The Complete Guide to Customer Support

Today's support operations face greater responsibilities than the help desks of the 1990s. That's because customers expect 24x7 assistance on whatever channel they choose - no matter what type of products and/or services they buy.

The Complete Guide to Customer Support is a concise, practical guide to running an effective customer support operation, highlighting key issues such as:

• How do you organize your support to meet customers' needs?
• How do you attract, train, and retain the best staff?
• What technologies do you need and how to they fit into support?
• What are the best ways to mesh live, automated, and field support?
• How do you ensure customers consistently reach people who can help them?
• Do you charge for support?
• And how do you know if your support operation is really doing a good job?

Using clear, logical explanations and case studies, balanced with wit and graphics to illustrate key methods, trends, and technologies, this book is an invaluable resource for understanding how support is evolving beyond technical help to long-term customer care.

Joe Fleischer, Call Center magazine's chief technical editor, regularly writes about how companies use technology to serve customers by phone and online. He's in frequent demand as a speaker at leading events, including Call Center Demo and Conference.

Brendan Read, Call Center magazine's services editor and author of Designing the Best Call Center for Your Business, writes about site selection, design, staffing, training, certification, outsourcing, teleworking, and laws and regulations. An experienced reporter and business journalist, he writes and occasionally speaks at trade shows in a unique way that makes complex topics understandable and interesting.