Business Coaching

Telephone Skills For Great Customer Service

Is a telephone call a regular first point of contact between a prospective customer and your company and if so, are the telephone skills of your staff consistently good enough to leave a great first impression? Business strategy and marketing consultant Jeff Nutbeem provides thirteen tips on how to improve telephone skills for great customer service.

Many will no doubt know these, but here are one or two I've picked up and have used when training my own telesales teams over the years, but they are pretty much universal in my opinion.

1. When answering make sure you give a second's pause between clicking the button to answer and speaking to let the caller adjust to the fact that the call has been answered

2. Always start with the greeting to get that out of the way before saying your company name. So "Good Morning XYZ Budgie Cages, how may I help you?"

3. It's how may I help you, not how can I help you.

4. Please don't put "today" on the end. There are some great things which have come out of the USA but this habit isn't one of them. Callers are already aware that it is today and they have called for help now, not the Christmas after next.

5. Have basic factual information stuck in front of your nose. I can't do a sales call without it. You can have a great call and then ruin in by spluttering over your phone number - especially if you maybe have one or two brands you deal with. So company name, web, email and phone number details stuck to the side of the screen usually does it for me.

6. Posture counts because it affects your breathing, and that affects your voice. So sit up straight, or even stand up and walk around if you need to make a point.

7. Have a mirror nearby. Not so good first thing in the morning maybe, but brace yourself, look into it and smile - it will come over in your voice.

8. The old one. Two ears, one mouth, use in proportion. If you happen to accidentally cut over someone speaking, yield first. People love to be listened to.

9. Have a comfortable phone, or a headset so again your body doesn't contort your voice as you contort it trying to balance a small handset in your neck whilst writing down the details of the £5,000 order.

10. If someone is having a little bit of a go at you, whatever you do please don't repeat the word "obviously". If someone is complaining, then the inner workings of your order system/crm/computer/despatch department/cleaning team is not only of no interest to them, it certainly isn't "obvious". What is "obvious" is that they have a complaint and you're not listening!
11.Get the name of the person you are speaking to, and write it down, then use it - just enough.

12. Sum up the conversation at the end and agree next steps if appropriate.

13. End the call in the reverse way of starting it - wait until the other party has disconnected before hitting the "clear" button otherwise it will come over as being abrupt and as if you have put the phone down on them.

Hopefully others will come in with their own views and other things I've missed. Like keeping a clear desk for example, but now I've numbered everything I'm not going back to number 1......

Jeff Nutbeem
Rienne Consulting
Marketing, mentoring and strategy for owners who want to grow their business  

Thanks Jeff.

This is a topic I can't see that I would have written about but it is such an important issue.

Yes it is an overused cliche but "you never get a second chance to make a first impression." As a Guerrilla Marketing coach I will encourage you to be intentional about everything you do that affects the way customers and prospective customers experience your company.

The big problem with telephone communication is that it only involves the ears. You have probably heard these statistics before about how messages and meaning are communicated - 7% by the words used, 38% by tonality and 55% by body language - so although these figures have been disputed, the telephone takes away the most important factor in communication and puts additional emphasis on the tonality.

I have a confession.

I have been told that I can sound a bit grumpy of the telephone (I put it down to my age and the irritation of too many telemarketing calls coming in) but now that I know, I am trying to put a lighter feel in my voice while still sounding professional.

Knowing is a key part of improving and if the telephone is important to your selling success, I recommend that you invest in some recording equipment so that you can listen to a sample of calls and train your team through examples. The problem with the telephone skills is that a lot of it is common sense and good manners so the temptation is to think "I know it and I do it" but the recordings don't lie.

To Your Success

Your Profit Coach

Paul Simister
Business coaching for customer focused entrepreneurs

Ken Blanchard Raving Fans - 4 Stars

The critical message of this book is that satisfied customers are not good enough...you need Raving Fans. The book "Raving Fans: A Revolutionary Approach to Customer Service" by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles carries on the One Minute Manager traditional of books.

As customer service is about customer satisfaction and customer satisfaction is about meeting and beating expectations, a sensible place to start would be with my expectations of the "Raving Fans" book.

