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Each month, our print publication Customer Service Newsletter provides in-depth information and ideas to help readers better manage their service operations.

But we often have valuable background material, additional information, or related resources that we just can’t fit in the newsletter. Listed below are a wide range of documents that add further insight and understanding to the articles in Customer Service Newsletter.

Click here to learn more about Customer Service Newsletter.

March 1, 2010

Steady progress for email, self-service options — The lead story of this month’s issue of Customer Service Newsletter offers a first look at some of the results of this year’s Standards and Benchmarking Survey, focusing on types of service and service channels. Here is additional data from the survey on hours of service by geographic region.

Should you be thinking about using at-home service agents and supervisors? — In this issue, Matt McConnell, CEO of Knowlagent, which provides online talent management tools for call centers, answered questions that CSN readers have about the use of at-home agents. Here’s a Knowlagent white paper, which answers a number of additional questions.

February 1, 2010

CSN selects the year’s best customer service books — The lead story in the February 2010 issue of Customer Service Newsletter (CSN) offers the editor’s selection of the top customer service books of 2009 — and the first couple of months of 2010. To provide readers with an additional sampling of some of these titles, here are some brief excerpts from several of those titles.

January 1, 2010

2010: More of the same, or a glimmer of hope for customer service? — The lead article in the January issue of Customer Service Newsletter offers a range of ideas from a variety of experts on what customer service managers can expect to encounter in the year ahead. Here are some additional comments from two of those experts.

December 1, 2009

How do I convince reps that complaints are opportunities? — In the December issue of Customer Service Newsletter, the “Ask the Panel” column offered a number of strategies for helping reps understand that complaints are opportunities for positive change. In addition, panelist Jeanne O’Brien of Mile-Hi Foods Company notes that it is equally important that reps handle those complaints professionally. Here is the eight-point process for complaint handling that her frontline reps use.

November 1, 2009

Will your service operations be affected by the Swine Flu? — The lead article in the November issue of Customer Service Newsletter looked at the timely preparations Language Services Associates (LSA) has made to ensure continued service to customers should its business — and in particular, its call center — be affected by the Swine Flu. Here’s a detailed outline of the steps LSA has taken, including preparation and preventive measures, business continuity plan triggers, and Phase I and Phase II steps of LSA’s business continuity plan.

October 1, 2009

What can my reps do during downtime? — What can you do to keep reps productive when the phones stop ringing? Here are additional suggestions from one of Customer Service Newsletter’s panelists.

How to retain experienced workers — Customer Service Newsletter’s “Service News and Notes” page reported on a study for the health care industry by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation on employee retention best practices.

September 1, 2009

Recession puts serious pressure on customer service salaries — The September issue of Customer Service Newsletter reports the results of CSN’s 2009 Salary & Incentives Survey. These additional tables offer data on regional pay differences for customer service positions and survey participants’ ratings of “most useful” performance motivation tools.

August 1, 2009

How to attract and retain Millennials as service reps — In the August issue of Customer Service Newsletter, Joanne Sujansky and Jan Ferri-Reed, authors of Keeping the Millennials, offer advice on attracting and hiring Millennial employees to customer service jobs as well as managing with Millennials in mind. Following is some additional material from our conversation with Joanne Sujansky about how to manage performance metrics with Millennials, as well as some specific advice on how to provide performance feedback to Millennial employees.

July 1, 2009

Are you customer-focused or operations focused? — This article in the July issue of Customer Service Newsletter offers insights from Shep Hyken, author of The Cult of the Customer, on how to create and maintain a customer focus in your organization. The following transcript of CSN’s entire conversation with Hyken provides a wealth of additional service-related information and advice.

June 1, 2009

Should you be looking at reps’ engagement levels? — An article in the June issue of Customer Service Newsletter discusses the characteristic behaviors of “engaged” and “disengaged” employees and how they can affect organizational productivity. The following self-assessment tool from Rivetmaker Consulting will help managers determine if “disengagement” is an issue for their work force.

May 1, 2009

Getting started in customer service benchmarking — In the May issue of Customer Service Newsletter, Alton Martin of COPC Inc. talked about the benefits and pitfalls of contact center benchmarking. In a recent Webinar, he took participants through some of the process. Here’s a look.

April 1, 2009

“Is the economy affecting your service center performance?” — What are the most important or unique customer service standards reported by companies participating in Customer Service Newsletter’s most recent Service Standards & Benchmarking Survey? We’ve assembled a sampling.

