"as above - giving agents ownership of customer issues that are raised with them."

"The most dramatic increase in customer service came when we put a huge focus on moving our people forward and taking large national teams and bringing them together so that they got to know one another. They didn't feel like they were operating in a silo."

"managing staff feedback formally and continiously."

"Trying to eliminate instances where reps are not empowered to address custoimer request without escalation. Don't want rep in a position of saying "I can't" or "That's our policy"."

"Leadership Circles where I hold monthly meetings with various teams to gather feedback and ideas, then elicite the help from the associates to bring their ideas into programs designed to help improve areas many complained about."

"I have worked to automate systems. Our old way of creating a return merchandise label for instance took 5-10 minutes per label. Agents were frustrated and disliked having to do those. After working with our IT department, I piggy-backed a system our IT department had created and made this onerous task, that used to take minutes, now only take seconds!"

"I have heard them all. The top 10 guidelines for best customer service or the 3 rules to follow when managing a customer are both well defined philosophies, but with all that we demand of our staff by way of process and procedure, I have found success in preaching one rule of thumb to increase customer service levels. "Provide customer service to a customer as you would expect to be serviced." As a customer, you want someone to resolve your inquiry, maintain proper communication when speaking with you, and help you feel like a person and not another call in the queue. So why would your customer expect anything less? When my staff understands this, customer communication is at it's best, ownership of escalations takes place and the customer feels as though they are a customer, and not another statistic for the queue."

"Keep it simple don't have too many rules or regulations. Yes business process are important but keep them simple so that customers and reps know exactly what it means."

"Comfort of openness and tranparency in accountability. its a carrot and stick approach."