Great Customer Connections.

Great Customer Connections, by Richard S. Gallagher, Book, 2006, American Management Association, $21.95.

I didn't expect to learn much from a book on customer service. I've been developing and facilitating award-winning customer service programs for nine years. Surprisingly, I found Great Customer Connections: Simple Psychological Techniques That Guarantee Exceptional Service by Richard Gallagher took customer service to a new level by presenting strategies that can empower employees to handle even especially difficult situations.

Avoiding escalating encounters

Done skillfully, these practices can reduce the number and severity of escalated situations that front-line staff routinely refer to managers. They can also be enormously helpful for managers needing to demonstrate a higher level of customer service competency.

The book's premise is that we need to understand the customer mind-set and respond from the customer's perspective. OK, that's not earth shattering. What I found unexpectedly useful was the author's analysis of the customer's perspective and suggested solutions for scenarios that could stump even the most expert among us.

There are whole sections on how to avoid saying "no," what to say to the customer who has caused the problem he is complaining about, and how to break the news when you, the employee, have made a mistake with major consequences for the customer. Other sections include, "Respect and Empathy: More Than a Feeling" and "Managing Specific Customer Personalities."

Personal applications

In the appendix, Gallagher focuses on "human relations skills that can affect every aspect of our lives." Using examples such as friends pressuring you to do something you don't want to do, Gallagher dramatically demonstrates how the book's ideas can be transferred to one's personal life. Readers may find interesting Gallagher's analysis of the news story behind the bestseller, The Purpose-Driven Life. Ashley Smith, taken hostage in 2005 by a murder suspect, talked her way out of a life-and-death situation by using some of the same customer service techniques described in Great Customer Connections.

The appendix section "Coaching for Peak Customer Experiences" emphasizes the key supervisor role of ensuring that learning transfers to the job. The primer on coaching is consistent with the ways the author recommends we treat customers.

The author is at times wordy or redundant, especially in the beginning and with points that he makes repeatedly. On occasion, I questioned how some of the suggested scripts would come across in real life and whether certain practices he criticizes are really that bad, e.g., informing customers that you are "closing in 10 minutes."

Grounded in psychology

Personally, I found Great Customer Connections to be incredibly validating. The book's contents are eerie in their similarity to training I developed from scratch, based exclusively on an organizational needs assessment and drawn from my own psychology background.

Gallagher clearly articulates the psychological principles behind his approaches just enough to get the reader to buy into his solutions. He avoids any deep psychological explanations and sticks to the basic dynamics of human interactions.

The author believes that customer service skills are learnable and can be used effectively by a variety of personality styles. The author refers to customer service as "the science of how you tell people that you have just towed their car away--in a way that most effectively reunites them with their car while preserving dignity and good feelings on both sides." Gallagher calls it liberating that you don't need to change your personality or attitude so much as to learn specific verbal skills.

Recommendation

I recommend Great Customer Connections for novice and veteran customer service professionals as well as their supervisors. Although the techniques are indeed "simple" (Gallagher's quote), they are not universally taught or practiced, and they are strikingly effective.

Review by Kim Neubauer

Product Ratings

Great Customer Connections

Holds user interest  *** 1/2
Value of Content     ****
Self-Study Value     ****
Instructional Value  *** 1/2
Value for the money  *** 1/2
Overall rating       *** 1/2