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
customer service training chicago
Skills Based Program to Improve Customer Care
Tooty Inc. provides solutions to reduce costly mistakes, improve customer care, and establish higher service standards.
Lori Miller, President of Tooty Inc., stated, “Customers want to be served by representatives who are more than friendly personalities. They want to be helped by someone who knows how to assess their needs, provide accurate information and appropriate solutions in a timely manner. That level of service does not come about through a motivational customer service training program. It requires accurate assessment of customer service representatives’ skills as they interact
Computer System Issues Impact Customer Service
Recently, news channels reported that in Chicago and all over the country, computer systems at Target stores stopped working. A Sun Times reporter shared, “People reported waiting in line for more than 45 minutes before giving up altogether. During the downtime in Chicago, the lines grew… shoppers took to social media to warn others and share a laugh.”
At your local customer service office or call center, you may have experienced something similar. A customer calls in, you try to look up the account or address and realize the system is down. Panic
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 surveys we completed in the last two months we have documented 4 deal breakers that may be scaring your prospective customers away or infuriating the citizens you serve.
Deal Breaker #1- Long hold times
How long is too long for a customer to wait? 2-3 minutes has been a common measurement standard for years. In some markets customers will not wait more than a minute while in others they wait as long as it takes. Your phone system should keep the data on when the customers in your market hang up the phone. That will help you determine your market standards.
Deal Breaker #2- Passing around the customer
Customers become frustrated when they spend 5 minutes talking with one person who then transfers the call to another person who asks the very same things all over again. It gives the impression of inefficiency and can make a customer wonder how complicated working with you will be. At Tooty Inc., we help organizations implement a One Call Does It All protocol where every person is trained and empowered to handle the customer from start to finish.
Deal Breaker #3- Broken promise
Your customers may understand that they need to wait for a return call sometimes. The preference is not to wait at all, but if they have to they expect the promise of a return call to be kept. When I ask sales and customer service representatives when a return call should be made to a customer if the standard is within 2 hours, they always say 2 hours. A customer’s expectation would be that a return call would be received in half that time. That is what they are measuring you on. You have 2-ways to verify your team’s record with returning calls. 1-ask your front line representatives who doesn’t return calls. They can tell you because they receive those complaints from customers! 2- Let Tooty make secret shopper calls into your organization that require a call be returned. We will evaluate the customer experience, document whether a return call is received and the time.
Deal Breaker #4- Conflicting personalities
What impression would a prospective customer have of your organization if the customer service representative who first answers is dynamic and the person who the call is transferred to is disengaged or unprepared? Insides sales, account managers, national sales, help desk, accounting and other departments are equally accountable to excellent customer care.
Tooty’s signature training program Telepicting ™ focuses on how a prospective customer perceives a representative based on voice, attitude and knowledge and concludes whether that customer would give him/her their money or trust the answers given. It is a fun and impactful training exercise.
Deal Breaker #1- Long hold times
How long is too long for a customer to wait? 2-3 minutes has been a common measurement standard for years. In some markets customers will not wait more than a minute while in others they wait as long as it takes. Your phone system should keep the data on when the customers in your market hang up the phone. That will help you determine your market standards.
Deal Breaker #2- Passing around the customer
Customers become frustrated when they spend 5 minutes talking with one person who then transfers the call to another person who asks the very same things all over again. It gives the impression of inefficiency and can make a customer wonder how complicated working with you will be. At Tooty Inc., we help organizations implement a One Call Does It All protocol where every person is trained and empowered to handle the customer from start to finish.
Deal Breaker #3- Broken promise
Your customers may understand that they need to wait for a return call sometimes. The preference is not to wait at all, but if they have to they expect the promise of a return call to be kept. When I ask sales and customer service representatives when a return call should be made to a customer if the standard is within 2 hours, they always say 2 hours. A customer’s expectation would be that a return call would be received in half that time. That is what they are measuring you on. You have 2-ways to verify your team’s record with returning calls. 1-ask your front line representatives who doesn’t return calls. They can tell you because they receive those complaints from customers! 2- Let Tooty make secret shopper calls into your organization that require a call be returned. We will evaluate the customer experience, document whether a return call is received and the time.
Deal Breaker #4- Conflicting personalities
What impression would a prospective customer have of your organization if the customer service representative who first answers is dynamic and the person who the call is transferred to is disengaged or unprepared? Insides sales, account managers, national sales, help desk, accounting and other departments are equally accountable to excellent customer care.
Tooty’s signature training program Telepicting ™ focuses on how a prospective customer perceives a representative based on voice, attitude and knowledge and concludes whether that customer would give him/her their money or trust the answers given. It is a fun and impactful training exercise.
Telepicture Sample
Age: 34
Appearance: Jeans and a tee-shirt
Facial Expression: none
Attitude projected: disorganized, unprofessional and bored
What is your impression of the company: One-person operation, not trustworthy
Would you give the representative your money: No
Was there a sales strategy: No
If you’d like to learn how you can receive a complimentary Telepicting™ evaluation, please contact: lori_miller@tootyinc.com
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 you need to utter before your customer concludes that you will be happy to help or that you will be difficult to work with? The process of associating a face or image to a phone voice is what Tooty coined as Telepicting ™. And your Telepicture sets the stage for what happens next. You can disarm a cranky customer with a cheerful voice or turn around someone who is having a bad day. You can win a sale, collect more money or rescue a bad situation based on voice, attitude and wording choice.
Your company or organization’s website lets the world know what to expect when they call in or meet a representative. The wording on your website probably describes your staff in such glowing terms that the expectation is high. The customer or citizen you serve may be looking forward to the great experience. Do you really know what happens when someone calls in to your call center, help desk, department or office?
You need help from the expert team at Tooty if:
- You want to confirm your staff is doing an amazing job over the phone.
- You want to discover areas where your team could be more effective and positive.
- You have the same problems today that you had yesterday, last week or last month.
- Departments are not working together effectively.
- Your call volume is out of control resulting in long
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 and employee performance evaluation scores do reveal what your customers are experiencing right now. My conversations with managers during June and July revealed that untrained back-up Customer Service and Sales representatives are causing more harm than good.
Selecting your second-string players
In a perfect world everyone within the office would be ready, willing and able to back-up customer service or sales. Use this check-list as you consider who your second-string players should be:
- Must have a nice voice
- Must love our customers and people in general
- Can step away from other duties to talk with customers
- Is a team player
Training your second-string players
No one performs well when they are thrown into something without training and practice. Training should begin 1-2 weeks before you expect the person to start taking calls, but it doesn’t have to take 1-2 weeks. The best process to develop someone who has helped in the past or who is new to customer service or sales should include:
- Side-by-side training with your best representative where he/she can hear the conversation and observe how the technology is used. Let the individual handle customer calls
I Hate Scripts
You and I have heard the declaration “I hate scripts!” more than once. We aren’t going to dwell on why you or someone you work with might get angry at the mention of a script. I want to point out what you and your team are missing when these great tools are left to gather dust on the corner of the desk.
Celebrating an individual’s improvement
Hunter is a CSR at the Orlando District and she has been with Waste Connections for almost a year. Her Tooty scores were up and down and she was frustrated by the scripts. During our coaching session together, she shared that she was frustrated by all the words on the script along with trying to figure out which one applied to the call at hand. We reviewed the residential and commercial existing customer scripts and she created her own version to use. It was a check list that applied to any customer calling. Hunter said, “I created this one to ensure I get all the information first, then I can determine which script I need so I’m not looking all over the place and losing my mind because of how different each one is laid out.” Hunter took initiative in creating a tool that would work for her. It had all the components of the full scripts, but visually it worked better for her because there were less words to look at. After using the new script, she gained confidence and found that it worked well for her and her customers. Hunter is happy to share the results of working with a script and not against it. “Thank you so much for helping me tweak it to fit my brain!! Just thought you should know your suggestion has worked for me marvelously and the underdog is going for the gold now J The last 2 tooties I had I received 100 % score on!”
For all you managers out there, this is what Hunter’s manager, Julia wants you to know.
“I decided to try the (Tooty) coaching. My job is to provide every opportunity for success for the folks who report to me. I try to accomplish that on my own, but I know that everyone learns differently and is motivated in different ways. These Tooty sessions are another tool for us that is clearly effective. I would be crazy not to tap into the mother-load as it were! Go straight to the source and get some coaching/teaching!!! It has clearly made a difference and reminds me to entertain all available options in the pursuit of success.”
Creating Scripting to Make More Sales
When I received an e-mail from an office manager with the subject “accidental sales” I was intrigued. Hilary, the Office Manager of Salina Waste in Kansas, had noticed that city customers call every day asking about bulk pick up or other service needs. She said, “
I would like to have a script or guidelines on how to navigate a phone call that wasn’t originally meant for our company. When city of Salina customers call, it would be great
Action Versus Intention
In customer service our attention tends to go towards putting out fires. Goals for improving or changing a process are put on the back burner for so long that we forget we ever had goals. It’s exciting and motivating to be able to share with you how others have been able to improve and innovate while handling the day to day demands that revolve around customer care. For all of us it is about taking head-knowledge, what we know about, and putting it into action.
Let me introduce you to 3 women of action!