March 1, 2009

Creating an all-inclusive service culture — Customer service is part of the mission and training of every employee at Whelan Security. And the company’s core values were created to support that service-oriented culture. Here’s a look.

The phone is still the channel of choice for most customers — This issue of Customer Service Newsletter looks at data from the latest Benchmarking Survey on service channels, degree of rep specialization, types of service provided, and hours of service. Here is some additional data from the survey on hours of service by geographic region.

February 1, 2009

Can we improve AHT without diminishing service levels? — The “Ask the Panel” column in the February issue of Customer Service Newsletter looks at strategies for managing CSRs’ average talk time. Panelist Jeanne O’Brien of Mile Hi Foods recommends creating a call evaluation form that can be incorporated into a broader training and evaluation program.

January 1, 2009

With the economy stalled, what can service managers expect in 2009? — The January 2009 issue of Customer Service Newsletter offers perspective and advice from a number of service experts on what to expect in 2009. Here’s some additional advice from two of them.

New Year’s resolutions for customer service reps — This month’s issue of SkillSharpener included 12 New Year’s resolutions for customer service reps. The resolutions are reproduced here as a mini-poster, which you may print and distribute.

December 1, 2008

Can you engage in productive confrontation? — This month’s issue of Customer Service Newsletter (CSN) includes advice from Joe Takash, author of Results Through Relationships, on engaging in productive confrontations with frontline reps. Here’s his advice on how to have a productive confrontation with your boss.

Ask the Experts: What should quality audits monitor? — CSN’s panel of experts had plenty of advice to offer on what call elements should be monitored. Here are some additional checklist items from our panelists.

November 1, 2008

Create a "culture of excellence" for your service staff — In the November issue of Customer Service Newsletter, Holly G. Green, CEO of The Human Factor Inc., discusses how to build a “culture of excellence” in your organization by defining excellence and clearly communicating expectations. Here she offers a set of questions you can use in one-on-one meetings with employees as a way to build more trusting relationships.

October 1, 2008

Working with at-home agents isn’t all that different from working with call center agents — Tim Houlne, CEO of Working Solutions, a customer service outsourcing company based in Plano, TX, described in the October issue of Customer Service Newsletter how his company finds, screens, and trains at-home agents. Here he offers suggestions on how agents can work to improve the customer experience.

September 1, 2008

Customer service salaries show moderate growth, with an expansion in extra comp offerings — The September issue of Customer Service Newsletter provided results of its 2007-2008 Salary & Incentives Survey. This additional data covers regional base pay differences for nine customer service management and frontline positions.

August 1, 2008

Eight strategies for managing change successfully — In the August issue of Customer Service Newsletter, Trevor Spunt of IBM Global Business Services offers strategies for dealing with changes that might affect the customer service organization. To help round out your change management skills, here are two articles dealing with specific types of change — implementing a CRM program and managing a shift from service to sales.

Let “change management” guide your center in the evolution from service to sales

Plan for resistance when deploying CRM or other service software

July 1, 2008

VistaPrint puts its employees on the phones to “Learn the Customer” — This article from the July issue of Customer Service Newsletter looks at a program created by online printing company VistaPrint to put non-service employees on the customer service phones to learn more about their customers, and by extension, their company. Following is a complete transcript of CSN’s interview with David Degrandpre and Jeff Esposito of VistaPrint.

June 1, 2008

What are you doing to motivate and engage reps? — The June issue of Customer Service Newsletter offered an article based on an interview with Jackie Freiberg, a consultant and co-author of Boom! 7 Choices for Blowing the Doors Off Business-as-Usual, on how to create a workplace culture that motivates and engages staff. Here she offers advice on questions customer service managers can ask job candidates to screen for the right kind of attitude to build a positive, service-oriented culture.

May 1, 2008

Track your customer service “ouch points” — In the May issue of Customer Service Newsletter, Linda Shea of Opinion Research Corporation (ORC) discusses how to track the customer’s path and experience when contacting your company and how managers can use that information. In the following white paper from ORC, “Forget the Theory: Practical Considerations for Listening to the Customer Experience,” Shea expands on her discussion of why understanding the customer experience is important and valuable for companies in general and service organizations in particular.

April 1, 2008

Are you getting a clear picture of your customers’ experience? — In the April issue of Customer Service Newsletter, John Goodman of TARP Worldwide explains how to get an accurate picture of your customers’ experience with your company. In this brief article he suggests a way to make that experience even more positive.

