Ask Questions 
Share Tips 
List Your Business 
Coffee Talk with Experts 
Biz Planning | Sample Plans 
Idea 
Name 
$ 
Do It! 
Promotional Merchandise
Managing | Operations
Work @ Home 
Yoga @ Your Desk 
|
|
About our Guest Expert: Donna Hall of The Right Answer
Donna Hall, president of The Right Answer, has been making customers happy and satisfied for more than 15 years. She's a customer service whiz who first discovered her service talents as an intern at a major daily publication working with subscribers, and later, she added to her service skills in the medical and newspaper industries.
After this, she was hooked on the high of making customer service departments click and worked her way up the customer service management ladder with USA Today. Along the way, she attended countless customer service seminars and workshops, where one day, she suddenly realized her true calling!
So, she quit her nine-to-five job and like the rest of us, jumped feet first into self-employment! Donna started her consulting business, The Right Answer, about five years ago to train customer service professionals the right ways and the right answers in dealing with daily customer service challenges. Her two-day seminars and workbooks are chockful of the nitty gritty of customer service.
Besides being a customer service guru, Donna's a whiz in the kitchen (which is almost a prerequisite for any Idea Cafe biz expert!). She whips up fancy feasts in her New York City home for her twin 18-year old sons and holds down the fort of her bustling biz at the same time. What a gal!
Donna's Answers
Does anyone have any pointers on how to handle those hard-to-please customers?
My customers are my bread and butter, but one thing that drives me to distraction are the last-minute cancellations or no-shows...
How do you deal with a long-term (pretty large account) customer, whose contact is incompetent? Any concrete training tips?
What types of rewards or programs seem to do the best job of motivating people to excel in customer service?
Does anyone know of any good books or magazines on customer service?
I run a secretarial service... How can I gently, but firmly get my client to pass over the books?
I'd like to build up my clientele for my service biz and could use some help on getting referrals....Anyone???
I struggle to find qualified people to answer our busy phone lines. Does anyone have any phone tips to help me train future staff?
Does anyone have any good advice for discouraging my service employees from making and receiving personal calls when they're working the phones with customers?
Would you recommend that my service department make up or adopt its own mission statement or service motto? If so, why or why not?
What can I do to help my employees be more people-friendly?
My customers love me, or else they wouldn't be sending all of their friends and family to me, but I'm worried that they'll find someone else who can stay on top of all this! Any suggestions for getting organized?
I am finding that my temper with my customers sometimes gets to the breaking point. I am looking for some wisdom to help me cope with them.
I recently had a frustrating experience as a customer, and it made me think about customer service at my local biz.... How can my biz learn from my customer service nightmare?
I'm considering starting a customer service company for local businesses in my community... How do I go about checking out the feasibility of this working and how do you charge for service-type businesses?
I own a home-office cleaning business. What I'm wanting to do is to provide additional services. . . . I want to outsource the majority of the services but still collect a fee. How do I approach other companies (well established) to even consider being a part of this business and for me to collect a referral fee?
|
|
Small Business Tax Center • Idea Cafe Home • Sign Up • Biz Grant Center • CyberSchmooz •Coffee Talk with Experts • People in Biz Profiles • Starting Your Biz • Biz Planning • Running Your Biz • FREE Trade Publications • Marketing • Financing Your Biz • Human Resources • Legal & Biz Forms • Managing Your Biz • eCommerce • You and Your Biz • Gen X • Work@Home • The Fridge • De-Stress • Send an Award • Send an eGreeting • Yoga @ Your Desk • Web Guide • Idea Cafe in the News • About Idea Cafe • Advertise on Idea Cafe • Contact Us • Privacy Policy • Site Map • Small Biz News
Copyright 1995-2021, Idea Cafe Inc. Downloads are for personal use only, not for resale to others, and may not be reprinted in any form without written permission from Idea Cafe Inc.
DISCLAIMER: We hope whatever you find on this site is helpful, but be cautioned that it may not apply to your own situation, or be totally current at any given time. Idea Cafe Inc. and all of its current and past experts, sponsors, advertisers, agents, contractors and advisors disclaim all warranties with regard to anything found anywhere on this family of websites, quoted from, or sent from Idea Cafe. and its related sites, publications and companies. We also take no responsibility for comments published by others on these pages. TRADEMARKS: The following are Registered Trademarks or Servicemarks of DevStart, Inc.: Idea Cafe®, Online Coffee Break®, The Small Business Gathering Place®, Take out Info®, Biz Bar & Grill®, Complaint-O-Meter®, A Fun Approach to Serious Business™, CyberSchmooz™, and BizCafe™.
|
|
|
|
Have a biz question of your own? Go post it in CyberSchmooz
Meet the other Experts
For more biz answers go to Coffee Talk Answers.