"The One Minute Manager" is one of my very few five star books. I love it but it has set the standards I judge all Ken Blanchard books by:

1. Powerful ideas which are simple to understand and easy to put into action.
    
2. Told in a compelling story which you want to finish.
    
3. The message is reinforced throughout by summary pages which make it very easy to refresh yourself on the key messages at a later date.

The Story? What Story?

Oh dear.

The gist is that the Area Manager (never named) is in a new job and he is told to forget his plans for Total Quality and instead to embrace customer service if he wants to last longer than the eight months average time in the role from his last three predecessors.

Then Charlie arrives, his golf addicted fairy Godmother. Why he had to be male and determined to give many of his nuggets of advice on the golf course is beyond me. Every time it comes up, it just irritates me.

You could say that I'm not satisfied and because the story doesn't grip me, it took several goes to find the persistence to read it through to the end. I've even been putting off the review.

Basically you are taken around with Charlie and the Area Manager and you read the descriptions of great customer service in action as they visit different types of business.

I would have liked to have heard more about the issues the Area Manager had in implementing the ideas. That was was of the strong points of Eli Goldratt's "The Goal".

The Summaries? What Summaries?

Aaarghh.

One of the things I liked best about the One Minute Manager books was the brief summary pages that were interspersed throughout to hammer home the key messages. Not subtle I know but who needs subtle.

This time they are missing so not only does it deprive the book of the reinforcements (which to be fair are included in the general text) but it also makes it much more difficult to find the section you want to re-read to just refresh your memory.

Sorry, far below expectations and I can't understand why they missed out this essential element of the formula.

The Message? What A Message!

Until this moment, the book was heading for a mauling but you know from the 4 star rating which is a "buy recommendation" that there must have been a redeeming quality about the book and it's here in the message or should I say messages.

No one can deny that a) customer service is important or b) much of it experience is adequate or poor.

This offers an opportunity for a customer focused entrepreneur (custompreneur) to get it right and reap the rewards. The bar is not set high in many industries.

Customers Leave Because They Don't Feel Appreciated

I have seen the following statistics quoted in a number of books but research into the reasons customers stop buying is:

• 1% due to death
   
• 3% due to a house move
   
• 5% start buying from a friend
   
• 9% buy from a competitor
   
• 14% find a better product or price
   
• 68% stop because of perceived indifference of the company/employees to their wants and needs.

That is two thirds of customers who move think that a business does not care about them or their business.

If you think about it gets worse.

How often have you put up with bad service because you don't believe that it would be any better anywhere else and could even be worse? Customer inertia is a huge factor in some industries and of course, they play on it because they know you can't be bothered to change.

Rule 1 - Decide What You Want

Your starting point for improving customer service is to decide the service you want to deliver in a full and complete way.

What special factors do you want to build into your business which will make it unique to your customers?

I know that this sounds a bit odd. To start with your vision but it will make sense.

Just write down the experience you want your customers to have from the time of first contact, all the way through to payment and then receiving the subsequent order.

I have found it useful in the past to identify the Moments of Truth and to give examples of what different levels of service would look like. It helps to explain to staff, how you expect customers to be treated.

Rule 2 - Discover What The Customer Wants

This may seem like the obvious starting point but if you ask customers what they want, you need a reference point.

If your customer's vision matches your own, you know you are on the right track. If they have expectations which go beyond yours, then you know that you need to raise your game and if they want something completely different, it will give you plenty of reason to stop, think and find out why.

It may be that your customers expectations are so different from your own ideas that it is clear. You are not right for each other and you need to have the confidence to send their business elsewhere. Your aim is to delight your natural customers and not to try and fail to please everyone all the time.

Customer polarisation is good.

Think rock music.

It is better to be loved by some but hated by many more than to have everyone indifferent.

No one buys "OK."

The other reason for working on your vision for the customer first is that customers will only focus on a few points. It may be free and easy parking, it may be a wide selection of good, it may be ...101 other different factors.

The customer who takes part in your survey or focus group won't spend the mental energy to think through your whole business from start to end and design a superb service in their own mind. They will just quickly scan their memories for what they liked or disliked.

You see, to discover what they really want, "you have to listen to the music as well as the lyrics".

Great imagery there and a very effective reminder that the words used only tell part of the story.

It is so easy to say one thing but to mean another.

How often have you been in a restaurant where the food has been poor quality or cold but when the waiter comes up to ask if everything is OK, you just automatically respond with "Fine thanks" while muttering under your breath that you'll never go back there again.

Rule 3 - Deliver The Vision Plus 1%

You have to go just that little bit further partly because the emphasis has to be on consistent and reliable delivery and partly because you can only achieve that aim by taking small steps.

Try to make a big improvement in one go and it is likely that you will fail, but improve by 1% per week and you are on your way to 50% improvement in the year.

What's Missing

The book doesn't have all the answers.

I would have liked the story to have included the issues of the Area Manager taking the ideas back to his business, involving his staff and showing the main implementation issues, problems and solutions.

The book doesn't address the need for the business to make money.

I know that it is supposed to be bad form to talk about "trade-offs" but somewhere there is a balancing act between customer service (and especially when it involve little extras and freebies), costs and selling prices. The book does not address this issue at all.

Customer service is good because customer service is good.

I would have been happier to see an economic case built on higher retention rates and higher transaction values, higher referral rates, lower advertising and sales promotion. Basically anything that didn't make me feel that this was another "motherhood and apple pie" appeal.

Summary

You can see that I do have some reservations and believe that the book could (and should) have been better.

However if you are working to improve customer service in your business, "Raving Fans" by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles is worth reading and passing around to influential team members.

It provides a useful framework to talk about customer service issues based around the three rules above and has some useful examples.

You can buy the book from Amazon UK or USA.

To Your Success

Your Profit Coach

Paul Simister

Business coaching for customer focused entrepreneurs

Become A Custompreneur™ or Customer Focused Entrepreneur™

What is a custompreneur™?

A custompreneur™ is a customer focused entrepreneur™.

It is an entrepreneur or small business owner who is totally dedicated to improving the performance and lives of their customers in a true win-win, partners for profit approach and achieves great financial success and personal satisfaction.

The Maven Of Custompreneurs™

Custompreneur is also my invented word as I try to move to become the maven of the custompreneur movement.

Hopefully the shortening of "customer focused entrepreneur™" will catch on.

Inventing your own words or being closely associated with existing words or phrases is one of the tips in The Maven Matrix Manifesto released earlier this week by Jay Abraham and Rich Schefren.

As at the 23 February 2008, there are no hits for custompreneur™ in Google or Yahoo.

The Client or Customer Wins

Because the business is focused on, in fact I would go further, purposely designed for delivering great customer service and delight the clients and customers receive great benefits which obviously vary depending on the business.

The clients and customers have great faith in the business and are keen and eager for their friends and associates to join in and share their good fortune. They know that to go anywhere else means that they friends risk missing out on the best, most dedicated and caring service.

Clients of custompreneurs™ become strong advocates.

The Business and Custompreneur™ Wins

Word of mouth recommendation is overwhelming and spreads like wildfire but the business guards its reputation fastidiously and grows at the pace it knows can be handled successfully.

Standards are high but the custompreneur's team delights in being members of the winning team and job satisfaction is high. Everyone is charged with purpose and enthused with a commitment to deliver great customer service.

Clients and customers are loyal and buy regularly, recommend the business to other people and are eager for the custompreneur to expand services into other areas.

Sources of Ideas For Custompreneurs™

1. The shocking service that surrounds us each and every day. You can tell your own story on my Bad Customer Service page on Squidoo and the delight when finding something that is good.
    
2. The work of customer service gurus like Ron Kaufman. Ron has been featured several times in this blog and you can find out more of his ideas about Improving Customer Service.
    
3. The work on customer value from Bradley Gale onwards.
    
4. Jay Abraham's pioneering work on the strategy of preeminence, risk reversal and improving business profitability by persuading customers to increase the value of what they buy and the frequency they buy.
    
5. The total quality and business process management concepts that will help any business to systematise, reduce the level and frequency of variations in quality and service and then continuously improve.
    
