Hi Ang,

While you may live in a small town the internet has opened the door a little wider for smaller businesses to do business cross platform with neighbors thousands of miles away.

This is only a suggestion, but if I were in your shoes I might try getting my feet wet and introducing my business and services locally first.

Since your focus is on customer services and I agree I have seen horrible decline in CS while business owners blame economy or whatever is on the news as to why business is down. I might suggest contacting your local chamber of commerce to give a free workshop.

During this exercise you can cover specific points IE.) The problems you see with many CS programs or lack of. How this lack of CS directly impacts sales.

Then you could go into the little seen CS aspects of a business. Example: a working ball point pen at teller booth in bank. Always keeping the envelopes stocked, acknowledging a customer quickly even if you can?t help them for a few moments while you finish up with other customer... etc. Small but very important aspects of CS often overlooked.

Many businesses do not recognize this as customer service but they are. Once you present your workshop you can offer to do free onsite business evaluations to those present. If presented correctly you can make many appointments. Record the exercise if possible to create additional value products and review. Try creating a series of workshops and making each topic into bite size pieces...

CJ