Customer Service Skills for Success 6th by Robert W. Lucas Now Available

The top-selling customer service textbook in the United States, Customer Service Skills for Success by Robert W. Lucas, is now in print from McGraw-Hill. This 6th edition includes a four-color layout with more images to enhance the content and a completely changed graphic appearance.

In the book, readers will find real-world customer service issues and provides a variety of updated resources, activities, and examples for customer service representatives at different levels in an organization. It also includes tips from the author and other active professionals in the industry designed to gain and hold readers’ interest while providing additional insights into the concepts and skills related to customer service that is found throughout the book.

The text begins with a macro view of what customer service involves today and provides projections for the future of the customer service profession, then focuses on specific customer service skills and related topics.

Here’s what readers will find inside the book:

Part One – The Profession

The Customer Service Profession

Contributing to the Service Culture

Part Two – Skills for Success

Verbal Communication Skills

Nonverbal Communication Skills

Listening Skills

Part Three – Building and Maintaining Relationships

Customer Service and Behavior

Service Breakdowns and Service Recovery

Customer Service in a Diverse World

Customer Service via Technology’

Encouraging Customer Loyalty

This book answers everything from “What is Customer Service?” to “How do I handle a variety of diverse customers in various customer service situations?”.

To gain thousands of ideas, strategies and customer service tips for interacting successfully with internal and external customers in any type of customer service environment and deliver excellent customer service, get a copy of Customer Service Skills for Success 6th edition.

Black Friday Stats Show a Huge Success

Each year, online and brick and mortar retailers strive to increase sales and revenues generated around the period of Thanksgiving and Black Friday. This year was no exception, with many companies offering pre-Black Friday deals followed by Cyber Monday opportunities to attract customers and generate sales, customers were treated to an extended period of sales bargains.

According to a Vancouver, Canada-based company (Wishpond Technologies Ltd.- a local shopping platform that connects online consumers with local merchants through the web, mobile, social media and partner platforms), 2013 was a huge success.

Here are some Black Friday statistics that the company shared through a presentation on the website Slideshare:

$12.3 billion was the overall brick-and-mortar store sales for Thanksgiving and Black Friday 2013 – up 2.3% from 2012 (source: CNN Money)
$1.964 billion was the overall online sales for Thanksgiving and Black Friday – up over 18.5% from 2012 (source: TechCrunch)
The average 2013 Black Friday online order was $135.27 – that’s up 2.2% year-over-year (source: TechCrunch)
Black Friday online mentions peaked at 11 am CST (source: Forbes)
Walmart dominated in Black Friday mentions, with 77.5% of the voice (source: Forbes)
But… 4 to 1 those Walmart mentions were negative (with words like “fight” “fought” and “fighting”) (source: Forbes)
Pinterest vs. Facebook 7 Pinterest dominates in direct sales. Referrals from the site spent 77% more than those from Facebook: $92.51 – average Pinterest order $52.30 – average Facebook order (source: Forbes)
Pinterest vs. Facebook 8 But… Facebook referrals converted sales at nearly 4x’s the rate of Pinterest (source: TechCrunch)
Mobile traffic: Grew to 39.7% of all online traffic – that’s an increase of 34% over Black Friday 2012 (source: TechCrunch)
Mobile sales: reached 21.8% of total online sales – that’s an increase of nearly 43% from last year (source: TechCrunch)
24.9% of all online traffic on Black Friday came from smartphones – that compares to tablets at 14.2% (source: TechCrunch)
How do you pay? PayPal reported a 121% increase in global mobile payments compared to Black Friday 2012 (source: TechCrunch).

About Robert C. Lucas

Bob Lucas has been a trainer, presenter, customer service expert, and adult educator for over four decades. He has written hundreds of articles on training, writing, self-publishing, and workplace learning skills and issues. He is also an award-winning author who has written thirty-seven books on topics such as, writing, relationships, customer service, brain-based learning, and creative training strategies, interpersonal communication, diversity, and supervisory skills.

Additionally, he has contributed articles, chapters, and activities to eighteen compilation books. Bob retired from the U.S. Marine Corps in 1991 after twenty-two years of active and reserve service.

Bob Lucas B.S., M.A., M.A, CPLP is the principal in Robert W. Lucas Enterprises, Inc and an internationally-known author; learning and performance professionals. He has written and contributed to numerous books on the subject of customer service skill training.

He regularly conducts workshops on creative training, train-the-trainer, customer service, interpersonal communication, and management,
and supervisory skills.

Learn more about Bob and his organization at www.robertwlucas.com and follow his blogs at www.robertwlucas.com/wordpress,
www.customerserviceskillsbook.com, and www.thecreativetrainer.com. Like Bob at www.facebook.com/robertwlucasenterprises

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