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Customer Service Psychology

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Focused on the psychology of customer service, this is a sublens of Customer Service Reader.

General 

CSR psychology section
Psychology section of the Customer Service Reader blog.
Customer Service Reader blog
Main page of the Customer Service Reader blog.

Happiness & customer service 

What's in it me for me?
Although much has been written about how customer service benefits businesses, writers have not paid much attention to how providing customer service also benefits the providers.
Joy to the whirled
I read three more books on customer service over the past week, and still no material on how customer service benefits the providers. Beginning to think that I may just have to make stuff up.
Q&A with Dr Ed Diener
Can customer service providers find happiness? To answer that question, it may help to gain a better understanding of what happiness is. Ed Diener is Alumni Professor of Psychology at the University of Illinois.
Customer Service and the Pursuit of Happiness
Most people don't expect to find happiness, working a customer service job. But customer service, by its very nature, presents unique opportunities for the pursuit of happiness, not only for individuals, but for society as a whole.
Self-actualization
The customer service literature mainly tends to treat those of us who actually provide the service as objects to be manipulated. For any customer service program to succeed, providers must turn that bias on its head. We must seize power, and take personal responsibility for our success. In Managing oneself, my homeboy Peter Drucker (or "Ducky", as we call him in the hood) finally comes around to my point of view.
Satisfaction vs Delight
Excerpts from Reassessing the Foundations of Customer Delight. Adam Finn, University of Alberta. In Journal of Service Research.

Hiring & Training 

Emotional competence in customer service
An attempt to code the Emotional Intelligence Consortium's Emotional Competence Framework, specifically for customer service.
That's a good doggie
Are we at best cute little puppies to be trained to turn tricks for treats?
Hiring tips
It is not easy to find people with a service orientation and history. But it is much harder to create a customer service mindset in people who have not already developed the habits on their own.
Jack Welch on hiring
Nothing is more important to winning than having the right people on the field. The team with the best players wins.
Nordstrom's #1 Customer Strategy
The qualities that Nordstrom looks for in its employees couldn't be more basic. First of all, the company wants its salespeople to be nice.
Customer service training - Guidelines
Guidelines for customer service training, adapted from the Emotional Intelligence Consortium's Technical Report on Training & Development. A summary report is also available from the EIC.

Empathy 

Goleman on empathy
Managing relationships well depends on a foundation of Self-Management and Empathy, each of which in turn requires Self-Awareness.

Perception 

No takers for fakers
Notes from Is "service with a smile" enough? Authenticity of positive displays during service encounters. In Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. Alicia A. Grandey, Glenda M. Fisk, Anna S. Mattila, Karen J. Jansen, Lori A. Sideman, Pennsylvania State University

Stress 

Customer service can kill you
Excerpts from Emotion Regulation in the Workplace: A New Way to Conceptualize Emotional Labor. Alicia A Grandey, Department of Psychology, Pennsylvania State University. In Journal of Occupational Health Psychology
LEAP away from stress
The main source of stress in the service environment is the angry customer. We can reduce the frequency and instensity of this stressor by (a) taking care of customers in the first place, so that they have no reason to be angry, and (b) fixing our mistakes through recovery processes such as LEAP.
LEAP to the customer's side
Anyone can be nice to nice customers. There's almost no skill involved in that. What separates the professionals from the amateurs is the ability to manage "difficult" customers.
Dysfunctional customers
When customers are not only wrong, but whacked. This article addresses dysfunctional customer behavior, which refers to actions by customers who intentionally or unintentionally, overtly or covertly, act in a manner that, in some way, disrupts otherwise functional service encounters.

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