Ryan Shell, Author at RyanShell.com

Are You Overlooking this Aspect of Delivering Great Customer Service?

My start up t-shirt company, The Home T, has been a ton of fun thus far. I’ve learned a little along the way, and also had the opportunity to put a lot of existing knowledge to use.

But the one thing I’ve focused on the most is customer service. To be clear, customer service is impacted by a massive amount of behind the scenes actions, so don’t just think it’s face to face or face to email/phone interaction.

I’ve preached before previously blogged about how customer service isn’t so hard, and to be honest, it’s not. You have to be attentive. You have to respect people. You have to deliver on what you say you’ll deliver. And more importantly, when something goes array, you have to be upfront with people and reassure them that all will be well.

It really is that simple.

Don’t Overlook this New LinkedIn Page Feature

By Ryan Shell

LinkedIn has released a number of website updates as of late, and there’s one in particular that has to do with Pages that you don’t want to overlook.

LinkedIn Pages, in general, are often forgotten about when it comes to content distribution platforms, which is unfortunate given that many pages, especially for larger organizations, can build up quite a following.

But, let’s assume using a LinkedIn page is part of your content distribution plan. The social network has now added a targeting feature to all page updates, and it’s actually pretty darn good. Here’s a quick look at the new targeted updates on LinkedIn. Note: click images to enlarge them.

Don’t Let an Inconvenience Allow You to Settle

By Ryan Shell

I’ve not mentioned it on this site yet, but I’ve created a small t-shirt brand called The Home T that is an extension of my fashion blog Fashables.

The website is TheHomeT.com and it was my first experience with building an ecommerce site. To make life easier I went with an out of the box version called Shopify that has a number of themes and makes it remotely easy to add products and take payments.

But the fun stops there.

Don’t Insult the Customer with Your Apology

By Ryan Shell

Customer service. It’s something I’m big on, and I promise this isn’t a mean spirited post, but it is a perfect example of how companies need to choose “the right response” when attending to consumer complaints.

I’ll let a string of emails take you through what happened. The first of which you’ll see below was my response to an invitation from West Elm – the furniture store – to attend an event at one of their stores.