CAGE Code: 7XUVO   Duns # 607290574       
Phone: 615.965.2465  PO Box 344 Mt. Juliet, TN 37121

Customer Feedback-Tooty Training

Tooty Training is not fluff.  We don’t offer trendy catch phrases or techniques to improve your customer service or sales teams.   We have evaluated over 250,000 conversations.  Evaluations were not completed by A.I., but highly trained individuals who have the skills to assess conversation, sales process, marketing strategy, problem solving and how customers are treated. 

We are a key to successful culture change.  We understand how to effectively train those who are working from home or a workforce that has been disrupted by Covid.  We love helping individual people grow in their

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Thankfulness

Lori Miller, President, Tooty Inc.

When I reflect on each person that makes up our team here at Tooty, I am thankful on a deep level.  I know how 2020 has affected them, what they have had to overcome, and the super-human effort required to produce an excellent product every day. 

Every organization has a similar testimony of their team’s resilience,  persistence and unity.  I reached out to some of our Tooty customers who were more than willing to share why they are so thankful for their teams. Be encouraged.

Pamela, New Mexico

I am thankful how the team has come together and even though we are physically distanced we are

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Help for stressed and stretched managers and employees

Lori Miller, President of Tooty Inc., stated, “Customer service teams are under unbelievable pressure as Covid-19 has disrupted the workplace and personal lives. But customer service is where the heart of any organization resides, and they are wired to love on people no matter what is happening. When your employees know you care, they can show your customers that they care.”
Lynne Franklin, one of the Tooty Training ® team experts (neuroscience and business communication) provided Tooty employees and their families encouragement by sharing the following message of hope.
Lockdown

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Inclement Weather Challenges Logistics Customer Service Standards

The winter of 2019 has been a nightmare from coast to coast. 25 degrees below zero in Chicago and blizzards on the west coast were only a couple of Mother Nature’s cruel tricks. Customers aren’t always understanding when it comes to delays in deliveries or services such as picking up their garbage. Often-times the only tool customer service representatives have at their disposal is to wait for updates on routes from the operations team and to hesitantly suggest service will be attempted “hopefully tomorrow”. We should be better prepared. We can surprise our customers with our great attitudes and realistic solutions. Here are some suggestions that will help your team push through the rest of this winter and prepare for spring weather concerns.
Scripting:
Deciding on the right words to use is an important public relations step. We need to effectively educate our customers on how they can prepare, what they need to do and what they can expect during inclement weather. Your website, automated phone messaging and the information communicated by customer service representatives all needs to be in alignment.
1. Preparation- Remember to think like a customer and don’t assume an instruction such as “clear the area of snow and ice” will mean the same thing to them as it does to a driver. These great tips should be posted on your website with a date and be recorded as part of your initial automated message and on hold message for customers.
2. Customer to Do List- Restate your service recovery process and include a reminder to check your website for updates. With product deliveries or something such as garbage service, if your process is that you will attempt service the next business day or following week, and that you would like the customer to leave carts out or make sure bins are accessible, then include that.
3. Safety- Highlight your commitment to the safety of your drivers and your customers.

Tips for Customer Service
1. Make sure your entire team is updated on the status of routes (hour by hour) and when it is anticipated that service will resume. Problems arise when we use a robotic response such
as, “If we don’t service you today, we will attempt service the following day.” Are you providing a Friday customer their service on Saturday? Will a truck be in that town the
following day?
2. Don’t assume all reports of a missed service or delivery are weather related. Complete your assessment.
3. When a storm is anticipated, the customer service and operations teams need to meet and talk through a plan.
4. To tactfully exit a conversation with an angry customer use something such as: I understand your frustration and appreciate that you took the time to call us today. Our first concern
is that you, your neighbors and our drivers are safe. We will be checking road conditions throughout the day.

Remember, once winter has passed, we will enter spring and summer where rains, flooding, hurricanes and tornados will create issues. As Benjamin Franklin once said, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”. Take the time to review what has not worked for your team and your customers in the past and craft a plan for inclement weather that will allow great customer service to out weigh anything Mother Nature sends your way.

If you need help with scripting or specific difficult customer situations, please reach out to me at: lori_miller@tootyinc.com or 708-478-5772. A recent attendee to our Difficult Customer Training session shared: I had an upset (not furious, but frustrated) customer call this morning, I was able to use the tools I learned yesterday and by the end of our call she couldn’t stop thanking me. Thanks again for hosting the call, it was very informative!