6. The rapidly increasing power of Web 2.0 social media technologies to reward the good and punish the bad.

This one word - custompreneur™ - embodies all my ideas I have previously explained through the Eight Pillars of Business Prosperity (This link takes you to my Business Profitability page on Squidoo which is my fullest explanation of the Eight Pillars.)

Join The Custompreneur Revolution™

I have a special email sign up for people who want to join the Custompreneur Revolution™.

Name:

Email:

So what do you think? Will the idea of customer focused entrepreneurs or custompreneurs™ catch on? It would be great to hear your views.

To Your Success

Your Profit Coach

Paul Simister

Business coaching for customer focused entrepreneurs

Ken Blanchard - The One Minute Apology 4.5 Stars

The full title of this book by Ken Blanchard and Margaret McBride is "The One Minute Apology: A Powerful Way To Make Things Better."

I had forgotten how good this book is until I re-read it yesterday after failing to find another book I own in the One Minute Manager Series.

This book, like the others, is told in the form of a story and makes some powerful points in what i find an entertaining way.

I know that some people find these story based business books simplistic and twee but I find the ones I like to be a welcome relief from the deadly dull prose of some of the more serious books I read.

According to Brian Tracy, "I was wrong" are three of the most important words that a manager can learn to say and "The One Minute Apology" helps you admit that you were wrong and to apologise for what has happened.

Admitting you are wrong means that you have to accept responsibility for what has happened which can be difficult.

Once you have admitted your mistakes and apologised for the impact they made on someone else, you can move forward to putting things right.

This is an essential part of life and just as important in our private lives as it is in business when our mistakes affect customers, staff, suppliers and other stakeholders.

It has been shown that admitting mistakes to customers, apologising and putting problems right has a dramatic effect and can turn a critic into a major advocate - see Service Recovery: Making Things Right After They Have Gone Wrong.

The Story Of The One Minute Apology

Profits are down and the President of the company has made some mistakes. The company is in crisis and in a showdown meeting with his board of directors, the President refuses to accept responsibility.

A new meeting is scheduled for three days time after the weekend and the President is asked to "consider his position."

Fortunately the president has an ally in the meeting. A young assistant who is shocked at what happened but knows the One Minute Manager, an old family friend and arranges to visit for the weekend.

While the assistant is away, the One Minute Manager and his family teach him the secrets of the One Minute Apology.

There are a couple of stories within the story that I will share below and through one of them, the assistant manages to get his boss thinking in terms of accepting responsibility and apologising.

The President and the assistant meet up at 7:00 am the day before the second showdown with the board of directors and the President knows that he should apologise but doesn't know how.

But the assistant now knows the secrets of the One Minute Manager and coaches the President. The President then calls his team together, apologises to them and they put together a recover plan.

The next day, the President faces the board of directors the knives are being sharpened.

But because the President now accepts responsibility, apologises, identifies the actions needed to correct the situation and makes a personal sacrifice, like all good fairy stories, they all live happily ever after.

Alfred Noble & the Nobel Peace Prize

Alfred Noble had an unusual experience.

He got to read his own obituary in a newspaper.

His brother had died and a newspaper made a mistake and mixed up the achievements of the two brothers.

Alfred read that he was destined to be remembered as the man who invented dynamite!.

Not the most positive image - to be always be associated with destruction - and Alfred decided to do something about it. He redesigned his life so that he would be remembered as the man who promoted world peace.

Quite a transformation but I love the story because it shows the power of building your live purposefully. Michael Gerber recommends that you write your own eulogy or obituary as part of his thinking on defining your Primary Aim.

Abraham Lincoln

The One Minute Apology also tells about Lincoln apologising to an army officer after curtly requesting permission to attend his wife's funeral.

You may already know it because I think the story is also told in Dale Carnegie's "How To Win Friends And Influence People". It was the power of this story that started the President thinking along the right lines.

The Essence of the One Minute Apology

What I like about the One Minute books is that they can be read at different levels.

The stories are short and can be read in one to two hours and you can be putting the ideas into action after a short period of reflection.

But the books are great to skim because of the summary pages with the main ideas which is ideal for reinforcement and easy reference when you just want to be reminded of the key concepts.

