Realistically customer service is done by a team rather than one individual and the members of that team will vary in ability. Tactics are therefore needed to get the company tone of voice right regardless of who is on the phones and tickets on a given day.

Customer service need support too. If a customer service team is well supported and not considered lowest of the low within the company then they will naturally project a more confident and enthusiastic tone than if they are not supported, not considered worthy and seemingly at a never ending queue of work that can never be done to their own or the customers satisfaction.

How to achieve this? A high level of automation helps. A contact us page that has relevant boxes is a good start, if you know that they will need something sent to them in the post or proof of purchase details then you can ask for that up front and have an automated response that puts their ticket on hold emailing them for missing details. These emails can be in a template where the tone of voice is well considered and polite, not the text speak of a busy customer service agent.

Reducing time on the phone is also important, if you need to send a code to someone, e.g. a coupon code for goodwill reasons, then you can make that code a simple mix of letters and numbers that take less time to dictate over the phone, unambiguous (no '1's, 'l's) and you can also embed a digit that the customer service can easily check for validity. 'A23S45J' will be easier to dictate than 'XJWR-TYWE-RE3T-TTT3', taking a lot less than half the time. Furthermore, the 'A' in 'A23S45J' could be the code for January and 'S' + 'J' could be the initials of that particular customer service agent, so, in aggregate you know who in the team is giving out the freebees (or converting angry customers into happy ones).

Supporting the customer service team also requires having good answers, so if you have a duff product and lots of people complaining about it then you don't want to have the customer service team taking the customer side and 'going rogue' against the company in off-piste ways. Or, on the flipside, having the customer service team getting angry with the customers in this unsolvable situation.

There also needs to be useful metrics, 'quality circles' to make sure that new areas of complaint can be solved in a structured manner and also some mechanism for feedback from the support desk to other company departments, e.g. design. It is no good if the guys in design take six months to learn of a new product flaw.

The more you can get the customer service team to feel that they are winning and are valued then the more confident and enthusiastic they will be. This tone will naturally be projected to customers and, if you get that right then there is no reason for a formerly angry customer to not right a rave review, to become a fan of the product and for their online review to be valued to the customer service team as well as to other potential customers.

As for using the customer's name, if a customer service agent is on top of their game, i.e. enthusiastic and confident rather than overwhelmed, then they will be far more inclined to develop a personal 'bond' with the customer to solve their problem and use their name as a matter of course. It should be a pleasure to pick up the phone in less than three rings for a customer service agent rather than phones ringing off the hook with every call prefaced by fear and dread.

If problems can't be solved then no amount of couched faux language and name dropping will help the situation.