Everyone aims to deliver proactive customer service. Whether you refer to it as cross-selling, up-selling, suggestive selling, or – as we like to say — “soft question” selling, a basic component of effective customer service is to offer your customers additional choices. Some customer service representatives might fear being perceived as pushy or assuming. No […]

by Nancy Friedman Do you know what the number one skill in sales and service is? I gave you a hint in the title. Listening skills. Doesn’t everyone know how to LISTEN? Sort of. Most of us ‘hear’ just fine but truly listening requires more effort? Are there any methods, tricks, ideas, tips or techniques […]

ServiceSkills.com Releases New White Paper Educational Resource Addresses The Return On Investment of Communication Skills Training St. Louis, MO – ServiceSkills.com, a leader in web-based communication training, announces the release of a new white paper, “How Improving Communication Skills Increases Bottom Line Results.” This white paper discusses the ways communication impacts business success. Readers learn […]

By Nancy Friedman, President, Speaker, Telephone Doctor Customer Service My entire career has been focused on developing ways to help companies communicate better with their customers. Each year we run this popular article as a reminder for all. Great customer service is sought by most everyone. Businesses go out of their way to give good […]

By Nancy Friedman, The Telephone Doctor Most business owners know that customers will walk – take their business elsewhere if they’re not treated as they’d like to be. But how does a business owner or manager find out what the customer really likes or dislikes? Well, your customers have told us what they may not […]

I love to read short blogs sometimes…and I love to write them too. This is one of those short ones; Blogs don’t always need to be long. It’s about strangers. And Customers We know we have paid customers We know we have internal customers We know we have potential – future customers We even know […]

By Nancy Friedman, Keynote Speaker, Customer Service Expert & Engagement Specialist.   A short, but ongoing course. Are you really engaged? Do you and your staff really know how to engage and interact with the customers? Do they even know what it means.  Seems as though every year there’s a “new” word in Customer Service. […]

If you can train your customer service representatives to substitute five common forbidden sentences with positive, smart replacements, they’ll turn disgruntled customers into satisfied clients. For instance, one forbidden response is, “I don’t know” Replace this with “That’s a good question, let me check and find out!”  

Many years ago, Alan (Ace) Greenberg sent me a complimentary autographed copy of his new book,Memos from the Chairman. I was curious as to why he would do that – having never met him… but his note was paper clipped to a page which explained why he did. The page he paperclipped was an article […]