March 1, 2008

Boost performance by getting your reps engaged — Employee engagement and customer loyalty are very closely connected, according to Allegiance, a provider of enterprise feedback management system software. In this white paper, Allegiance offers advice on “The Top 11 Ways to Increase Your Employee Loyalty.”

February 1, 2008

Build team-building into your service routine — Brian Cole Miller offers two more team-building activities from his book, More Team-Building Activities for Busy Managers, that you can try out with your service staff.

January 1, 2008

People issues will dominate the attention of customer service managers in 2008 — Here’s more from the experts Customer Service Newsletter interviewed for the annual Looking Ahead article on the type of challenges customer service managers can expect in 2008.

December 1, 2007

DHL’s service mantra for all employees is: “I’m on it!” — More on DHL’s service efforts from the archives of Customer Service Newsletter.

November 1, 2007

Wait time shortens as call handle time lengthens — What is your service organization’s most important customer service standard? Participants in Customer Service Newsletter’s 2006-2007 Salary & Benchmarking Survey offer a variety of ideas from the broadly strategic to the eminently practical.

October 1, 2007

Service contacts: Phone contacts still lead, but self-service surpasses snail mail — The following tables are derived from Customer Service Newsletter’s 2006-2007 Salary and Benchmarking Survey. They look at survey participants’ hours-of-service offerings by size of service staff and by geographic region.

September 1, 2007

Frontline service salaries show low to moderate increases — The following table consists of data from Customer Service Newsletter’s 2006-2007 Salary Survey and covers regional base pay differences for nine customer service management and frontline positions.

What GM learned from Disney about service — Martitz Learning has helped a number of companies to get more value out of their customer service benchmarking at the Disney Institute. Here are some of the common benefits companies have taken away from the process.

August 1, 2007

Customer-centric companies invest in staff productivity — One way to increase employee productivity is to increase employee engagement. Sibson Consulting’s “Rewards of Work” survey provides a basic definition and advice on increasing engagement in the workplace. Following are some highlights of the survey report.

July 1, 2007

To deliver exceptional customer service, know what customers expect — According to author Michael Levine in the July issue of Customer Service Newsletter, “mystery shopping” is one way to keep track of how your customers are actually being treated by frontline employees. Here’s an article from the CSN archives providing more detail on how “mystery shopping” works.

June 1, 2007

What do you really want to know about customers? — In the June issue of Customer Service Newsletter, Rich Hanks and John Sperry of Mindshare Technologies offer their advice on using customer feedback to drive operational improvements. In the following white paper, Mindshare president Rich Hanks argues that the key to successful service is giving customers what they want in the way they want it.

May 1, 2007

More companies are considering at-home agents — Looking for more data on using home-based service agents? Five9 Inc. surveyed 200 companies with call center operations — large and small — in the U.S. and Canada about the cost and efficiency of using at-home agents.

A detailed summary of the results of that survey is presented in the following white paper — “At-Home Agents: Promise and Pitfalls.”

April 1, 2007

Ten mistakes that service managers should avoid — In the April issue of Customer Service Newsletter, Trevor Spunt of IBM Global Business Services looks at ten “people management” issues that service managers should be concerned with. Here he looks at a number of technology-management issues that managers should look into as well.

March 1, 2007

Benchmarking and certification point the way to service excellence — One of the benefits of continuous benchmarking is the ability to focus efforts and build on previous years’ results. Here’s an article from the Customer Service Newsletter archives that describes Xerox Services’ initial efforts at benchmarking and J.D. Power certification and suggests how they used those results to make even greater improvements this year.

February 1, 2007

CRM software is now within everyone’s reach — In the February 2007 issue of Customer Service Newsletter, Sundip R. Doshi of Surado Solutions (www.suradocrm.com) discusses some of the important issues to consider when looking at customer relationship management (CRM) software for small business. The following white paper from Surado covers an even wider range of issues, including how CRM can help better manage your business, how it can help you reduce costs, and potential CRM pitfalls, among other topics.

January 1, 2007

Should first call resolution be a key service metric? — In the January 2007 issue of Customer Service Newsletter, Rob McDougall of Upstream Works makes the case that first call resolution (FCR) should be a leading service metric for customer service centers and call centers. Following are samples of the types of FCR reports that can be generated via available call tracking software for individual agents and for the service center as a whole.