Corporate Advocacy or Customer Service

Corporate Advocacy: Rhetoric in the Information Age

Author: Judith D D Hoover

Internal and external advocacy is a complex communication process, with many interwoven purposes, methods, and expected (or unexpected) outcomes. Judith Hoover and her contributors show what the advocacy processes are, using a fascinating set of case histories, and then analyze and evaluate them by means of rhetorical, cultural, critical, and argumentation theories. In doing so they blend organizational communication and classical rhetorical theory, and thus extend the concept of corporate advocacy into new areas of study. An important resource for teachers and students of communication theory and practice, and an unusual insight for corporate communication specialists.

Booknews

Comprises 16 essays analyzing the processes and products of corporate America with an emphasis on the inocuous-seeming yet persuasive language and rhetoric used in the corporate world. Topics include the notion of the corporate hero in the American timber industry; Lee Iacocca as corporate rhetor; advocacy in the interest of consumers; the National Transportation Safety Board and the airline industry; and union advocacy. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Table of Contents:

	Acknowledgments
	Introduction	1
1	Corporate Advocacy: A Powerful Persuasive Strategy	3
2	The Barbecue on the Mount: The Robber Barons' Gospel of Self-Reliance	19
3	Tycoons, Lumberjacks, and the Notion of "Corporate Hero" in the American Timber Industry	32
4	The Evolution of the Shareholder's Voice in American Capitalism	48
5	The Rhetoric of the Money Changers: Corporate America Responds to the Great Depression	61
6	Straight Talk: Lee Iacocca as Corporate Rhetor	73
7	Reconstructing Corporate Culture: Corporate Advocacy in Fred Meyer's Newsletter, The Q-municator	91
8	Expatriate/Repatriate Training: Corporate Advocacy of Interculturalism	105
9	Beyond Argumentative Corporate Advocacy: Natural Advocacy	120
10	Wall Street as Main Street: A Narrative Approach to Organizational Crisis	131
11	Consumerism: Advocacy in the Interest of Consumers	148
12	Investigating Commissions as External Advocates: The National Transportation Safety Board and the Airline Industry	170
13	Union Advocacy: Power, Organizing, and Change	187
14	Poetics and Petrochemicals: Organizational Performances of the Mississippi River	204
15	"Not Worth the Money I Paid for It": Dialogue, Diversity, and the Rhetoric of Organizational Advocacy	220
16	Argumentation and Corporate Advocacy: A Synthesis	237
	Conclusion	253
	Index	257
	About the Editor and Contributors	261

Look this: Trying to Give Ease or Into the Shadows

Customer Service: Skills and Concepts for Success

Author: Robert W Lucas

Customer Service Skills & Concepts for Success is the most comprehensive book on the topic available to educators, corporate trainers and individual readers. The book uses a wide variety of text, margin features, and activities to gain and hold your interest while providing additional insights into the concepts and skills related to customer service. It also has a complete Instructor's edition, video, audiocassette and CD-ROM residual support materials (available to schools and organizations that adopt the book as a text).

The text begins with a macro view of what customer service involves, then focuses on specific skills and related topics, and finally provides insights into future customer service trends and issues.

The text includes the following features:

• 15 chapters divided into five sections, plus Appendices.

The sections focus on different aspects of customer service:
(1) The Profession
(2) Skills for Success
(3) Self-Help Skills,
(4) Enhancing Customer Relationships
(5) Customer Service for the Twenty-first Century.

Along with valuable ideas, guidance, and perspectives you will also encounter real world cases from experts in today's business world and activities to challenge your thinking on the issues presented.

Each chapter starts with behavioral-based Learning Objectives to direct reader focus and to help measure end of chapter success in grasping the concepts presented. Readers will also find a Quote from a famous person to prompt thinking related to the chapter topic and the text focus.

As the reader explores the chapter material they will find many helpful tools to enhance the learning experience and assist in transferring newly acquired knowledge to the workplace.

These include:

An opportunity to do a short Self-Assessment of current skills and knowledge levels before the reader even gets to the first page. This is done through a series of brief questions related to providing customer service that the reader can score individually. If responses are incorrect, the reader can use the areas missed to focus in on specific chapters as you read the book. For those areas where answers are correct, the reader can use chapters that discuss the topics as reinforcement.

Pretests and Post-tests called Quick Check Preview and Quick Check are provided to allow the reader to check topic knowledge going into a chapter, then again at the end of it.

From the Frontline sections placed at the end of many of the chapters provide insights into customer service in a variety of businesses, industries and organizations. Told in the words of experts in the fields, these candid snapshots explore what it is like to provide service in an ever-changing world.

Worksheets are provided throughout the chapters to provide an opportunity to immediately act on what has been learned. In some cases readers will be creating samples based on information provided in the chapter, while in others they will be developing an action plan or list of valuable information for future use on the job.

Work It Out activities throughout the chapters challenge reader knowledge and provide an opportunity for individual and/or small group work on a specific topic or issue.

At the end of each chapter is a Summary and Review that brings together the key concepts and issues.

Face to Face exercises are customer service scenarios in which the reader assumes the role of a specified employee and use information provided to determine how he or she would handle a customer service issue.

Search It Out activities at the end of skill-building chapters give you an opportunity to expand your knowledge of customer service and use your research skills on the Internet. In each chapter, you are asked to explore the Internet to obtain a variety of customer service facts, figures, and related information that you will use in group activities, presentations or discussions. You may also want to visit the Website especially designed by Glencoe/McGraw-Hill for Customer Service Skills & Concepts for Success.

In some of the skill-building chapters, readers will also have an opportunity to participate in Collaborative Learning activities where they and one or more of their peers can actually work through a customer service issue with you to practice your skills and find answers to various questions.

Ponder This questions are included at the end of each chapter to stimulate thinking on how certain situations might be handled using information gained in the chapter. Ponder This can also be used as a discussion vehicle with others to share ideas.

At the end of the book is a handy Appendices Section that contains a Sample Action Plan and a Reader Satisfaction Survey that gives readers a chance to provide the author with feedback on the perceived value of this book. In addition to experiencing an actual customer survey to express what you liked and did not like, readers will also receive a gift for returning the form.

In the rear of the book, are a Bibliography of additional reference materials, a Glossary of Terms, and an Index.