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Customer Service Training Activities: Stories and Strategies

The best team building activities allow people to have fun, while also creating something that will be useful to the team in the future. In this post, we share some small group activities to share with your customer service teams. First, form small groups of people that provide similar types of…
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Group Problem Solving: Customer Service Challenges

In this post, we offer an idea for a customer service call center exercise with groups of 10-60 people — you need a large space, chart paper and markers.  The goal is to allow people to share their customer service experiences — and fears — in a safe supportive forum.…
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Rewarding Customer Service: Creative Gifts

Everyone likes to feel noticed and appreciated — and for staff working on the front lines with customers, a small reward or gift for the work they do can be particularly meaningful.  I once worked with an employee-centered customer service manager who has a great set of small symbolic gifts…
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How to Calculate Compound Interest in Excel

Whether for personal or business application, it’s a good idea to know how to calculate compound interest for loans and investments. There are two methods you can use, the long form and the FV (future value) function. Download ExcelCompoundInterest.xlsx to see the examples. Long Form In this first example, we’ll…
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Accounting Magic – What You Need to Know About Accounting Excel Formulas

Accounting is more than just debits and credits. It is the calculation and analysis of those debits and credits that generate accounting information an organization can act upon. Let’s take a look at two types of reports a professional in the Accounting Department might be asked to generate. Then, we’ll…
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How to Show and Format Excel Pivot Table Dates

With the most recent versions of Excel, you have gained more and more functionality with Pivot Tables. It is now much easier to work with dates. There are two features that you can put to work right away:  data filtering (2007) and timeline slicer (2013). There’s also a change to…
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Excel Finance Formulas

Given the number-crunching power of Excel, you might surmise that when it comes to calculating money matters, it really shines. And, so it does. In order to understand how the various financial functions, work, there are a few components to understand. Most of the 55 functions that are classified as…
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