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Training and the infinite return on investment by Seth Godin (distributed with permission) Training pays. Sometimes, it's easy to underestimate just how much it pays. Consider an employee who is going to work 2000 hours for you this year. It's not unusual for an...

A position opens up in your company and you're part of the interview process. This will be a brand new experience for some interviewers and a repeat performance for others. Regardless, hiring the right candidate is an anxiety-inducing process for all parties, with...

A triage nurse takes a call from a patient who says, “I’m not feeling well.” A quick assessment is needed to determine the next step for this patient. This person needs help to pinpoint the likely cause of the problem before any determination can be made about how the...

Few business phrases can be as disheartening and conversation-stopping as “Sorry, that’s our policy.” Rules, regulations, and policies are there for a reason, and ideally, your team members will provide the best service possible within those guidelines. But the...

Ethics in the workplace is a unique topic. Ethical matters normally don't deal with issues that can be assigned a number, a value, or a quantity. In other words it doesn’t exactly fit in the cell of a spreadsheet. "Ethics" is about behavior and conduct. Dealing with...

by Nancy Friedman, the Telephone Doctor Normally, I bet my audiences the cash that’s in their wallet that they have one or more of these phrases on their cell or office phone at that moment. I’ve never had to pay! When was the last time you checked your own voice mail...

Everyone aims to deliver proactive customer service. Whether you refer to it as cross-selling, up-selling, suggestive selling, or - as we like to say -- "soft question" selling, a basic component of effective customer service is to offer your customers additional...

You know that helpless feeling when attending a poorly organized office meeting? One with no structure or meaningful objective? Frustrating, isn't it? Meetings are so unpopular that one recent poll showed that about half of the people surveyed admitted they’d rather...

One of the most abrupt and shocking forbidden phrases you can say to a customer is, “We can’t do that.” These words close the door on the customer’s request as quickly as does its close cousin  -- “That’s our policy.” Everyone has heard the “We can’t” phrase before,...

By Nancy Friedman, Keynote Speaker, Customer Service Expert, President Telephone Doctor Customer Service Training If this hasn’t happened to you yet, my bet is it will. You see the name or a number you recognize on the phone and pick it up with, “Hi Joe” (or whoever...

By Nancy Friedman, Keynote Speaker; Customer Service & Communications Expert; and President of Telephone Doctor Customer Service Training FACT: The best weapon for a successful business is customer service. It’s that simple. We will pay more for better service! So...

Everyone has had the experience where they meant to send a private response to someone in a group email, but accidentally hit “reply-to-all.” If we were lucky, it was a limited mistake and only a minor annoyance. If we were less fortunate, it might have been the type...