Summary

I recommend "The One Minute Apology" very highly and give it 4.5 stars.

It seems to me that the world would be a better place if everyone read the One Minute Apology, accepted responsibility for their mistakes, apologised and then focused on making amends.

You can buy it through Amazon UK or USA although the reviews are mixed - some love it, some hate it which I find interesting.

Perhaps some people don't like the idea that to apologise sincerely you have to accept responsibility, others find the story line irritating and some find the ideas over-simple.

But I like simple ideas - they are easy to understand and easy to apply. I first read this book about five or six years ago and I have tried to put the principles I learnt into action ever since.

To Your Success

Your Profit Coach

Paul Simister

Business coaching for customer focused entrepreneurs

Fish! - Stephen C. Lundin et al

The full title of the book is "Fish! A Remarkable Way to Boost Morale and Improve Results" by Stephen Lundin, Harry Paul & John Christensen and I have come close to buying the book a few times when I have been browsing in book stores.

Thanks to Business Summaries I now have the chance to comment on the content of the book and decide whether I want to invest my time in reading the full version of the book.

This is another "management light" book (similar to the One Minute Manager series) that sets a powerful message in the middle of a story. This is a very effective way of transferring the key lessons.

Mary Jane Ramirez is a manager at First Guarantee Financial, and as a promotion takes on the task of managing the notorious third floor. It's so bad that it's known as the "Toxic Dump" thanks to the dreadful attitude and couldn't care less approach of the staff.

Lessons from unlikely sources

I encourage everyone to look and learn. What do you see that's good and bad? What lessons can you take away and put into practise?

That's exactly what Mary Jane did. She was impressed with the energy and enthusiasm of the Pike Place Fish Market and made friends with one of the traders to learn why Pike Place was so different from the Toxic Dump.

Note that while the environments are very different, this isn't a comparison between an awful job and a great job. I mean, would you want to work in a fish market?

Key lesson 1 - you can choose the attitude you take to work

While there may not be any control over what you do and where, you always have the choice of how you do it. With a smile or a grimace. Life is too short and we spend to much time at work to take a bad attitude in as generally, you get back what you put in.

When I was buying a make-to-order sandwich yesterday, the shop assistant didn't meet make eye contact or smile once. In fact she didn't even look at my face so she didn't get a warm feeling from my smile and I was disappointed with her cold attitude.

Key lesson 2 - play and have fun.

You can be serious about doing great work without taking yourself seriously

Look for ways to have fun. Happy people treat others better, time passes quickly and work becomes something to enjoy rather than to dread.

Key lesson 3 - make their day

Create great memories for your customers by finding ways to include them in the fun.

Develop a service personality committed to customer satisfaction.

By serving others well and caring about their problems, it will take our attention from our own difficulties.

Key lesson 4 - be there

Focus on the person in front of you, listen and look for opportunities to help. Put your customer first.

Conclusion

I enjoyed reading the summary very much and I rate it a 4 Stars Business Brief.

I believe that there is plenty of benefit from reading the book and plan to read it.

The next time I am looking for a light management book to read in a railway station or airport, there is a very good chance that it will be Fish!

You can buy Fish! from Amazon UK or USA

I recommend that you take a look at Business Summaries because this review shows the benefit of being able to get the essence of a book from reading a few pages of summary in 20 minutes.

To Your Success

Your Profit Coach

Paul Simister

Business coaching for customer focused entrepreneurs

How To Build A Superior Service Culture

The Better Business Focus newsletter in December 2007 brings you another great article from Ron Kaufman, best selling author of "UP Your Service!".

This time it's Ron's "Top Ten Tips To Build A Superior Service Culture" so I'll just give you a flavour of the tips.

1. Create a unique service philosophy
   Make sure that you define exactly what great service means to your customers and clients.
    
2. Constantly explain and promote your service philosophy.
   The more often you promise, the more commitment your team to providing great service and the more it distinguishes your business from your competitors.
      
3. Hire people who will commit to your service philosophy.
   I love it when I find people who care about their jobs and about the service and results that the customer receives.
      
4. Orient your new team members to your service philosophy.
   People need to start well if you are going to maintain your customers trust and the faith of your other employees.
      
