10 Customer Service Blogs You Should Bookmark

While there is a broad array of high quality blogs available when it comes to topics like Ecommerce or Online Marketing, quality blogs that concern themselves with Customer Service are much scarcer. Customer service has been evolving in a fast pace over the past decade, calling for high quality resources for industry professionals to lean on.

Thanks largely to social media, the way that we interact with customers has changed forever. Whilst once it was the norm to man customer service desks and communicate via phone and email, customer service reps now have numerous channels through which to manage customer relationships.

This is a tough reality for the service manager. The power is firmly in the hands of the customer and should one become frustrated, it’s easy for a company to find itself on the wrong end of a social media frenzy. To effectively manage all channels, reap the benefits and prevent disaster, the 21st century service manager needs to be aware of the latest tips, tricks, techniques and tools. Blogs are the perfect resources to stay on top of such a fast developing industry.

Quality resources are a bit harder to find in the customer service blogosphere, but the following 10 customer service blogs show how it is done.

#1 Helpscout

This is the favourite service blog of our team. The frequency of new posts is not that high, but what they put out is of the highest quality. So much so that I voluntarily receive their content newsletter and actually read it each time it reaches my inbox.

The Helpscout blog publishes a range of information, especially industry case studies, which makes this a little different and helpful in that you can really get a grasp on what’s worked and what hasn’t for other businesses. Helpscout itself offers helpdesk software to help better manage customer relationships and communications.

This blog is ideal for those starting out in customer services or those carrying out market research. It’s always good to know what’s working for other companies and what’s not, and more importantly, why, so check it out.

#2 CRM Daily

This site is dedicated to customer relationship management and all that it entails, including the latest industry news. It’s owned by Newsfactor Network, one of the leading publishers of business and tech news in the US. With top stories being published regularly on all aspects of customer service, this site is one to check with your morning coffee.

Here you’ll find news on customer engagement, legal matters, privacy and all of the latest happenings when it comes to some of the world’s biggest brands. It’s highly useful and a must when it comes to the cutting edge of the channel’s news.

#3 Userlike

Well, it would be rude not to mention the Userlike blog wouldn’t it? Userlike offers chat software for ecommerce websites so that you can engage with customers at a time when they need it most. We publish in-depth articles on all aspects of ecommerce and customer service with a focus on providing highly useful and actionable information to help customer service managers and ecommerce site owners do their job more effectively.

The Userlike blog is updated frequently and includes pieces on development, how to use the software that we produce, industry news, customer stories and best practices. Bookmark us and find out just how great our blog is – we promise you won’t be disappointed.

#4 Hyken

This is the blog of Shep Hyken , a customer service expert and professional speaker who works with companies to help improve their customer services and build loyal customer relationships. He’s been widely published in some of the world’s top publications such as the Wall Street Journal and USA Today and is also a bestselling author.

The blog focuses on customer experience and service and is updated frequently with a raft of expert advice aimed at boosting relationships with customers and employees.

#5 Customer Experience Report

This blog focuses more on strategy, business and enabling technologies than on the mechanics of customer service and as such, is one that you should bookmark if you want the latest in industry insight and research. The Customer Experience Report blog carries stories on multichannel customer service, often concentrating on implementation on a large scale such as within contact centres.

The blog is aimed at managers and decision makers responsible for all aspects of customer service and with the authority to implement new solutions. It looks at all aspects of multichannel communication such as SMS, email, chat and social media and the industry solutions that can help manage these successfully. It’s a useful blog, especially for managers at senior level, as it contains a lot of high-end, strategic advice and financial insights for budgeting.

#6 Get Satisfaction

This company provides customer engagement solutions and its blog is sub headed ‘How to Survive in Social Business’ which will tell you a lot about what it publishes. The Get Satisfaction blog offers a range of useful, multimedia content such as infographics, pieces on customer relationship management, customer spotlight posts and more. The latter is again useful for learning by the real-life experiences of others and is ideal for carrying out industry research.

It also publishes guides to using its product and how other industry platforms have been used to best effect.

#7 Salesforce

I’m sure you’ve already heard of this company if you’re in customer sales and service. It provides cloud-based sales software which is used extensively across a wide range of industries. The blog focuses on small business, sales, customer relationships, the cloud, IT and marketing, giving its readers a wide range of material to help discover the latest happenings in the industry as well as tips and advice.

Salesforce also often produce industry research, both in cloud and customer services, so is worth bookmarking as this information is usually at the very cutting edge of the industry and technology.

#8 Get Response

This company provides email marketing software and its blog is regularly updated with information on all aspects of online business including social media, CRM, design, email marketing, analytics and much more. The diversity of information carried on the blog makes it worth bookmarking and it’s updated frequently with fresh content so check back often.

#9 The Consumerist

Published by Consumer Reports, this blog is a ‘consumer advocacy’ site which publishes the latest news, trends and insights on all things customer service related. The site publishes a lot on topics surrounding the law, supply, worker’s rights and much more. It’s very useful for providing insight on what’s happening with the big brands, both with success stories and details of lawsuits and for giving advice to consumers themselves. This is useful to the customer service manager as it’s always wise to be aware of what consumers want and how they’re being told to get it.

Another one for the morning coffee, this is a great site to flick through and discover a range of industry happenings as they occur.

#10 Think Customers by 1to1 Media

This blog provides a wealth of content that’s aimed at helping customer service professionals to optimize the customer experience. There’s a huge amount of content to be found here including:

• Infographics
• Webinars
• Videos
• In-depth articles
• White papers

It’s aimed at senior-level executives who are in charge of budgets and strategizing and is backed by customer strategy and marketing leaders Peppers & Rogers Group. The site also runs award schemes for its readers and other industry leaders in the forms of the Gartner and 1to1 Media CRM Excellence awards and the 1to1 Media Customer Champions award.

This is an excellent site for all things ecommerce and customer service not least because it produces a lot of content in various mediums. Bookmark it for performing market research, reading up on the latest news and discovering the newest and most effective resources for CRM.

When you’re starting out in the customer service and relationships management industry, it can be difficult to know where to find the best and most relevant information. We hope that our list has helped you to cut down on time spent trawling through sites looking for the best. All of the above sites, without exception, provide a host of useful content and actionable insight to help you to carry out your job as a customer services manager effectively. They are also pretty diverse, we’ve tried to cover as many different types of site as much as possible in order to give you sites which you can add to your reading list that don’t all say the same thing.

Let us know in the comments section if you know of any other sites out there that you find indispensable. We’d love to hear from you and to get discussion going so that we can all share in the best customer service resources that the web has to offer.

About Userlike

Userlike is live chat software for websites, allowing companies to chat with their (potential) customers directly over the website. Look here for more information.