Bill Kuipers

Give your best customer service reps gift certificates to their favorite catalogs (excluding your own, of course). Then put the reps together in a room with a speaker phone, and have them place orders using the gift certificates. Instruct your reps to listen carefully to how other catalog CSRs respond to their questions and take orders. After the calls are done, ask your reps to critique how the calls were handled by their own favorite catalogs. Is there something you can learn from them and incorporate into your own operation? —Bill Kuipers of Spaide, Kuipers & Co., catalog consultants