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Customer Service for Municipal Waste Services

Municipal agreements can have a variety of different requirements that speak directly to the customer service a hauler will provide. Often-times the customer interaction points are not clearly defined. 1. The primary focus is on what a driver will be doing which is only one customer interaction point.
2. Your customer service department may also work directly with citizens to set up service or handle questions. That is a second customer interaction point.
3. The third interaction point tends to be what Tooty calls a Back of the Room Customer Service Representatives or BR-CSR. These are individuals who interact directly with the municipality via phone or e-mail and they tend to be in dispatch and accounting departments. In some cases, the only interaction citizens will have is with these BR-CSRs. These representatives tend to operate without any customer service training or standards which can lead to problems with your valuable municipal clients.
I want to share with you a recent request I received from a municipality. A county official asked if Tooty would secret shop the two haulers that split the service for their county. The county had been receiving complaints from the citizens and wanted to get in front of those complaints. (No one enjoys hearing from an angry citizen at a city council meeting!) The county also had inspectors out in the community who were assessing what citizens had at the curb, illegal dumping and other issues that make citizens angry and frustrate a hauling company’s operations department. Since the county uses Tooty training for its solid waste and utilities departments to improve their efficiencies and customer care, they were counting on some unbiased assessment that would help them help the haulers and make the citizens they serve happy.
Tooty made 44 secret shopper calls to the two haulers and posed as citizens with questions on everything from recycling and bulk items to recycle bin deliveries.
Key Points
1. All 44 calls were answered by someone in dispatch.
2. All representatives were untrained in customer service.
3. Every representative had different answers for common questions from the citizens they serve.
4. Each representative panicked when asked about a cart/bin delivery status.
5. The background noise from within the dispatch offices was disturbing.
6. Each person worked for a well-known hauler that had a separate customer service department.

Identifying your Back of the Room CSRs
I know that some of you have them. I’ve seen them! When I have the privilege to visit an office I do try to meet as many people as I can to see how they connect to customer service. There are times when I am told that “those people” only work with the municipality or brokers. They don’t talk to customers.” It is important, maybe even critical, for you to evaluate those who seem to work behind the scenes.
1. Do they send emails?
2. Do they talk on the phone?
3. Are they as great as your customer service representatives?
4. Have they been through training?

You have an opportunity to surprise your current municipal customers with improved customer service and to share some key differentiators with those municipalities you are hoping to close a deal with. Be proactive versus waiting for municipal officials to identify your customer service weakness.

Customer service is not a job title or a department, but a philosophy of how we care for those we are lucky enough to serve.

If you would like to try a Tooty Secret Shopper campaign or your back of the Room Customer Service people need training, please contact: Lori Miller at 708-478-5772 or lori_miller@tootyinc.com

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Deal Breakers

Today the phone will ring into your organization and if you are lucky, you will have a golden opportunity to sell your services, help a citizen or solve a problem. Having a great sales and marketing strategy or a fantastic CRM tool is one part of the equation. But, the customer’s impression of your organization through a customer service or sales representative can make or break the deal. At Tooty, we have a unique point of view to share with you because we FEEL what customers go through as we make secret shopper calls and listen into monitored conversations each week. Based on over 2,000

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Voice, Attitude and Wording Shape Image

How many words does it take for you to determine if the customer on the other end of the line is in a bad mood?  One?  Maybe two?  You hear your customer’s voice and you can’t help but start to pass judgment on cranky old Mr. Smith.  After the conversation is over, you turn to your co-worker and say, “You won’t believe the jerk I just spoke with!”  Your teammate nods her head and smiles as she says, “Wait until I tell you about mine!”  Before you know it, everyone is talking about their customer as that jerk or that idiot that needs to get some manners. 

How many words do

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Training Your Second-String Customer Service Team

Summer vacations leave your office short-handed.  Often-times you find you must recruit someone to help with the phones who has not been trained or who isn’t working in customer service for a reason!  Customers tend to wait on hold longer when you aren’t fully staffed, and they are likely to get incorrect information or incomplete help which generates additional calls.  Training your second-string customer service representatives allows you to utilize your personnel more effectively and to be prepared for anything that affects customer care.

Tooty Secret Shopper Calls

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Who Is Your Customer

During a recent training session, I asked someone who is designated as a back-up to answering the phones who her customers were.  She was confident in her response, “I don’t have customers.  I don’t have anyone from the outside call me.”  I explained that customer service isn’t a job title, but a trait a person has.  It is about understanding who you interact with each day and being intentional about helping him or her to the best of your abilities.  It’s about serving people.  She caught on quickly and came to understand that her customers were most

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Inspiration for Sales and Customer Service Teams

Where does your inspiration come from? Let me be more specific. Where do you go for fresh ideas to motivate your team? Possibly you have had a rough month or two with weather related heartaches, price increases, technology or attendance issues. For some of you it has been all of the above! Some of you are watching your team’s performance scores like a hawk and others are in a rebuilding phase and want to finish the 4th quarter well so that they can build momentum for 2018. I had the honor of interviewing 3 Customer Service Managers who have

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