License to Serve: Beyond Selling. the How- To Guide for Creating Exceptional Customer Service

Whether you want the fast-track approach to customer service or strategic insight on establishing long-term commitment to customer service, this book provides it all.

License to Serve demystifies the secrets behind delivering optimum customer service, when it occurs and what it takes to go beyond customer satisfaction. Whether you ultimately serve customers, co-workers, patients, partners, a board of directors, voters, members, or senior managers, the insight presented in this book will help you strategize, create and deliver customer service to internal and external customers.

Section One presents 65 customer service truths insights, observations, techniques, tips, and strategies that you can implement immediately. These tools are the first step in crossing the line between your customer satisfaction expectations and optimum customer service from the customer's perspective.

The next three sections -- Who is Responsible for Customer Service; Determining Customer Service Touch Points; Maintaining an Environment of Optimum Customer Service -- take this foundation to the next level with a greater understanding of how to create a culture of customer service within the hearts and minds of all levels of employees.

Successful organizations today understand that it is not a question of high-tech or high-touch; the issue is combining high-tech with high-touch! It is fine to use technology to help streamline efficiencies and discover root causes of problems, but it is people who play the pivotal role of providing high-touch personalized service by understanding the customer s perspective. License to Serve gives you the tools to determine customer touch points a defining moment of customer service.

Knowing how to provide optimum customer service is just the beginning. Changing behavior to continually provide optimum customer service is the goal. License to Serve outlines how to create the momentum to reach this goal through words and actions, techniques and strategies. Integral to making the transition to optimum customer service is the change model that illustrates the different points involved in maintaining this successful environment.

License to Serve will prepare any kind of organization from public to private and profit to non-profit with the necessary skills to exceed customer needs and expectations that ultimately increase profitability and future success.

Joe Ilvento has been serving customers both internal and external since working in his family's restaurant at age 10. Keeping customers happy and beyond satisfied is the secret to his success. It is as much an art as it is a science. The art is seen in Joe's attitude of service. Ask anyone he has ever known or worked with, he is always looking to help and go beyond what is expected. Working in the family restaurant business he saw first hand the impact of word of mouth advertising and repeat customers. His grandfather and father also knew how to treat customers. Long after they retired from the business, barely a day goes by when Joe introduces himself and the person says, I used to eat at Ilvento's restaurant, followed by stories about how his father and grandfather did things to make them feel special. Twenty years after the restaurant s closing, Joe still hears these stories now that s customer service! You could say he learned these lessons in the trenches from some of the best.

Sales and service go hand in hand. Joe, upon graduation from Syracuse University with a Bachelor of Science degree in psychology, began his career with Cable & Wireless Communications. Within a few short years he was promoted to National Sales Trainer. He then moved on to become a Master Trainer with Learning International (formally Xerox Learning Systems) one of only 13 worldwide. In 1989 he started his own consulting firm and has been helping Fortune 500 clients ever since. In 1998 one of them, the largest financial firm in the world, hired him as an executive in their corporate offices and he continues to play a major role in helping others in the areas of executive development, talent management and staffing. Delivering service excellence inside the corporation is something Joe does on a daily basis.

Joe has personally presented to over 15,000 business people around the world and has presented via self-directed online learning modules to another 20,000. Past audience members have included numerous government agencies such as the Central Intelligence Agency, the Marines, the Air Force, the Treasury Department, the Secret Service, and Army National Guard. Private sector audience members have included Citibank, MCI/WorldCom, Printing Industries of America, the National Real Estate Institute of America, Marriott, First Union Bank, Royal Insurance, Bechtel, the Family Research Council, Ford Motors, and more.

Joe's first book Nobody to Somebody in 63 Days or Less shows people how to use word of mouth advertising and referral selling to dramatically increase sales. Joe partnered with Doug Price on his second book License to Sell Professional Field Guide to Selling Skills & Market Trends. He has appeared in newspapers, magazines and on various radio and television shows including the Bloomberg Financial Network, WPGC Business News Radio, Entrepreneur s Radio Showcase, and the Business as Unusual television show.

Joe Ilvento specializes in developing the selling, marketing and customer service skills of others. His seminars are interactive, applied, fun, and most of all effective. Joe can be reached at 1-800-382-6343 or by e-mail at joeilvento@comcast.net.