Introducing My New Book: Customer Service Tip of the Week

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Thousands of customer service professionals around the world subscribe to the Customer Service Tip of the Week email. Now you can get over 52 of my favorite tips in one book!

Introducing the Customer Service Tip of the Week book. 

It's a sourcebook full of tips and reminders to help keep your skills sharp. Use it to discover new ideas or reinforce the concepts you learned in training.

Cover image of the Customer Service Tip of the Week book.

How to Use the Book

If we're honest with ourselves, there are certain aspects of our service skills that can get a little rusty if we don't work on them.

Bad habits can get formed. Other priorities get in the way of our development. Sometimes, we're all guilty of a little overconfidence.

That's where the weekly tip comes in.

It allows you to stay sharp by focusing on just one simple thing. You can rebuild your skills over the course of the week in that area and then move on to something else the following week.

The book makes finding tips easy.

  • Browse tips by category

  • Find tips by the specific issue you are trying to solve

  • Go in order, starting with #1

Special Features

The Customer Service Tip of the Week book has a few special features.

On the back cover and scattered throughout the book, you'll find quotes from frontline professionals and customer service leaders who use the tips on a regular basis.

Pages 12-13 contain a grid listing 10 service challenges and suggest tips to help solve them. These challenges are the top issues shared by weekly email subscribers.

The book is only available in paperback. I tested an e-book version and couldn't get the user experience right. After all, it's designed to be a quick reference guide that you might keep on your desk.

Obviously, an audio book was out of the question for a quick-reference type of book!

I recognize many customer service teams have limited budgets, so I managed to keep the price point low. The book retails for just $9.95 and quantity discounts can get the price down to just $6.96 per copy when you buy 25 books.


Get It Signed!

You can easily turn your book into a signed copy.

  1. Buy the book

  2. Email your mailing address to me: jeff [at] toistersolutions [dot] com

  3. I will send you an autographed bookplate

Interview with Shep Hyken about The Convenience Revolution

NYT bestselling author and customer service expert Shep Hyken has a new book coming out October 2, just in time for Customer Service Week.

It's called The Convenience Revolution.

The book focuses on the next wave of service—making it easier for customers to do business with you. It's chock-full of case studies from top companies, both big and small. The best part is it contains practical ideas that can allow businesses of any size to out-service the competition.

Shep shares six convenience principles and invites readers to decide which principles work best for their business:

  1. Reduce Friction

  2. Self-Service

  3. Technology

  4. Subscription

  5. Delivery

  6. Access

I recently had a chance to interview Shep and discuss his new book.

Shep's always an entertaining interview, and he shared lots of great examples and ideas. You can order the book now.

My Favorite Books, Podcasts, and Blogs for Customer Service Leaders

Crowdsourcing can be an interesting way to get ideas.

For example, ICMI hosted it's Contact Center Demo and Conference in Las Vegas this week. Vee Rose used the conference hashtag to tweet a request for customer service leadership book and podcast recommendations.

It's been awhile since I compiled a list of my favorites, so I decided to write this post in response.

Books for Customer Service Leaders

Full disclosure: I've added affiliate links to each book's Amazon page, which means TPS gets a referral fee for each purchase. These are all books I've read and thoroughly enjoy.

Uncommon Service Frances Frei and Anne Morriss make a compelling case that a company can't be great at everything, so customer service leaders must make difficult decisions about where to focus and build on strength.

Amaze Every Customer Every Time Any book by Shep Hyken is bound to be interesting and useful. This one in particular focuses on ways that Ace Hardware developed a strong service culture. Hyken explains how service leaders can implement each of these tools in their own organizations.

Winning at Social Customer Care Dan Gingiss wrote this excellent playbook on how to run a social customer care operation. He draws from experience at organizations like Discover and Humana and is currently the Senior Director of Global Social Media at McDonald's.

Strategic Customer Service John Goodman (the customer service guru, not the actor) is responsible for the famous statistic about angry customers telling 10 friends. He brings a refreshing, data-driven approach to help service leaders understand what really moves the needle.

Kaleidoscope The latest book from Chip Bell is fun. It's packed with wonderful stories and ideas for innovative service. Look closely and you'll see that Bell reveals a clever strategy. Going the extra mile is unsustainable while being unique can set your business apart.

The Service Culture Handbook This is my own book. I wrote it to provide leaders with a step-by-step guide they could use to get their employees obsessed with customer service. There are many contact center examples plus profiles of other leading companies.

 

Podcasts for Customer Service Leaders

CallTalk A podcast about contact centers! Bruce Belfiore and his guests cover a wealth of topics related to contact center customer service and experience. Belfiore is the CEO and Senior Research Analyst at BenchmarkPortal, and he makes his living studying contact centers.

The Net Promoter System Podcast Rob Markey conducts in-depth and insightful interviews with customer service leaders who use the Net Promoter System (NPS) to better understand their customers and drive continuous improvement. 

Crack the Customer Code Adam Toporek and Jeannie Walters host a wide variety of customer service and customer experience experts on their podcast. Both are accomplished experts and consultants who frequently supply their own numerous insights.

Amazing Business Radio Shep Hyken brings his signature enthusiasm for customer service to this series featuring interesting and fun conversations with customer service leaders. Hyken is one of the tops in our field and always worth listening to!

Frank Reactions Tema Frank hosts this podcast where she and her guests discuss the intersection of the digital era and technology in customer service. Her message really resonates with me as someone who is constantly striving to help employees do their best.

 

Blogs for Customer Service Leaders

Though this wasn't part of the request, here are a few blogs I regularly read: