A greater emphasis has been put on customer service as a growing number of consumers provide reviews and feedback to businesses on their mobile devices. In addition, companies such as Zappos have set the bar really high in terms of customer expectations.

A new report by Pike Research shows that customers have been increasing their demand for communication with public utility providers via social networking. It is estimated that about 57 million customers engaged their providers via social networking in 2011, and …

Anybody who works in customer service will tell you that it can be a thankless job. Not to say that all days are bad but it can definitely be tiring. I noticed a post on Search Engine Roundtable about an …

In a year where AT&T was prevented from acquiring T-Mobile, dealt a lawsuit by Sprint, ran afoul with the FCC, and then got ensnared in the Carrier IQ debacle, they have to be eager to put this year behind them. …

British Airways “revolutionises customer service using iPads,” says a BA press release on August 17 about a service trial that got quite a bit of attention this week. The airline says it’s trialling  iPads with 100 cabin crew to enable …

Sunday night, some Netflix users experienced an outage of the company’s streaming services. While this might happen from time to time, this particular time it sent many customers into a fury of outrage, because not only was it down for …

Some of your complaints about the new Netflix interface have been heard, apparently. Scrolling and sortable lists have been addressed, although, the overall redesign is still in place, much to the chagrin of those who wanted a complete rollback. When …

To get this out of the way, I am not a disgruntled Verizon customer. I’ve never been a Verizon customer. This is not a personal vendetta being aired because I had to spend 4 hours on the phone with Verizon …

How can you not love the viral power of the Internet? Besides all the silly memes, troll faces, LOL Cats and weird videos, said power is also responsible for creating ripple effects throughout whatever industry is being targeted. Just ask …

The outsourcing of customer service is a topic of much consternation, silly sitcoms be damned. The horror stories of customer service call centers are to numerous to detail here, so much so in fact, it seems people have learned to …

We’ve all been on the phone frustrated with the customer service rep who we need to dictate all of our information to even though we just typed it in via our telephone key pad. We’ve all had problems with internet service providers or cable operators who can’t seem to fix our problems.

Have you noticed members of your community posting customer service related questions on your Facebook Page? Or perhaps you have now revised your customer service and customer relationship management processes to integrate Twitter as part of your programme.

Co-authored by Jay Baer and Amber Naslund

“Once upon a time, customer contact was centralized around the switchboard, and the phone was the preferred method for communication between companies and customers. When it rang, you answered, because it was likely a customer or a potential customer on the other end of the line. Now, the calls are coming through online, via the social phone.”

Listening. It’s a mantra we’ve heard PR, marketing and social media consultants preach to brands for the last two years. But, how many brands are really listening to their customers online?

I’m not talking about responding to comments on Facebook or Twitter. That’s fine, but at this point, it’s table stakes, don’t you think?

Earlier this month comScore released its Q2 retail e-commerce sales estimates, which indicated that US online retail spending dropped from the same period from last year. This is only the second time that has happened.

A while back, I wrote a piece on a company called IMShopping, which was using Twitter for a fresh approach to eCommerce. Essentially what the company was doing was using a Twitter account to answer questions consumers have about products they are seeking, aiming to bring a human element often lacking in the online retail world.

WebProNews looked at some interesting research from Forrester and Shop.org this week, which indicated that while online retail sales have been increasing, those for the majority of web-only businesses have actually remained flat or on the decline.

One startup launching this week thinks injecting a little human touch into eCommerce can be a way to combat this. Naturally, Twitter is the medium the company’s using to do this.

The problem with being a dominant company comes when one treats customer service as another expense.

As this past year at Yahoo! has been my first year working for what I’d consider to be a large company, I’ve become more interested in strategies around running and operating companies efficiently. My past experiences have been with startups or small companies where a lot of the challenges that larger companies face don’t exist.

The term "social media" might conjure up images of tossed sheep or sparkly profile pages, but a new study proves businesses need to take it seriously.  Consumers are quite willing to both share bad experiences and learn about what’s happened to others.