Customers do notice and reward service

American Express and the National Retail Federation (NRF) conduct a Customers’ Choice survey to determine the top ten retailers for service.  The survey’s purpose is to recognize excellent customer service and to promote best customer service practices for retail operations. The ten finalists were: Amazon.com Coldwater Creek HSN JC Penney Kohl’s Land’s End LL Bean [...]

How important is it to set up a customer service department?

Imagine that you are a new company. You are selling an electric gadget. You’ve already set up a pricing scheme and distribution network. You have marketing in place and a couple of reviewers really liked your product.  Should you set up a customer service department? The answer is yes, you should. What will inevitably happen [...]

The spirit of Christmas

The spirit of Christmas is one of cheer, one of helping out those in need, of forgiveness. Customer service can be the spirit of Christmas all year long. In today’s Washington Post, there is a story of a city worker who went above and beyond to help someone have a merrier Christmas.  After a neighborhood [...]

If your product is excellent, shouldn’t your service be too?

Some stores are known for their exceptional customer service. These stores are generally higher-end, where people are spending more money, and therefore expect the utmost in service. One such store is Neiman-Marcus, which has developed a reputation for having outstanding customer service.  The website Luxist, has nominated the chain for a Reader’s Choice Award for [...]

Investment advice we can really support

How do you choose which stocks to buy? You and your broker probably have lots of issues and numbers you check before deciding where to invest your money, like performance, company health and return. That’s fine,  of course, but we think there is one issue that you should check when deciding where to invest: how [...]

Person to Person

In large part, customer service is about the personal touch. It is about people getting attention from other people. It stands to reason that certain businesses are more about personal relationships than others. For instance, this article from the British website Moneyfacts, reports that to British bank customers, personal service is still very important. Customers [...]

It really is simple

Is  business success simple? Not completely. Anyone who runs a business can talk about the myriad issues that come up. But perhaps the strategies for business success are simple. According to a review by Guy Kawasaki published in Open Forum, that is the gist of John Spence’s new book: Awesomely Simple: Essential Business Strategies for [...]