Customer Service Topic Sheets

Outsourcing involves the transfer of the management and/or day-to-day execution of a business function to an external service provider.

Benchmarking has become an important methodology for providing a fast-track to achieving organisational excellence. This topic sheets investigates the different types of best practice benchmarking and their relative benefits.

Self-service is the practice of serving oneself when interacting with a supplier of goods or services. eService is a term used to describe self-service via the internet

A contact centre or call centre is a centralised office used for receiving and/or making customer contacts by telephone, email fax or webchat

What is a brand? Is there a simple answer?

Speech recognition technology (hardware and software) can be used to enable customers to communicate with an organisation or an individual to communicate with a personal computer

Where a complaint can't be resolved at point of entry, it will required to be escalated or referred up the line. In some cases, a complaint may reach deadlock.

There are some simple steps that if followed can ensure that complaints are resolved effectively

This topic sheet looks at why communication is so important and offers some crucial principles to bear in mind when communicating with customers, whether over the phone, in person or in writing.