The Ultimate Online Customer Service Guide

“The Ultimate Online Customer Service Guide: How to Connect with Your Customers to Sell More! is a great gift from author and entrepreneur Marsha Collier. Marsha defines the art of customer service, connection, and engagement, and teaches small businesses how to battle and win with big players. Marsha’s bestselling Starting an eBay Business For Dummies is a legend in online retailing. This new customer service tutorial delivers much more than the title promises. If you read Marsha’s book and apply her lessons, your business will grow. In this economy, make an investment in Marsha’s new book. You won't be disappointed.”

- Kathy Ireland, CEO and Chief Designer, Kathy Ireland Worldwide 

Social media and the economy have changed the game for customer service for companies large and small. In this book, Marsha provides the tactics and know-how to take your business to the next level.”

- Frank Eliason, Senior Vice President of Social Media, Citibank

Community has always been an important aspect of the interaction between businesses and their patrons. In the earliest days of America, people visited their local neighborhood stores, got to know the owners and the owners got to know its patrons, creating a bond of loyalty and trust. Now, businesses all over the world have the opportunity to grow in the online realm, but this does not mean that because they do not meet their customers face-to-face they should ignore the importance of community.

Marsha Collier’s latest book, THE ULTIMATE ONLINE CUSTOMER SERVICE GUIDE: How to Connect with Your Customers to Sell More! (Wiley; Hardcover; December 2010; $24.95; 978-0-470-63770-8) advises business owners on ways to stay connected to their customers using various online channels of customer service. Customer service cannot simply be lip service; rather, it has to be the foundation of a business. The book explores how using a company’s Web site, engaging through social media, such as a blog, Twitter and Facebook, and interacting with reviewers can expand any business’ customer service connection.

The best businesses grow as a result of word-of-mouth and social media is simply a high-quality word-of-mouth that is more efficiently delivered and appropriately executed by technology. Social media allows customers to express their issues, share reviews and voice their concerns. For businesses, this opens up an opportunity to create a sense of community around their brand, company or service. It also provides them with a quick system for contacting customers, a simple way for customers to contact a business and a marketing plan that can draw even more loyal consumers to their businesses.

THE ULTIMATE ONLINE CUSTOMER SERVICE GUIDE will show readers how to become authentic and engaged servants to customers through social media. Using a blend of case studies, a primer on classic customer service maxims, and instructions on how to execute quality customer service, this book will help any business better understand the opportunities that social media presents as a means of serving customers. Key lessons include:

• Authentically using social media to connect with customers to boost bottom line
• Attracting new customers through an online presence
• Achieving higher Gross Merchandise Sales with quality customer service
• How to involve employees as brand ambassadors
• Examples of some small businesses that did it right
• Consequences of the lack of customer service

“I am simply a student of business and a business educator,” says Collier. “I have tested these techniques, studied the results, taught by doing and want to bring these practices and all that I have learned to businesses that are looking to increase their profit and loyal customers online.”