5. Continuously train and re-train your team
   You know it but do you do it?
      
6. Recognise and reward great service
   If your staff don't think you notice when they go above and beyond the call of duty, then they will think that you don't care. In fact I have just remembered someone had a recognition system called the ABCD awards for above and beyond the call of duty! Shame I can't remember who.
      
7. Bring the voice of your customer into the business.
   Make sure that everyone understands what it is that customers want and don't want. Let people hear the nice things that customers say and the complaints (although you should disguise any guilty parties in public).
      
8. Create and sustain a service improvement program
   You may think that suggestion schemes won't work but they will if you are committed to making it work.
      
9. Walk the talk
   There is no finer example to set than the boss who is obsessed with delivering superb customer service but at the same time, there is nothing more damaging than a leader who sets a bad example. Don't let short term profit motives interfere with the long term development of the customer relationship.
      
10. Create rituals to reinforce your your service culture.
    What regular events can you hold to remind your staff and celebrate success?

So there we are. Another great article from Ron Kaufman following on from two earlier postings:

Service Recovery: Making Things Right After They Have Gone Wrong

Teamwork for Customer Service

In fact I am so impressed that I am going to buy his book. It's got some great reviews from Amazon UK and USA.

For more information about Ron Kaufman and his great tips on customer service I recommend that you take look at www.RonKaufman.com although you can be sure that I will be featuring more of Ron's advice on this critical area.

To Your Success

Your Profit Coach

Paul Simister

Business coaching for customer focused entrepreneurs

Teamwork For Customer Service

Ron Kaufman, author of the best selling "UP Your Service!" books has written another excellent little article in the November 2007 issue of Better Business Focus available as part of my newsletter subscription.

In "Are You Pulling In The Same Direction?", Ron Kaufman shows that in too many businesses, the sales prevention and customer bad-will departments are as active as the sales and marketing efforts hoping to persuade more people to buy more.

This creates a one step forward, one step backwards dance that drives customers crazy and ultimately away from the business.

Ron tells a story of one of his students, a stolen computer and a computer company more focused on the profit of a single transaction than the much bigger profit potential from a long term relationship.

The article provides a simple lesson.

Every customer contact represents a moment of truth that can meet or beat customer expectations but can also lead to frustration, irritation and anger for the customer.

Have you stood in your customers' shoes?

Have you tried being a customer of your business?

Have you analysed the moments of truth and set standards for what is required?

I haven't read any of Ron's books yet but I am impressed with these short articles so I'll keep my eyes open.

For more information about Ron Kaufman and his great tips on customer service I recommend that you take look at www.RonKaufman.com although you can be sure that I will be featuring more of Ron's advice on this critical area.

To Your Success

Your Profit Coach

Paul Simister

Business coaching for customer focused entrepreneurs

Service Recovery: Making Things Right After They Have Gone Wrong

No matter how hard you try, sometimes things just go wrong.

You can have great systems, fantastic employees who are really well trained but sometimes the winds blows in the wrong direction and bad things happen.

But how you recover is essential to maintaining a great reputation for service.

In fact perversely, you can forge a much stronger bond with your customer after something has gone wrong than if everything went well.

It is in these moments that the value of your guarantee or your strong customer focus comes shining through and it can come through so strongly that it leaves an enduring positive impression with your customer.

In an article in the September 2007 issue of Better Business Focus, Ron Kaufman tells you "How To Lose A Customer For Life".

This is your chance to learn from someone else's mistakes - something so much nicer and more effective than not learning from your own mistakes.

Ron is a leading educator in upgrading customer service and the author of the best-selling book "Up Your Service!"

In his article he tells the story of a Chinese restaurant where something went wrong. Unfortunately they reacted in the wrong way and lost the customer (and their family, friends and anyone else they told the story to).

To read his article in Better Business Focus please subscribe to my free Partners For Profit newsletter.

For more information about Ron Kaufman and his great tips on customer service I recommend that you take look at www.RonKaufman.com although you can be sure that I will be featuring more of Ron's advice on this critical area.

To Your Success

Your Profit Coach

Paul Simister

Business coaching for customer focused entrepreneurs