It''s commonsense, stupid!

Peter Economy, a well-known author of around a dozen business books, including Raising Capital for Dummies, and Home Based Business for Dummies, has now come out with one on how to service your customer better. If you are already deep into the study of this customer service, customer relationship management, and so on, Customer Service Secrets may not be the book for you. But, if you wish to learn some basics, it's worth a read.

Beginning with some basics, such as "Never treat a customer like a number", and "let the customer do the talking first", the author urges the reader to "get out of your office", and establish personal contact with customers. "Aren't these the most obvious truths anyone can state?" you might ask. Obvious as they are, however, they are often forgotten in practice. That's the problem with commonsense — it's not too common.

Don't be surprised to find the customary CRM axioms like "A 5 per cent improvement in a company's customer retention rate will increase profits by 15 to 20 per cent, depending on the industry". But the author goes beyond the numbers, and explains the subject with remarkable ease, often in a conversational style that makes it easy to assimilate the ideas.

The book is replete with anecdotes and real life examples from the field, and gives you some clues on how some companies try and keep their customers sold on their products and services.

One wonders whether the couple of chapters in the book on the Internet were included by mistake; they have little relevance to the issue at hand. However, the author has inserted an interesting three-page chapter that addresses Indians working in a call centre type of business. He advises them to understand Americans better, including their views on status, gender, and their interest in sports and the weather rather than politics or religion. Very basic — but, what the hell, when an author addresses dummies, what else do you expect?

Customer Service Secrets may not be a book for the erudite, but as with well-written, quickie books of this type, you are likely to find some takeaways that you can apply to your business.

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