Complain, Complain, Complain

If you’ve ever sat on hold with the cable company for 40 minutes while you tried to get an issue resolved, you already understand the agony involved in most customer service interactions. But with more and more people cutting down on non-essential costs—like cable, gym memberships, and weekly blow-outs at the salon, to name a few—due to the recession, an increasing number of companies are ramping up their customer service efforts as a way to keep people coming back for more.

Losing paying customers is always an unwanted event, of course, but it’s especially perilous for companies during a recession. According to a report published by the Forrester Research firm earlier this year, investing in customer service is one the best ways a company can hold onto its existing customers. Signing up for a company Twitter account or hiring a few "Help Desk" workers to respond to inquires via instant messenger will always be cheaper than investing in a multimillion dollar ad campaign, after all, which is why the same report listed investing in social-networking communities and becoming proactive about chat as two "recession-busting strategies" that major companies should utilize. [Read more]

--Posted by Stephanie Miles, RecessionWire.com

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