Good customer service starts with good employees.  In order to improve your customer service, you need to look inside your business. Below you can find my favorite articles this week. Find out what kind of skills your customer support agents need in order to improve themselves, how to improve your customer service policies to show that you trust your employees, tips to improve your social customer service and more.

Are Your Customer Service Reps Eating the Marshmallow?

Researcher Walter  Mischel at Stanford devised an ingenious experience to test self control and the ability to delay gratification in children. He put a marshmallow in front of children and told them they could either eat the marshmallow or wait up to 20 minutes and then get two marshmallows. Most kids couldn’t wait. In this article, Adam Toporek explains how can organizational leaders use this test to improve customer service.

6 Essential Customer Service Agents Skills

In this article, Lauren Thomson provides us with the six most essential soft skills that help desk customer support agent should be aware of. Every business should use these skills in order to increase professional arsenal, and to improve their customer support and service.

Do Your Customer Service Policies Show You Trust Your Employees? 5 Strategies to Consider

In a lot of businesses, front-line employees have to get a manager’s approval for even the simplest, low-dollar merchandise return. This fact will influence your customers, whether they choose your business or your competitors. They know that if they want to return their latest purchase,  they will have to answer a lot of questions and the customer care representatives can’t give them an answer without getting the manager involved. Randy Conley gives us five strategies that demonstrate trust in your employees and customers.

7 Tips for Improved Social Customer Service

According to JD Power and Associates, 67% of consumers have used a company’s social media page for customer support. Social media allows customers to access the support system from their company’s computer or personal computer conveniently without leaving the network, whether the network is Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Google+. In this article, Daniel Matthews providing us seven tips for improving social customer service.

The Benefits of Customer Segmentation

In this article, we reveal the benefits of customer segmentation. First, it’s important to understand the concept. Customer segmentation is the process that involves dividing customers into groups. Second, the goals of customer segmentation help the company decide how to relate to customers in each segment in order to maximize the value of each customer to their business.