2-1-2 Small Business Sense

When we envision a call center we visualize a big room full of cubicles, desks, and customer service reps (CSRs) answering their telephones with their headsets on. We envision clients and customers calling into a queue and waiting for the next available rep. We think of business service as how fast the CSRs answer the telephone calls – the longer the wait time, the worse the service is perceived to be.

But call center customer service goes far beyond that. A call center is a place where a business answers the phone when a client calls. It can be a small business with just one or two employees or a big business with thousands of CSRs manning the phones. It does not matter; a call center is not necessarily what we all envision it to be. If you have ever answered the phone at your place of business you have provided customer service at a call center.

Remember that – if you answer the phone, you are providing customer service. That means you need to be accessible to your customers, solve their problems, sell them what they need, and do it in a timely manner. Customer service is not only done by large businesses with an army of service reps, but also by every small business professional, sales person, and business owner.

Every time your business phone rings it is an opportunity to provide exceptional service to a customer. Be courteous, be polite, and your customers will love you for it.

By: Tino Toskala

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For those of us who have chosen careers in business, it makes sense to have all the business reference books you need close at hand. Thus, when giving speeches a colleges to MBA students, I often recommend that they start building their business library now. Indeed, my business library is somewhere between 3500 and 4000 books and lately, I have been going through it and giving away the books I no longer need since I am now retired.

However, I am not pitching all the books quite yet, because they say that the entrepreneurial itch runs deep and if it chooses to show itself again, then I want to be ready. So, with this truth told, let me recommend a few of the books that are staying on my personal business shelves that have to do with business management. If you do not have these books, I recommend considering them for your self:

“The One Minute Manager Gets Fit” by Kenneth Blanchard, PhD. – 1986

“Market Driven Management – Prescriptions for Survival in a Turbulent World” – B. Charles Ames and James D. Hlavacek – 1989.

Market Driven Management is the key to winning in the new paradigm of the fast paced market, with fierce competition, global markets and “exploding technologies and higher R and D costs” states the author.

“Getting IT to the Bottom Line – Management by Incremental Gains” by Richard S. Sloma – 1987.

This book explains how business managers can grow their businesses and manage by goal setting, careful evaluation and repeating that process. It is not some sort of get rich quick way to go about your business and the author makes it clear that it takes discipline, but assures the reader that this way works.

He talks a lot about business ‘profit’ planning, after all people are in business to make money. In the second half of the book he spends his time on the important task of measuring financial performance, and how to use this knowledge to project, set new goals and continue refining the process of making money, the bottom line.

I wish you all the best in starting and contributing the best books in business to your business library and wish you continued success in your business career whether you are a manager, corporate executive or a fearless small business entrepreneur.

By: Lance Winslow

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