Biography of Lisa Ford

Lisa Ford delivers what her audiences want—practical ideas combined with plenty of opportunities to laugh and relate to her examples. Her content inspires people to increase their personal, team and organization's results.
Lisa is the author of How To Give Exceptional Customer Service, the #1 selling business videotape series for the last 3 years in the U.S. She has also authored, Developing A Customer Retention Program, co-authored Building A Customer Driven Organization: The Manager's Role video and audio tapes, and Personal Power audio tapes. She is an expert in the field of customer service, customer retention, managing, hiring and training for service excellence. Other popular topics offered by Lisa are on leadership, team issues, everyday excellence and change.

Lisa's experience includes working with many of the nations' best: SmithKline Beecham, Equitable, Viacom, CSX and Georgia Power. She presents over 90-100 speeches and seminars yearly across the United States, United Kingdom and Australia

Over the years, Lisa has customized numerous videos for clients to use in their ongoing training efforts. She is highly rated and a favorite speaker at INC. Magazine's Customer Service Conference, where she speaks annually.

In 2002, Lisa was inducted into the National Speakers Association's elite -
Speaker Hall Of Fame.

Lisa is known for designing content customized to the audience and the issues they face. Audiences love how the presentation is filled with practical strategies, common sense, memorable stories and combined with enthusiasm and humor.

Speech Topics
Why Customer Service Is NOT Enough
This is a presentation on why customer service alone will not lead to long term survival. Everyone has read the books, many businesses have pledged fidelity to its customers but few have implemented actions that match their attitude. And most efforts are faint hearted, gimmicky or off the mark. Today’s organization must focus on customer’s satisfaction and retention with renewed energy. This speech is a combination of content, examples and motivation. The challenge is to get customers to love your products, services and people. Lisa relates statistics, strategies and stories so the audience leaves with skills and the desire to win and keep customers.

Extreme Customer Service
Today's competitive advantage means going to the edge and extreme in superior service delivery. Customers want to be "wowed" by your products, services and people. This session covers six ways to rethink your service. These ideas will help you create ways to exceed your customer's expectations, see your service from the customer's view and set service standards to make service delivery a reality. You will hear how to hire the best employees, then how to train, reward and lead them to execute great service daily. This is offered as a seminar or a speech filled with high energy, humor and techniques.

Exceptional Customer Service
Your employees and their customer service skills may be the only thing that differentiates you from the competition. This seminar is for front-line employees who do the daily demanding job of serving more sophisticated and educated customers. The skills of employees must constantly be updated to meet customer’s expectations. Lisa delivers hands-on techniques that employees can use immediately. The content is combined with examples and humor so employees have a chance to laugh and learn. Here’s what people will learn - how to calm down an angry customer, listen to uncover customer’s needs, recover from a problem the organization created and win the customer back, handle conflicting needs of customers and keep enthusiasm and an attitude of "customers first" all day. This seminar is based on Lisa’s best-selling videotape series, "How to Give Exceptional Customer Service".

Create A Service Focused Team
Face it--front-line customer service is a tough job. One of the biggest challenges is keeping your team inspired and motivated every day. Learn what works when it comes to inspiring exceptional service and creating loyal customers. This session will cover the environment you must create to encourage a strong, involved team, your role in modeling the right behavior and the strategies to maintain the right service attitude. Other hands-on information includes how to train a staff that's emotionally equipped to handle front-line intensity, what to discuss at team meetings to keep the momentum, and managing today's generation of team members.

How to Lead a Team
The competition may be able to copy your products or services, but they cannot copy your team. This session will give you the strategies that will set your team apart from the rest. The ideas covered are: how leaders guide success; what the best organizations do; create trust to gain respect; develop operating agreements to ensure accountability; and get the team to make their own decisions. Lisa will also cover the characteristics of a successful team member and how to reward and recognize each team member to keep the motivation high and the team on track.

Customers as Partners: Build Loyalty and Repeat Business
Customer retention must be a key strategy for your business. Keeping customers means increased profits. This session is about creating partnerships to get customers to love you and to continue to choose you. People will learn why retention is smart business by determining the cost of losing a customer and how to find out why customers leave or love you. Lisa will share strategies on how to build partnerships, create complaint handling systems so you can capture customer complaints, build recover skills, and how to use guarantees to add value. Other ideas include how to empower employees and align the entire organization to focus on retention. This session is packed with tools and examples of what companies are doing to keep their customers.

Everyday Excellence
The best way to survive in today’s fast moving and changing workplace is to be better and smarter every day. You must examine what value you add to the organization and you team. This session covers how individuals must make a difference and increase their results daily. People will learn to understand and love change, take risks and action to make things happen. Lisa shares questions to identify what value you add and create an action plan to increase your value. You will also hear how to create your own luck and success and maintain an attitude of energy and enthusiasm. Today’s world is one where everyone must accept that we are all "self-employed". Lisa will give people a chance to laugh and learn while accepting the new reality.

Change Works
Everyone is aware of the pressures of this fast changing world. Some people are able to adapt a little faster and easier to this new environment. Learning the right strategies and attitudes can help the individual and organization embrace change successfully. This speech will help people understand their fears around change, why resistance exists and how to overcome it. The strategies covered are common sense ones that encourage people to take responsibility to make change work. This presentation will also discuss how to get staff to make needed changes. The goal is for the audience to understand that flexibility and adaptability are key success strategies for the future of their career and the organization.

Personal Communication Power
The common denominator for success is the ability to communicate skillfully. This session will take a look at your current habits and replace ineffective ones with communication that is clear, direct and respectful. When you take control of your communication style you have control over your interactions and results. The skills covered are: learn to change words that sabotage your credibility; establish rapport through words and body language; and turn confrontations into problem-solving situations. Other powerful skills covered are: enhance your listening skills for negotiation and persuasion; communicate respectfully without being abrasive; and build confidence in your communication ability. Lisa will also review how to handle the difficult people in life, including the complainer and know-it-all types.