5 Monday Customer Service Must Reads

One of the most important things you can be doing consistently as a customer service professional is routinely reading blogs and articles about your craft.  You will find yourself constantly inspired and invigorated if you commit to doing this.  Here are five of my favorites for this past week.

Three Social Customer Care Trends You Need To Know by Jeff Toister

In this post, Jeff Toister shared some insight from the 2014 Customer Experience Management Benchmark.  Remarkably, so many companies are still way behind when it comes to customer service via social media.  One of the most alarming stats he shared was that 68% of Fortune 500 CEOs are still not on social media.  The fact of the matter is that our customers are on social media and they are talking about us.  They would love to talk to us.  Your business should be on there actively seeking to engage those customers!

A Membership Experience Is A Powerful Customer Service Strategy by Shep Hyken

Shep Hyken shares about his entertaining experience as a brand new member of Dollar Shave Club.  From product, to marketing, to customer service, they really nail it when it comes to the member experience.  As opposed to an online store that simply sells razors, Dollar Shave Club take it to a new level when they call their customers “members” and throw in tons of perks in the process.  And look at what happened.  Shep Hyken posted about them on his blog and now I’ll probably become a customer of theirs in the future.

The Art Of The Focus. How To Get Into The Zone by Doug Sandler

There can never be enough said about learning how to lock in and focus on one thing at a time.  In this post, Doug Sandler gives us a great exercise to write out a list of our important daily objectives and then the distracting ones. He then encourages us to schedule blocks of time for the important activities.  I’m going to give this one a shot on Monday.

Turning A Customer Service Culture by Adam Toporek

Adam Toporek gives us insight into the huge task of turning a ship around and compares that to Comcast’s plan to create a customer-centric culture.  The size of this task is absolutely mind-boggling.  Regardless of how it goes, we are sure to learn a ton about culture change within organizations through this process.

Cash Register Versus Customer by Chip Bell

In this post, Chip Bell shares an experience at a hardware store where the cashier could not simply charge him $1.99 for an item without first scanning a barcode.  We read so often about companies that empower professionals to do what is right by the customer up to a certain dollar amount.  In this case, the machine won and there was apparently nothing the cashier could do.  What a great reminder to ensure that our customer service professionals are empowered.

So there’s five must reads for you.  What are your recent favorite customer service articles and stories?

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