Your "loyal" customers may not be so loyal—or so forgiving—as you think. The average U.S. consumer will stand for no more than two negative customer service experiences before taking his or her business elsewhere, according to recent studies. And more than 75 percent of consumers seeking customer assistance by phone will hang up if stuck on hold for longer than five minutes.

Though you might assume that in this environment, no self-respecting warehousing and logistics company would try to operate without a formal customer-service strategy in place, you'd be mistaken. A new report, "WERCwatch: Customer Service: The Key to Real Competitive Advantage," from the Warehousing Education and Research Council (WERC) indicates that many companies have not made service a part of their core strategies. So to give those laggards a jump start, the report presents examples of industry best practices and illustrates its points with case studies from the warehousing industry.

To purchase a copy of the report, which costs $10 for WERC members and $20 for non-members, contact the WERC office at (630) 990-0001 or visit www.werc.org.