Rich Gallagher’s new book: The Customer Service Survival Kit

Author and Point of Contact Group founder Rich Gallagher loves worst-case customer situations. Why? Because learning to handle them well is the key to creating excellent service in any situation. And you will learn the same skills from his new book The Customer Service Survival Kit: What to Say to Defuse Even the Worst Customer Situations, which will be released worldwide by leading business publisher AMACOM in late March 2013.

This book will teach readers the same skills that hostage negotiators, crisis counselors, psychotherapists and others use to defuse the very worst customer situations, and help them become supremely confident in dealing with any customer. Some of the techniques you will learn include:

• Understanding how to manage your worst customer situations – or any customer situation – by using teachable skills
• How to dissolve criticism by “leaning in” to it
• A four-step “ladder of acknowledgement” that will change the way you listen to customers
• Avoiding common “trigger phrases” that cause bad customer reactions
• How to deliver even the worst kinds of bad news by breaking the message into stages
• Effective problem-solving techniques, even when the answer is “no.”
• Ways to reframe your language to get better reactions from customers
• Defusing angry customers with the skill of a bomb squad, through acknowledgement, questioning, and negotiation techniques
• Becoming immune to intimidation by combining assertiveness and empathy
• “Wrapping up” transactions in ways that send customers away happy
• Case studies on how to handle some of your worst customer situations
• Tips for keeping yourself safe when customer behavior gets out of hand
• How difficult customer skills can change your entire organization

Featuring a foreword by New York Times bestselling business author Carol Roth, this new book is designed to fundamentally change the way we approach difficult customer situations. Stay tuned for its launch campaign, including free gifts and live online webinars, through the book’s website at www.customerservicesurvivalkit.com. You can also pre-order the book at Amazon.com right now using the following link: http://bitly.com/Wr41sC

Rich Gallagher MA MFT is a former customer support executive, practicing psychotherapist, and author of numerous books on customer service and communications skills. He has trained over 25,000 people how to handle their most difficult situations with customers and others, and is one of the nation’s leading experts on workplace communications skills.