With all options Internet brings, competition is literally a click away. If, as has been reported, 65% of your business comes from current customers, then in order to stay in business, you best focus on winning satisfaction and loyalty of those customers.

With continued attention on customer service, customer retention, and lifetime value of customer, it is no surprise that contact center operations continue to increase in importance as primary hub of a customer’s experience. The contact center is still most common way that customers get in touch with businesses. In fact, Gartner reports 92% of all contact is through center.

While much attention has been focused on technology and benefits of providing multiple channels for customer contact, little consideration has been directed to handling human part of equation—training Customer and Technical Service Representatives to field more than just telephone communications. With explosion of e-commerce, need to reinforce keeping human element in equation is paramount. Certainly now more than ever before in history, customer-centric service is a necessity.

Twenty five years from now customers will still be human beings, still be driven by desires and needs. Virtual environments do not create virtual customers. Except for simplest transactions, some customers still need to be connected with and nurtured by a live person. Amazon.com has learned this. They employ hundreds of traditional customer service representatives using phone lines to help customers with questions that cannot be dealt with online. With ability to handle simple transactions available by using sophisticated, self-service technology, customer calls, faxes, and/or e-mails are more complex, more complicated, sometime even escalated, heightening stress levels.

At same time, research has identified Customer Service and Technical Representative as one of ten most stressful jobs in America today, with job stress costing employers an estimated $300+ billion yearly in absenteeism, lowered productivity, rising health insurance costs and other medical expenses (up from $200 + billion just ten years ago.) A recent NIOSH study reported that 50% of employees view job stress as a major problem in their lives--double from a decade ago.

Lines of demarcation have blurred and change is rampant in today’s center. Why? Because of our cell phones, voice mail, faxback, PDA’s, and e-mail. We are now more available and accessible than ever before. The lines are no longer clear as to where our jobs or projects begin and end—they can follow us home again and again.

In today’s competitive marketplace there is little difference between products and services. What makes difference--what distinguishes one company from another--is its relationship with customer. Who has awesome responsibility for representing themselves, their companies, perhaps their industry in general? Front line representatives. The ability of a company to provide human-to-human connections--back and forth live communication--continues to be critically important. The fact is voice is most natural and powerful human interface, real time or otherwise. That isn’t going to change any time soon. To customer, people are inseparable from services they provide. Actually, person on other end of phone is company. It is no wonder, then, that companies with superior people management, invest heavily in training and retraining, reinforcing human element.

Yet customers still leave. The latest statistics on why are:

•45% because of poor service •20% because of lack of attention.

This means that 65% of your customers leave because of something your front line is, or is not, doing.

•15% for a better product •15% for a cheaper product and •5% other

This is good and bad news. It’s bad news because that’s a high percentage. On other hand, it’s good news because there is something you can do about it—it resides on human side.

Drop shipping, for those who are unfamiliar with it, is a system whereby you promote products of a particular manufacturer, take orders directly, and manufacturer/source handles all inventory and fulfillment functions for you.

In a nutshell, here is drop-ship system:

• You generate and accept order.

• You take your profits out of sale price.

• You forward order and wholesale cost to drop shipper.

• The source factory ships directly to your customer.

The benefits of this arrangement are probably obvious:

• No inventory cost to you.

• Substantially higher profits to you over what most regular affiliate programs allow.

• The ability to quickly set-up inexpensive, highly targeted, niche or mini-sites to test and promote diverse products.

This process has been around for years and has been responsible for many highly successful mail order dealer relationships in past. Many of top catalogers and other direct response marketers, have been using this system to increase profits for decades. If you have ever ordered a high priced item from a mail order catalog and been told that product was being shipped from factory... then you have experienced drop shipping first hand.

Drop shipping is, I believe, a virgin un-tapped storehouse of profits for todays internet marketer.

On-line directories exist which reveal essential contact information for drop shippers of over 2,000,000 products and 4,000 brands. Most legitimate drop ship sources will require that you have a state tax reseller number in order to approve you to sell their products and give you wholesale pricing you are looking for.

Beware of any drop ship source which requires you to pay a fee in order to become a drop-ship dealer... or requires a membership. These are generally organizations which make their money selling "drop ship licenses"... and are, for most part, scams. Legitimate drop shippers and factory sources never charge you any fees other than actual shipping costs of products you sell.

Another caveat... always make sure that you have a written agreement with source factory that you own customer! The factory or drop ship source should agree in writing not to solicit your customers in any form. This is very important to you. Your customer list is one of your most important assets. If factory you are dealing with balks at this request... use another source who will agree.

Almost every conceivable type of product is available from a drop shipper willing to ship products in single units under your companies name. Pick your interest area... electronics, consumer products, agricultural & industrial products, office equipment & supplies, hobby gear, recreational / sporting goods, clothing, furniture, etc. The list of available products from drop shippers is almost endless.