Welcome to the Summer Edition of the Customer Service Carnivale. I hope all is well with you and your business!  Take some time out today to read all the great submissions I received for this edition.  If anything, they will inspire to take your customer service to the next level of success.  Enjoy :)

Heidi Miller shares her Top 5 Contact Center links: the customer experience battleground posted at Spoken Communications.

If you're a hiring manager in need of a new Help Desk person, consider these Help Desk Interview Questions and Answers: IT, Computer and Analyst posted at Job Interview Guide.

Every once in awhile we need to be reminded of the basics of customer service.  Charles Chua C K offers great reminders in All About Living with Life: Positive Customer Relationships – 10 Customer Care Tips posted at All About Living with Life. Charles also wrote another great post called H.E.A.R.T Way to Customer Care.

Everyone is talking about social media these days, and the MetaSpring Blog offers a great example of how the TV show "The Office" is using it to connect with their fans.  You have to read , The Office:  A Study in Social Media Success.

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of customer service carnivale using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

It's time for another round of helpful customer service tips, tools, and resources!

June Tree presents Why Online Banking Customer Satisfaction Matters posted at The Digerati Life.  Customer service and customer satisfaction does affect the bottom line of financial institutions!

Utpal Vaishnav shares Contribute Beyond Your Title With Assumed Responsibility And Take The Right Decision! posted at Utpal Vaishnav.  This is a great example of a leader who takes the road less traveled.

Are you on the hunt for a career in customer service? Nissim Ziv offers some good tips in Customer Service: Resume Objective Examples posted at Job Interview Guide, saying, "On your resume, one of the most important paragraphs is the paragraph of the objectives statement, as this paragraph should present briefly your experience and your main skills."

In this next article, Home Based Business Success, is a video in which Deb Bixler offers up some great customer service tips.

As someone who lives the Yoda philosophy, I appreciate Steven Di Pietro's post, Trying is not good enough - what we can learn from Yoda posted at Service With Purpose.

Ryan Taft presents Tweet Us with ANY Questions posted at Catalyst Marketers, saying, "Twitter is a great tool for customer service. It allows you to instantly update your loyal customers/followers. Things like store closings due to weather, special offers or events, time-sensitive specials...all of these messages can instantly be in the hands of your followers. Your followers also have the ability to instantly connect with you, ask questions, and get feedback. Check out this post to see how you can utilize Twitter for Customer Service." 

And speaking of social media, here are 5 Social Media Sites for Managers & Executives posted at Masters in Healthcare Management.

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of customer service carnivale using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

We live in a very connected world. It's a wonderful time to be in business because it's so easy to stay in touch with people. Back in the day if you wanted to market your business, you had to have a budget and pay for ads in newspapers or TV to get noticed by the masses.

Nowadays you don't have to have the budget of big name companies like Nike or Mercedez to get your business noticed.  Now we have social media...and it's a great thing.  You can be a small business based on a small, remote island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and still connect with customers.

I'm probably preaching to the choir regarding this idea of using social media to connect with customers as many of you regular readers already realize the value of sites such as Twitter and Facebook. However, are you using these sites correctly is the question.  This is something that I've been exploring as I create content for an upcoming seminar.

I've been continuously looking for examples of companies that are using social media to establish deeper relationships with their customers. At this very moment Southwest Airlines is one company that comes to mind. I remember when they were one of the first companies to start blogging and connecting with customers. And it wasn't just a marketing person blogging for the whole company - they recruited employees from different departments to contribute to the blog.

It's one thing to have a Twitter or Facebook account and blast out company news or special deals.  It's another thing to use social networking sites to find out more about your customers like, dislikes, where they hang out, what their dog ate that day...well, maybe we don't necessarily want to know that last tidbit (unless your a dog food company), but you get the idea.  Social networking offers an opportunity to let customers know that what they say does matter...and that you're listening.

I'm very passionate about social media.  As part of my freelance writing and internet marketing services, social media is one area in which I help small businesses.  So, if you're in the San Diego/Southern California area on Thursday, June 24, 2010, and want to learn how you can really connect with customers using social media, then I'd love for you to attend this seminar about using social media to enhance the customer service. This half-day seminar is being facilitated by my business mentor, Maureen Orey, of Workplace Learning and Performance Group.

If you're interested in promoting this seminar, I'm offering 10% commission of ticket sales. Click here to sign up to be an affiliate!