Wow! eBook
Service Failure: The Real Reasons Employees Struggle with Customer Service and What You Can Do About It
Author(s): Jeff Toister (Author)
- Publisher: AMACOM
- Publication Date: 1 Dec. 2012
- Language: English
- Print length: 208 pages
- ISBN-10: 0814431992
- ISBN-13: 9780814431993
Book Description
Customer service goals have been articulated, messages drilled, and incentive programs created. But many employees still deliver lackluster service. What does it take to get them functioning as stellar frontline representatives of the company?
Rather than offering another set of tactics for improving customer service, this book takes a novel approach by rooting out the real reasons employees aren’t delivering the service they should. The results can be both surprising and illuminating, such as:
• Company culture doesn’t always support service excellence
• Over-emphasis on cost reduction often increases the cost of service
• Employees are torn between doing the right thing for the customer and following policy
• Poor products and services can make helping the customer nearly impossible
• Employees’ interests often don’t align with company goals
Once core problems are identified, the book offers corrective solutions, including redirecting coaching efforts, revisiting policies and procedures, clarifying roles and responsibilities, and more. Filled with inside stories from well-known organizations and the latest scientific research, Service Failure helps people overcome the obstacles preventing them from doing their very best.
Editorial Reviews
From the Back Cover
“Remove the obstacles that get in the way of providing excellent customer service. With multiple strategies supported by real-life examples, Jeff Toister teaches how to avoid service failure and provide service success.”
— Shep Hyken, New York Times bestselling author of The Amazement Revolution
“Service Failure offers a very personal and deeply felt discourse on an important topic: improving (and avoiding failure in) customer service and the customer experience.”
— Micah Solomon, author of High-Tech, High-Touch Customer Service and business keynote speaker
Are you endlessly trying to improve your organization’s customer service efforts, but getting so-so results? There may be a culprit in your organization that you’ve never considered.
Service Failure reveals ten hidden obstacles that prevent employees from delivering great customer service, including:
• Overly strict standards that make it hard for employees to adapt to customers’ needs
• Corporate cultures that unwittingly encourage deficient service
• Ineffective procedures that routinely anger customers and frustrate employees
• And supervisors who unknowingly encourage employees to focus on tasks at the expense of serving customers
These unseen problems are frequently overlooked in the rush to launch another quick fix that inevitably fails to improve customer service.
Using examples from well-known companies, real stories from frontline employees, and the latest scientific research to highlight the challenges customer service employees experience every day, Service Failure delivers straightforward solutions for overcoming these obstacles. From redirecting coaching efforts to revisiting policies and procedures to clarifying roles and responsibilities, the book’s powerful, sometimes counterintuitive insights can be applied at the organizational, departmental, or even the individual level to help the entire team deliver outstanding customer service.
JEFF TOISTER is president of the consulting firm Toister Performance Solutions, Inc., and has worked as a customer service trainer, manager, and frontline employee for over 20 years. He lives in San Diego.
About the Author
JEFF TOISTER is president of the consulting firm Toister Performance Solutions, Inc., and has worked as a customer service trainer, manager, and frontline employee for over 20 years.
