Robert Bacal
Robert Bacal
Robert began his career as an educator and trainer at the age of twenty (which is over 30 years ago!), as a teaching assistant at Concordia University. Since then he as trained teachers for the college and high school level, taught at several universities and trained thousands of employees and managers in customer service, conflict management and performance appraisal and performance management skills.
Referring To An Outside Source – Customer Service Excerpt
This is a preliminary excerpt from "If It Weren't For The Customers, I'd Really Like This Job", due out in Q1 of 2011. There are...
Why Zappos Is A Poor Example For Customer Service
Shocked at the idea that you shouldn't try to emulate the legendary companies of customer service like Zappos and Nordstroms? Read on. There are companies...
Customer Service Predictions For 2011 – Myth Smashing – (CS Improves?)
Storm Clouds on the 2012 Customer Service Horizon As is the case every year, people stick their oars in and make predictions for the next...
Twitter and Discussions – A No Go
In a blog post Richard Nantel shares his perceptions about using Twitter for discussions in an article entitled The Challenges of Using Twitter...
Twitter Health – Investors Better Look Closely
Here's Why DST Won't Invest In Twitter from The Business Insider, that talks about the drawback of Twitter no longer having its founder involved...
Usexploitation
Immersion MicroThoughts You cannot fully understand social media solely by being immersed in it. In fact, one reason why there is so much bad information…
Hidden Failures – Abandoned Twitter Business Accounts
Several times I've noted that the few business successes that occur involving social media are repeated over and over, even when they aren't real...
Name Please. NAME Please if You Write on The Net.
It's an ultimate strangeness. In my role of curator (collector and filtering of content for our online libraries), a good 30-40% of the time...
Brian Sollis, You CAN Do Better
In a post on Fastcompany entitled "21 Twitter Tips From Socially Savvy Companies", Brian Sollis uses examples from a number of companies to...
Who do YOU Believe, Robert Bacal?
Q: You've been a harsh, sometimes abrasive critic of what you've called poor and misleading information about social media, customer service, and e-learning. It...
Bottom Line Advice Regarding Social Media For Small Business
Q: You've made a lot of negative comments about the effectiveness of social media for business purposes. Do you have bottom line advice for...
Customer Service Help: The Chronic Nuisance Caller
Since calling on the phone is so easy, some people will call repeatedly to voice their concerns, or because they are lonely. Often such...
Social Media and 50 Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong
In 1927 or so the lore goes, Sophie Tucker recorded a song celebrating the differences between the USA and Paris of the time, entitled...
In The Customer Service “Who Cares” Department
Amazing. As a customer, I have an expectation that what I purchase will do what it's advertised to do, and that if I run...
Real Time Twitter Updates? Why? Bizarre to Bizarro
So, what's the business/product strategy. 1) Build a platform/product that has almost no actual functional use for most people by building in limits to what...
What Qualifications Do You Have that Make You A Customer Service Guru/Expert
…and take money from people for providing advice, consulting, and speaking services to companies (or to customers)? That's the question I'm wondering about, and no,...
Crowdsourcing, Self Regulating Groups On Social Meda – Great example of failure
I've had a lot more spare time this week than planned, brought down by a bad flu and now a throat infection. So, bored...
Subtract (Social Media) = More Sales, More Profit Part II
In Part I of this series, I indicated it looked like our revenues had improved around the same time that we cut back almost...
Social Media Makes Customers More Powerful? Not On Your Life
I Can't Believe There's No Spinach Here! Look Under Those Red Things, Oilive There's been a lot of talk, not surprisingly occurring on sites like...
What IS Your Position On Customer Service?
It's time to put our assumptions about customer service and business under the magnifying glass, because so many of them are just right enough...