From humble beginnings: In 1982, Nancy Friedman phoned her insurance agent and told him, "Cancel all my policies!" She was upset after experiencing repeated episodes of poor service from his staff. For most of us, the story might have ended there. Instead, Nancy's agent pleaded with her to visit his office and conduct a training course to teach his staff to handle customers in the same great manner that Nancy had developed over the years for Weatherline, Inc., an advertising company she and her husband Dick founded. Combining these service techniques with delivery skills she acquired from her professional theatre background, Nancy's presentation proved to be extremely entertaining and effective.

She was soon invited to train over 300 employees at a newspaper in Iowa. It was after one of these sessions that the Editor of the newspaper approached Nancy and congratulated her by saying, "You've sure got all the cures...you're the Doctor...you're the Telephone Doctor!" After a series of Fortune 500 corporations repeatedly hired her to conduct her workshop, she and Dick formed a company to market these skills. Before long, Nancy had a full time career delivering workshops to corporations and associations across the country.

The following year they were contacted by a producer who was familiar with Nancy's customer service workshops. He was interested in making a customer service training movie based on her teachings. They agreed and shot a 17 minute movie in a single day. After some initially disappointing sales, Dick and Nancy purchased the rights to the original movie and went on to sell over 10,000 prints of it.

The company has released over 60 video and computer-based training programs on all aspects of communication with niches as diverse as E-mail Etiquette, Motivation, Sales Training, Debt Collection and New Employee Orientation.

In just over 20 years, Telephone DoctorŽ Customer Service Training has become a familiar and valued brand name within corporate training and development departments. Over half of the company's current business is the result of repeat or referrals. Core offerings continue to be The Complete Video Training Library and on-site instructor-led workshops. Telephone DoctorŽ also offers keynote presentations, a comprehensive e-Learning platform as well as a growing series of business animations.

The next time you're frustrated by poor service you receive, remember that there are dozens of staff members and thousands of their customers who are glad that a poorly handled phone call back in 1982 resulted in this very unique company!