Frank Eliason - Your service: how to attract new customers, increase sales, and grow your business using simple customer service techniques

Contents

Praise for @YourService

Frank understands that one of the cheapest, most effective forms of marketing is called extraordinary customer service.

Seth Godin, Author of We Are All Weird

Compelling, personal, and illuminating, @YourService is a delight to read, and essential if you have any influence at all on how your own company manages the customer experience!

Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, PhD, Coauthors of Extreme Trust: Honesty as a Competitive Advantage

@YourService talks about what customer service really means in the networked world and helps you get there. It helps you face the changes you need to make in your corporate culture to realize the benefits of superior customer service. Theres lots on the technology required, but the focus is always about how people treat people.

Craig Newmark, Customer Service Rep and Founder of craigslist

Eliason shows you how to enchant your customers by building trust and likability with the small, personal touches. His wisdom is bound to make your business flourish in this new age of fast, free, and ubiquitous social media.

Guy Kawasaki, Author of Enchantment and Former Chief Evangelist of Apple

At Zappos, we believe that if we get the culture right, then most of the other stuff, like delivering great customer service or building a long-term enduring brand, will happen naturally on its own. This book shows the clear impact that company culture can have on the customer experience.

Tony Hsieh, New York Times Bestselling Author of Delivering Happiness and CEO of Zappos.com , Inc.

Too often customer service is seen just as a cost. But what is the cost of a lost customer or a ruined reputation after the ex-customer talks about it online? In @YourService, Frank Eliason shares hard-won insights from the front lines of the online customer service revolution he helped pioneer. Through real-world examples and folksy anecdotes Frank illustrates the simple truth that bringing decision makers closer to customers and empowering lower-level employees to deliver improves consumer experience, and the bottom line. Simply put, it pays to be nice, because when every customer can be a publisher online, the potential costs of doing anything but are too dear.

Ben Popken, Former Managing Editor of Consumerist.com

As someone who had spent a career moving through sales, corporate strategy, marketing, and corporate communications, I thought I knew something about customer service, or at least the importance of customer service. I had always railed against my marketing colleagues for seeking customer acquisition, but forgetting about customer retention. Frank Eliason not only understands customer service, but he has also made it into a real profession in the age of social media. Frank helped teach the people at Comcast how to reach out, engage, talk with, listen to, win over, and win back customers. His ideas have spread to other companies. He is, in my opinion, a seminal figure in the field of customer service. As someone who cares deeply about connecting strategy and execution to build and grow brand and reputation, I celebrate Franks accomplishment as the one who helped teach companies about how customer service is integral to brand and reputation. This is a book well worth reading!

Elliot S. Schreiber, Clinical Professor of Marketing and Executive Director, Center for Corporate Reputation, LeBow College of Business, Drexel University, Philadelphia

Frank has learned the hard lessons and speaks from the heart when it comes to customer service. In @YourService he gives vital information to all who need to cut to the chase and learn the return on investment from outstanding customer connections.

Marsha Collier, Author of The Ultimate Online Customer Service Guide: How to Connect with Your Customers to Sell More!

Every business wants to know how using social media can improve its bottom line. One of the simplest answers is told here beautifully by Frank Eliason: In the age of the networked customer, a real-time, human approach to service can save you money, improve your brand, and build customer equity that you can take to the bank. Dont miss this book!

David Rogers, Author of The Network Is Your Customer: 5 Strategies to Thrive in a Digital Age

Copyright 2012 by Frank Eliason. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Eliason, Frank, 1972

At your service : how to attract new customers, increase sales, and grow your business using simple customer service techniques / Frank Eliason.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 978-1-118-21722-1 (cloth); 978-1-118-28688-3 (ebk); 978-1-118-28393-6 (ebk); 978-1-118-28231-1 (ebk)

1. Customer services. 2. Corporate culture. 3. Customer relations. I. Title.

HF5415.5.E57 2012

658.812dc23

2012003419

I would like to dedicate this to my wife, Carolyn, and our girls Gia, Lily, and Robyn. Thank you for supporting my dream to see the Customer Service field come to a seat at the table for every business. I could never have taken my first steps on this path without you.

Foreword

I thought Frank Eliason had a terrible job: handling complaints from customers for the largest company in a much-disliked industry, Comcast.