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Many companies are unsure of whether or not to include email support as part of their online customer service experience. Some companies feel that email takes too long to respond to or that trying to manage email from customers without dropping a ball is just too much. However, customers say that they actively look for an email option when it comes to contacting companies for the convenience. WHY EMAIL WORKS Online customer service comes in two varieties: the kind where the customer can get an instant answer, such as chat or FAQs, and the kind where customers can send a message and go about their day until they receive a response. For non-essential services, many customers are happy to send an email asking a question about a product or service and wait up to 48 hours for a response. Usually, this is because they do not need an immediate resolution, and their time is too valuable to spend sitting on hold for an answer right this second. As many as 60% of consumers say that they w...

With Millennials making up the largest cross-section of the working world these days, and many younger Millennials coming of age right now, expectations for technology and quality service have taken a big turn in recent years. Some companies have taken the time to survey the newest communication technologies for business purposes to determine what Millennials want most when it comes to communications. Now it's up to you to take advantage of this information and do your very best to keep your customers happy. NO MORE WAITING If there's one thing that really irritates the Millennial generation, it is having to wait on hold for customer service. Waiting on hold generally means not getting other things taken care of, and we are all too busy to be sitting around waiting for answers anyway. Instead, more than 40% of Millennials say they would rather text than wait on hold, and of the companies that currently use text for customer service, more than 80% of their texts are opene...

I WILL TAKE PERSONAL OWNERSHIP . I will exhibit good stewardship, be disciplined, and exercise follow through. I will treat company property and money as if it were my own. If a customer tells me a problem, I will own it. This is what sets us apart from other companies. WATCH THE VIDEO HERE : Early in the 2009 season, the Florida Gators lost a close game to Ole Miss.  Tim Tebow was interviewed by the press following the game.  He didn’t look to someone else to step up, but he took the personal responsibility for the loss and committed to making a difference.  It was a nice speech, but that’s not what made the difference.  The difference was what he did in practice every day and in every game.  He followed through, owned it, and later that year won the national championship. If each of us will take the opportunities in front of us and take personal ownership, we also will rise to a new level of success.

I WILL BE PRODUCTIVE . I will set priorities, use measurements to track my performance, and hold myself accountable for achieving results. I will consider the opportunity cost of everything I do and add things to the Stop Doing List. I will work with a sense of urgency and get things done. In the final 2 minutes of the 2015 Super Bowl, the Seattle Seahawks drove from their own 20-yard line down to the one and Jermaine Kearse made the best catch of any Super Bowl to get there.  But this fantastic 79-yard effort did not produce results.  A bad call and poor execution resulted in a loss for the Seahawks and a win for the Patriots. Check out the whole play here. At the center of this pledge is a realization: in order for our work to be effective, it must have results . It must be productive. It can be very easy to slip into a mindset of thinking that just because I put in the hours (or effort) that my work was productive (I did something). The harsh reality is that, in many...

Office phone systems have changed a lot in the last few years. Fortunately, the majority of these changes take advantage of technology that you are already using day in and day out. For the most part, new office phone systems combine all of this technology to provide you with a more comprehensive customer service solution. Here are a few great ways you can upgrade your phone system today: BRING YOUR OWN MOBILE DEVICE Your employees are probably already carrying smartphones with them every single day of the week. If your company has a large number of field employees, you may have already purchased phones for all of them. Today's office phone systems extend beyond your desktop phone banks and connect all of those mobile devices to your network. This means that phones can be answered no matter where your employees are. BOOSTING YOUR CONNECTIVITY Moving to a VoIP-type phone system is typically seen as a way to improve connectivity and call reliability by providing alternative ...

Upgrading your business phone system is a great way to overhaul your customer service experience and provide a better infrastructure to all of your employees. By making the jump to modern phone technology for business, you can integrate text and chat-based customer support and make your operation more efficient overall. Here are just a few of the ways you stand to gain from a phone system upgrade: MORE COST-EFFECTIVE If you have been relying on traditional landline phone technology for business all this time, you are probably paying a premium for every phone call you make. It is estimated that every telephone contact made with a customer costs an average of $9 to your company. By contrast, chat contacts cost only $5, email costs roughly $2.50, and a simple FAQ page on your website costs only 10 cents. Upgrading your phone system will allow you to take advantage of these alternate streams of contact, saving you money on each and every customer. INCREASE CUSTOMER RETENTION Typi...

The field of business telecommunication is quickly changing to reflect our dependence on mobile devices and our demand for instant answers. In just the last few years, more companies are depending on text, chat, and email-based customer service than ever before. Customer's willingness to wait on hold for a live representative has dropped off drastically during this same period. ADD CHAT The inclusion of chat-based customer support has increased by nearly 26% since 2010. Customers who have used chat support report just over a 70% satisfaction rating. There can be many explanations for this, but typically, customers experience shorter wait time through chats, are not faced with the infamous language barrier that is so common across customer support call centers, and are able to communicate more clearly in writing. Transcripts of the conversation can be saved and used for reference later, and customers are better able to get a resolution. USE SOCIAL MEDIA In just the last tw...