Washington County Arkansas Spotlights Telephone Customer Service Skills

Washington County, Arkansas provides its staff with an Employee Training and Development website presence. A library list of videos available to county employees is posted.

The County training resources lists a number of training films for employee development. Spotlighting one that refers to telephone communications is The Five Forbidden Phrases of Customer Service offered by The Telephone Doctor at www.telephonedoctor.com.
 
Five Forbidden Phrases Preview Video

http://youtu.be/F7jEDS6vWHw

Zappos: Example of Unique Employee Engagement Tactics and Customer Service

Zappos placed 23rd in the 2009 Fortune 100 of the Best Companies survey to work for.  Zappos developed a list or so-called 10 Commandments as a guide to their core business values and corporate culture. Commandment #6: Build open and honest relationships with communication.

Zappos embraces an open culture about feedback and input from employees. As enticing and well-rounded as the company is, it also employs a corporate coach to listen to grievances and give tips on how to navigate the internal promotion track or even to another career outside of the firm.

Some other perks offered to employees include: free food, concierge services, and pays all cost of health insurance premiums. Other team building and work atmosphere development activities have included creating stimulating work areas like the one exhibited in their version of the “rain forest” theme (see photo).

All new employees are required to attend a 4 week customer loyalty training program. This includes 2 weeks of handling customer phone calls in its Call Center. This training is so impressive to new employees that only about 3% take a Zappos $2000 incentive to quit before starting. This helps build the Zappos culture by weeding out those not firmly committed to the focus of the training and corporate values.

The Wacky World of Zappos - Youtube Video



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Disney Institute Offers Founder's Creative Genius Through Employee Training

While there are numerous training and education institutions around the globe for learning new ideas. The Disney Institute, based in Orlando, Florida, is one that touts its founder Walt Disney’s work ethos of promoting innovation. The Institute offers a number of unique organizational development programs to enhance both productivity and effectiveness. One such program is their Creativity and Innovation course. Billed as a program for those interested in “Disney best practices for inspiring greater creativity and innovation at employee and organizational levels to capture and leverage the creative potential in his/her organization.” Read more

The Institute’s main topics include: Disney’s approach on Leadership Excellence; People Management; Quality Service; Brand Loyalty; and Business Excellence. 

Additional Topics

Disney Institute Overview



More Institute Videos

Customer Service Resources: Spotlight Australia CSIA

The Customer Service Institute of Australia (CSIA) was founded in 1997 with five initial aims:

• To promote customer service as a profession and to improve the level of its practitioner’s professionalism through assessment, accreditation and certification.
• To provide people working directly or indirectly in customer service (Public or Private sector), with education and professional standards.
• To develop and promote the International Customer Service Standard certification program and Australian Service Excellence Awards programs, which will help organizations develop and sustain a customer ethos.
• To improve knowledge of the components of customer service excellence through research, training and development programs, publications, awards, conferences and customer focus groups.
• To provide a voice for customer service professionals and related issues via the media and public education forum

The CSIA e-magazine entitled Customer Service Excellence publishes articles about the following customer-focused topics:

• Building long term customer relationships
• Differentiating product and service
• Identifying the key success factors for customer service
• Using measurement as a driver for improvement
• Developing an effective process for obtaining customer feedback
• Creating a world class call center
• Ensuring satisfied customers are loyal customers
• Keeping people motivated and passionate about their customers
• Managing change
• Customer emotions
• Handling customer complaints
• The relationship between quality and service
• How to add value
• Creating magic moments for customers
The periodical uses information about technology, tools and techniques, and best practices to advance and explore the depth and breadth of customer service.

More Customer Service Focused Organizations:
Customer Service Institute of America – Home
Customer Service Institute of America - Certified Customer Service Manager Course Brochure
The International Customer Service Institute (TICSI)
TICSI Online Customer Service Assessment Concept

Customer Service: HowTo.Gov Informs Of Best Practices

In April, the President signed Executive Order 13571—Streamlining Service Delivery and Improving Customer Service. This requires federal agencies take specific steps to strengthen customer service and information on federal .gov websites.

Youtube Video, October 5, 2011, Webinar on Customer Service from HowTo.Gov -



The Executive Order requires federal agencies to develop implementation plans to include:

• establishing one major initiative (signature initiative) that will use technology to improve the customer experience;

• establishing mechanisms to solicit customer feedback on Government services and using such feedback regularly to make service improvements;

• setting clear customer service standards and expectations, including, where appropriate, performance goals for customer service required by the GPRA (Government Performance and Results) Modernization Act of 2010 (Public Law 111-352);

• improving the customer experience by adopting proven customer service best practices and coordinating across service channels (such as online, phone, in-person, and mail services);

• streamlining agency processes to reduce costs and accelerate delivery, while reducing the need for customer calls and inquiries; and

• identifying ways to use innovative technologies to accomplish the customer service activities above, thereby lowering costs, decreasing service delivery times, and improving the customer experience.
Read more