This guest post is by Richard Sexton, president and founder of Carolina Rustica, a multi-channel retailer of high end furniture. Visit Happy Customer for weekly guest posts from leading thinkers in ecommerce and customer service. 

Our industry is littered with dead companies that have tried to exceed customer expectations at the lowest possible cost, at all times and in all situations. As a 17-year veteran of furniture retailing, I can tell you that there is no more difficult customer service challenge than the safe, cost-effective delivery process of getting a piece of furniture into a home.

The Challenge
Furniture is heavy, difficult to move, and easily damaged. Just one scratch on the table, or imperfection in the leather, and that piece is coming back to you at great expense.

Most online furniture retailers employ white glove delivery services that are supposed to “deluxe” a piece before that last mile. Sometimes this happens, but sometimes it doesn’t. And even if …

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Editor’s note: For the first installation in our monthly series featuring the top books on customer service, Adriana Dunn interviewed Lee Cockerell, former Executive Vice President of Operations for the Walt Disney World Resort, about his new book, The Customer Rules: The 39 Essential Rules for Delivering Sensational Service (Crown Business, March 2013).

Admittedly I was a bit surprised to see the author of The Customer Rules offer up his personal contact info to his readers in the middle of the book.

If you ever need to contact me, just go to my website, www.LeeCockerell.com. There you will find my address, my e-mail, and my cell phone number. When you call me, I will answer the phone myself.

Was the author just doing this to illustrate a point, specifically Rule No. 21: Make Yourself Available? I decided to reach out with an interview request. Sure enough, Cockerell personally responded to my note just a few hours later, agreeing to a phone interview and sending along some …

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Online retailers that field customer service questions strictly through phone or email may be missing out on a quick, cost-effective way to engage customers: live chat. According to LivePerson, a company that provides online real-time customer engagement solutions including chat, using live chat for customer service reduces issue handling costs by 25% and converts 20% more visits into sales.

“With email, you could end up in four or five back and forth emails, which is time-consuming and increases your costs to resolution,” says Josh Tenby, who runs LivePerson’s North America Small Business Team. “With phones, you can only talk to one person at a time, so the cost per resolution is higher [than chat]. In chat, it’s very easy to jump from one chat to another without having a negative impact on the customer experience.” In fact, Tenby says that in many companies, chat agents handle three to four clients at a time.

STELLAService data from the past six months shows that phone …

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Your gutters desperately need cleaning. Your wife still wants that trellis built. Your indoor fans haven’t been cleaned in years, and the exterior of your house needs a good scrub. Spring is here and the time has come to tackle the home improvement projects you’ve been putting off all winter saving for nicer weather.

While shopping with home improvement retailers online can save you time, how do you know you’ll receive the same level of service that you would in store? How are you going to feel confident that you’re buying the proper mulching blades for your riding lawnmower?

It’s all about well-trained customer service agents with strong product knowledge. STELLAService stress tests retailers on a daily basis across numerous metrics, including product knowledge.

Let’s take a look at the product knowledge performance of five of the largest  ”Hardware/Home Improvements” retailers evaluated by STELLAService — Build.com, …

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A study by the Customer Contact Leadership Council says that the percentage of millennials operating in contact centers has increased from 41% to 65% in the past two years.

There’s been plenty of commentary around this generation’s ideals. A recent Pew Research Center survey in which different generations were asked what made them unique, baby boomers responded with qualities like “work ethic”; millennials offered “clothes.”

And, there has been plenty of commentary around managing the most recent entrants into the workforce. A quick search for “managing millennials” on Amazon.com returns six pages of results.

The Customer Contact Leadership Council has its own set of tips for getting the best performance out of millennial employees tasked with offering the best in customer service:

1. Offer Career Pathing and Mentoring – Millennials possess high aspirations particularly because they are new to the workforce and have something to prove. Try to take a vested …

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The title to this article is a question. This article is full of questions related to the customer experience. I hope you take the time to read them, answer them, and if necessary, act on the answers.

Here’s a hypothetical situation. Let’s assume you are a successful business. (Okay, let’s hope that last sentence isn’t hypothetical.) Customers are buying your products and/or services. You have a good company with good people and you are doing well. The big difference is that you charge double what your closest competitor does.

That’s right, you charge twice what your competitor does, but you are still successful. You keep your old customers and continue to get new ones. (Remember, I said this was hypothetical.) Why and how could this be?

If this were the case, what are you doing that people are willing to pay twice as much for? What level of customer service are your customers receiving? How fast are the customers’ phone calls returned? How quickly are orders being …

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If you’re building a new online business, be it an iPhone game or the latest catchphrase t-shirt site, exceptional customer service must be delivered in every customer engagement.

“Each and every one,” says Craigslist Founder Craig Newmark “is a unique opportunity to get it right or to fail.”

Newmark told Happy Customer there’s no one specific touchpoint where a business can focus its customer service efforts, rather every piece must receive particular care as part of a broad initiative.

Newmark founded Craigslist in 1995, first distributing the list to friends via email. Today the site generates more than 20 billion page views per month, placing it among the most highly trafficked websites in the U.S. Since the business’s beginning, Newmark has always championed the importance of great customer service. And, to this day his business card still carries the title “customer service rep & founder.”

One of the areas Newmark says has changed in customer service since …

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Alex Knapp, social media editor at Forbes, has re-appropriated one of the Bible’s most popular adages to teach us all a lesson about customer service.

“Do unto your customers as you want to be treated when you’re a customer.”

Having worked in the service industry before finding his place in the media world (first at a pizza parlor, then at a department store), Knapp comes from a unique understanding of the customer-business relationship. And now, as a social media editor, he has the opportunity to read and write about how customer service has evolved with web 2.0.

The underlying principle, however, remains the same, and Knapp asks some salient [hypothetical] questions to help us understand how this all can play out:

“Do you like having to wait days or weeks to have your problems resolved? No? Then why do your customers have to wait?” Knapp’s rhetorical questions remind us that, in a world of re-tweets and likes, we desire nearly instantaneous gratification. And if you …

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When consumers were asked about the best ways companies can gain their loyalty, the top choice for respondents was providing exceptional 24/7 service, according to the 2012 Brand Loyalty Survey conducted by ClickFox, a provider of customer experience analytics.

Customer service was followed by reward programs, personalized products and services and sending exclusive, relevant offers. “Bottom line – consumers not only want companies to delight them from a customer service standpoint, but they also want companies to better understand their needs and preferences on an individual basis,” according to the study.

Eighty-seven percent (87%) of consumers surveyed said that they would tolerate more from certain companies or brands because of their loyalty, with 77% of these respondents pointing to quality and 63% pointing to customer service as factors driving their commitment.

Consumers said the most critical time to gain their loyalty is when they make their first purchase or begin …

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Don’t forget that Monday’s Memorial Day holiday means some online retailers will be working with limited personnel, so be prepared for potential complications with your service needs.

Happy Customer checked with the customer service departments of the Internet Retailer Top 50 and found several that said their customer service departments will be closed on Memorial Day.

Understandably, many of the retailers are the types that cater to businesses that also likely have the day off. For instance, customer service for Office Depot and Staples are both closed, as are computer equipment retailers like Apple, CDW, Newegg and PC Connection.

In all, 11 of the top 50 online retailers are closing their customer service departments on Memorial Day. Those closed include Amway, Apple, Avon, CDW, Costco, Fanatics, Newegg, Office Depot, PC Connection, all of Redcats’ U.S. retailers and Staples.

Costco deserves kudos for placing that information on their recorded hold message, while all other …

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