concern to those who manage customer service departments or to anyone who wants to know how to make customer service departments operate more efficiently while becoming more responsive to customers.

This book is available now, in two versions -- hard copy and hard copy with the files on diskettes. CWL Publishing Enterprises managed the production. You can click on the title of each part to learn more about the articles in that part as well as about the authors of those articles, their e-mail addresses, and links to their Web sites.



Contents

Part One. Great Customer Service, Customer Retention, and Growth
First of all, it's important to know why it's vital to be concerned with customer service. Explaining that is the purpose of Part One, which is all about retaining the customer base that will fuel growth and profitability.
  1. Customer Service, Value, and the Systems View, John A. Woods
  2. Traveling the Highway to "Wow!" Service, Jerry Fritz
  3. Quantifying the Impact of Great Customer Service on Profitability, John Goodman
  4. Delighting Your Customers: Creating World-Class Service, Eberhard E. Scheuing
  5. Customer Retention and the Stages of Service After the Sale, Terry G. Vavra and Douglas R. Pruden
Part Two. Practical Models for Managing Customer Service
The articles in this part of the book provide you with practical frameworks for planning, organizing, and delivering excellent service.
  1. How to Create a Plan to Deliver Great Customer Service, Susan Smith
  2. Building a Picture of Perfect Service, Michael Vandergriff
  3. Standards for Service: From Countability to Accountability, Kristin Anderson
  4. What Customers Really Want: How That Affects What Service to Deliver, Georgette M. Zifko-Baliga
  5. Customers Care When They Share: How to Nurture Loyalty Through Inclusion, Chip R. Bell
  6. Training for Success Through Service: How Delta Air Lines Does It, Nora Weaver and Tom Atkinson
Part Three. Practical Methods for Leading Customer Service
While Part Two provides you with some useful management frameworks, Part Three is more tactical, with specific techniques for leading customer service.
  1. Authentic Coaching: Getting the Best From Customer Service Providers, Anne Bruce and James S. Pepitone
  2. Unleashing the Power of Customer CARE in Your Organization, JoAnna Brandi
  3. How to Let Customer Value Drive Customer Problem Solving, R. Eric Reidenbach, Gordon W. McClung, and Reginald W. Goeke
Part Four. Customer Service on the Front Line
Here we've provided five articles that provide specific techniques customer service managers and reps can use to do their jobs better.
  1. Six Tools for Improving How You Deliver Service to Customers, Rebecca L. Morgan
  2. Maintaining Superior Customer Service During Periods of Peak Demand, Janelle M. Barlow and Dianna Maul
  3. Creating the Sounds of Quality: Delivering Great Service on the Telephone, Kathleen Brown
  4. Problem-Solving Techniques for Telephone Representatives, Donna Hall
  5. Customer-Sensitive Automated Response Systems, Marlene Yanovsky
Part Five. Improving Customer Service: Strategies and Techniques
Our goal in this part of the book is to give you an eclectic selection of ideas you can use to improve the quality of service your department delivers.
  1. The Ten Practices of Exceptional Service, Mark Sanborn
  2. Beyond Loyalty: Inspiring Customers to Brag, Michael E. Cafferky
  3. Customer Service Sort Cards: A Training Exercise, Sharon A. Wulf
  4. Strategies That Foster Customer Loyalty, Lisa Ford
  5. The Care and Handling of the Mature Market, Patricia V. Alea and Rebecca Chekouras
  6. Customer Surveys That Deliver Actionable Information, Robert Shaver
Part Six. Customer Problems and Problem Customers
Do you want some techniques for effectively handling upset customers and recovering when you blow it with your customers? That's the purpose of the two articles in this part.
  1. Service Recovery: Turning Oops! Into Opportunity, Ron Zemke
  2. Cooling the Customer With HEAT, John Hartley
Part Seven. Customer Service on the Internet
The Internet is becoming ubiquitous, providing great opportunities for better customer service. In this section we provide three articles that will help you become familiar with this customer service tool.
  1. The World Wide Web Was Made for Customer Service, Jim Sterne
  2. Using the Internet to Measure Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty, John Chisholm
  3. Internet Self-Service Support: Beyond Search Engines to "Smart Answers on the 'Net"TM, Keith Loris
Part Eight. Customer Service and the Rest of the Organization
The customer service department does not operate independently of the rest of the organization. What CS does affects the rest of the organization, and what goes on in the rest of the organization affects the level and nature of assistance the customer service department can provide. In Part Eight we explore these relationships from a variety of perspectives.
  1. Coordinating Services Across Functional Boundaries: The Departure Process at Southwest Airlines, Jody Hoffer Gittell
  2. Swing With Your Trapeze Buddy: Working Together Internally to Serve External Customers, Mark Rosenberger
  3. The Company-Wide Sales-Focused Organization, Gary Connor
  4. Customer Service: A Key to Innovation Success, Scott Davis
  5. Great Internal Service Creates Great External Service, H. Lee Meadow
Appendix A. Benchmarking Your Customer Service Operations With Findings From the 1996 ICSA Benchmarking Study
Includes 20 graphs documenting some of the most useful findings from the 1996 ICSA Benchmarking Study.

Appendix B. Magazines, Journals, and Newsletters That Deal With Customer Service
Includes publication and subscription information and a brief description of their content.

Appendix C. Customer Service Resources on the Internet
Includes an annotated listing of Web sites, discussion lists, and other information about customer service available online.

To order Best Practices in Customer Service, just click on the publisher: HRD Press



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