Press Release

New Guide Helps Frontline Customer Service Reps Write Better Email

(Boonton, NJ, December 13, 2006) — The amount of customer email continues to grow, and at most organizations, responsibility for responding falls to the customer service department.

Unfortunately, most customer service reps have never been trained in the basics of business writing. And even reps with the most polished phone skills may come across as overly formal, unclear or even careless in their writing.

The good news is that many of the skills and techniques reps have honed working with customers over the phone also apply to email. Reps just need to develop a few key skills for dealing with the written word.

In 15 Steps to Writing Effective Email the authors show reps how to transfer their phone skills to email and start them on the path to professional, customer-friendly writing.

One of the important but often overlooked steps is “reading between the lines.” As the authors say, it is tempting to respond as quickly as possible to email — just get through it. But managers should coach reps to slow down and take the time to read between the lines to make sure they understand what the writer really wants. Just as reps listen carefully when speaking to customers, they must give that same level of attention and concentration to customer emails.

Additional information on 15 Steps to Writing Effective Email is available online at www.customerservicegroup.com/training_guides.php or by phoning the Customer Service Group at 1-800-232-4317.

About Customer Service Group

For more than 20 years, the Customer Service Group has helped customer service, call center and help desk managers increase productivity, improve service quality and boost customer satisfaction, loyalty and retention. The Customer Service Group publishes Customer Service Newsletter and The Customer Communicator.

About the Service Success Guides

Each publication in the Service Success Guides series is written expressly for frontline reps in an engaging no-nonsense style, which is sure to capture their attention. Each publication is sold in packs of 10 so that every rep has a copy for their own desktop reference library.

Additional titles in the Service Success Guides series are: Yoga at Your Desk, 10-Step Anti-Stress Campaign, 21 Simple Time Management Strategies, Guide to Cross-Selling and Upselling, Guide to Handling Difficult Customers, and 10-Step Guide to Career Management.

More information is available at www.CustomerServiceGroup.com.