Jeff Toister
Jeff Toister
Jeff Toister is the bestselling author of The Service Culture Handbook: A Step-by-Step Guide to Getting Your Employees Obsessed with Customer Service: www.serviceculturebook.com.
Day 1 & 2 Re-cap: ICMI’s 2013 Call Center Demo & Conference
<div class="sqs-block html-block sqs-block-content" data-block-json="{"wysiwyg":{"engine":"code","mode":"htmlmixed","isSource":false,"source":""},"html":"This week, Iu2019m attending ICMIu2019s Call Center Demo and Conference in Atlanta, GA. It can be tough to keep track...
Why gamification doesn’t play with customer service employees
Gamification is big. It's finding its way into everything from innovation, to customer experience, to software testing. A 2011 research report from Gartner predicted...
How to keep hot potatoes from burning your customers
Some customer service problems are like a hot potato; nobody wants to touch it. We've all heard the language of excuses. Employees use these...
Why Customer Service Isn’t Our Top Priority
Source: Wikipedia (author unknown) Customer service is not our top priority in life. At best it's fifth. Understand this and you can understand what really...
What we can learn from customer service benchmarks
I recently teamed up with Jen Waite from inContact to present an ICMI Educast on benchmarking. Itu2019s a short, informative webcast that explained the...
Confirmation Bias and The Power of First Impressions
First impressions set the tone. We all know that great first impressions are important in customer service. But exactly how do first impressions influence...
Jedi mind tricks for reducing customer wait time
It's no secret that customers hate to wait. What may be surprising is customer satisfaction isn't just influenced by the actual amount of time...
How often do you talk about customer service?
Companies are constantly searching for new and interesting ways to improve customer service. Here's a simple one that has flown under the radar: Talk about...
REI’s tighter return policy is still customer-friendly
Last June, outdoor retailer Recreational Equipment, Inc. (REI) tightened up its return policy that allowed customers to return an item at any time for...
How Detoxing Our Brains Can Improve Customer Service
The ability to pay attention is one of the most important customer service skills. It helps us understand our customers' needs and identify solutions...
Signs that a service failure lies ahead
Businesses use signs for a variety of reasons. They're used as advertising to entice customers to come on in. They offer guidance so people...
5 Ways to Hire Faster
This post originally appeared on the Call Center Demo and Conference website. I'll be facilitating a session at the conference titled "Staff Up! 10...
Emotions: the next frontier in customer service efficiency
Many frontline customer service jobs have two things in common. First, the pay is low with many starting at minimum wage. Second, they require...
How could they miss that?!
I recently spent the night in a budget hotel. It had all the features you might expect such as a clean bed, a decent...
5 Reasons Why Angry Customers Don’t Complain
Customer complaints are a valuable source of information. They let us know when a customer is unhappy so we can try to retain their...
Why employees don’t pass along customer complaints
Continuously improving customer service seems simple in theory. All you have to do is listen to what customers complain about and then solve their...
Why customer service reps aren’t friendly
This post originally appeared on the Salesforce Blog. You can also read my latest Salesforce blog post, " How detoxing our brains can improve...
How to work faster with less knowledge
My last blog post shared four ways that memorization can hurt employee performance. Now, I'd like to share a few solutions for overcoming this...
4 Ways Memorization Hurts Performance
Employees need to know a lot of stuff. They must know their company's policies, procedures, products, service standards, customer preferences, and leadership prerogatives. They...
Boost performance with scenario based training
Note: This article originally appeared on ICMI.com. It focuses on new hire training for call centers, but the principles can be adapted to many...