This guest post is written by Matt Winn.  Matt is the Social Media Manager at Volusion, a Grasshopper partner .  This post is the first in our four part series on customer service during the holidays.  Be on the lookout next Wednesday for the next post in the series on the Volusion Blog.

When you think about awesome customer service, what comes to mind? Your favorite barista that goes heavy on the espresso shot? That tech support guy who didn’t laugh because your “broken” TV wasn’t plugged in? Regardless of situation, great customer service typically stems from positive personal connections.

So how do you transcend personalized customer service to a faceless ecommerce site?

This is a guest post by Erica Moss, the social media outreach coordinator for the Master of Science in Nursing program at Georgetown University.

In this competitive marketplace, little details can get lost in the big picture. You and your company work hard every day to provide consumers with the best possible product and to position your organization at the front of the pack. One simple way to achieve your goal and to keep your consumers loyal, that is often overlooked, is to make it easy for your customers to contact you.

If you’re a regular reader of our blog, you already know that we love getting to know our customers.  Whether it’s through a guest post, customer spotlights, or simply hopping on a phone call – meeting our customers is one of the best parts about working here.

We recently took to Twitter and Facebook to find out a little bit more about our customers, their business and their favorite Grasshopper features.  As you can see below, our call forwarding and read your voicemail features really take the cake. 

This is a guest post by Dave Lavinsky, President of Growthink.

I’m biased. I admit it. Having written thousands of business plans for entrepreneurs over the past decade, I think every entrepreneur should have a business plan.

But does every entrepreneur need a business plan?

Back in January, we wrote about one of our customers 360clean.  360clean took Grasshopper and turned it into their very own time card system that employees used to log their attendance and time at a client’s office.

A few months ago we found out about yet another one of our customers using Grasshopper in an extremely innovative way.  Meet Carolyn Appleton.  Carolyn is an independent, certified fundraising executive. She has worked in the non-profit sector for over 25 years, and she recently decided to change the way she handled things for her fundraising events.