Cynthia has been a Customer Service Representative since 2016. During the annual Tooty Training program, we focused on selling services- business to business. The Tooty script is great, but CSRs admitted they may only get 1 or 2 calls for new service in a month and aren’t confident when it comes to recommending service. I suggested that if there was someone who was talented with excel that the formula offered during training could be turned into an amazing tool that would allow a CSR or inside sales rep to enter in some details from the script and quickly determine a service that would best fit the customer’s needs. Cynthia not only offered to do it but, followed through! The tool will also shorten talk time.
In her role as Customer Service Manager, Destini attended the webinar Tooty offers to managers. The office had staffing issues. Destini said, “Our jobs are more than head count and phone calls”, which is what she discovered after she used the work-time-study formula provided by Lori Miller to document the number of customers that came to the office, inbound and outbound calls and customer e-mails. This data helped Destini and upper management make an informed decision about staffing.
Deana had been a CSR for just over a year before receiving the award as a 2017 Top 10 CSR in all of North America for Waste Connections. Her average for 2017 was 99! Deana said, “If I can do it, I know that you can do it. Just use the tools provided and the sky is the limit!” While on site providing one-on-one coaching to CSRs we noticed that small details that impact customer service and accuracy were not given attention. Every CSR had a different level of knowledge and there wasn’t time to share facts during the day. As the new Lead CSR, Deana took a Tooty suggestion to create a “Did you know” board where CSRs are incentivized to share what they learn each day- ah ha moments.
We don’t get very far by thinking about or wishing for things to be better. Action steps and deadlines make a difference.
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 invested time and tears in shaping excellent customer service representatives, and in some cases, turning around their teams. They have some great ideas to share which should inspire you to do something different with your team as you press towards the finish line for 2017.
Charelle is ex-military and she ran her team with the chain of command approach and had distanced herself from the individuals on her team. When the team was not achieving their goals, she re-evaluated what she was doing and adjusted her management style. She intentionally got involved with each person on a personal level and noticed that when she showed she cared, everyone performed better.
Unique motivation and rewards:
1) Individuals earn wings for every 100 Tooty score and they compete to see who has the most.
2) When customer service representatives, CSRs, achieve their 10th 100 score they are rewarded with a great lunch along with a letterman’s jacket.
3) They love games and frequently play Tooty bingo with a reward of a gift card for the winner. They spent 8 months playing Wheel of Fortune and if a CSR received a 100 score she would have 5 seconds to guess a letter and 10 seconds to solve the puzzle. The winner received a $250.00 gift card.
Rohannah has a big customer service department and moving their average performance score up by 10 points this year has been a monumental accomplishment for all of them. She has created 2 teams within the department led by her 2 lead CSRs. They created smaller teams of 3 individuals who take turns role-playing and scoring each other every month to make sure that when they talk to customers they are doing their best.
Unique motivation and rewards:
1) Parking is a big deal. The individual with the best monthly performance score and year-to-date-average will have the CSR of the Month Parking spot close to the door!
Charelle is ex-military and she ran her team with the chain of command approach and had distanced herself from the individuals on her team. When the team was not achieving their goals, she re-evaluated what she was doing and adjusted her management style. She intentionally got involved with each person on a personal level and noticed that when she showed she cared, everyone performed better.
Unique motivation and rewards:
1) Individuals earn wings for every 100 Tooty score and they compete to see who has the most.
2) When customer service representatives, CSRs, achieve their 10th 100 score they are rewarded with a great lunch along with a letterman’s jacket.
3) They love games and frequently play Tooty bingo with a reward of a gift card for the winner. They spent 8 months playing Wheel of Fortune and if a CSR received a 100 score she would have 5 seconds to guess a letter and 10 seconds to solve the puzzle. The winner received a $250.00 gift card.
Rohannah has a big customer service department and moving their average performance score up by 10 points this year has been a monumental accomplishment for all of them. She has created 2 teams within the department led by her 2 lead CSRs. They created smaller teams of 3 individuals who take turns role-playing and scoring each other every month to make sure that when they talk to customers they are doing their best.
Unique motivation and rewards:
1) Parking is a big deal. The individual with the best monthly performance score and year-to-date-average will have the CSR of the Month Parking spot close to the door!
Talair has created a team culture in her department by strategically placing customer service representatives in smaller teams so they can help each other and work towards a common goal. Teams are changed regularly to build co-worker relationships. She has found that no one wants to let their team down, so they try harder and do better than if their recognition was focused on individual performance.
Unique motivation and rewards:
1) The manager will sing to his CSRs (which I have witnessed) and rewards high performers by having them be his co-manager for a half-day. He makes a big deal of their successes, but doesn’t gloss over failures.
2) CSRs can earn a mini fish tank to have on their desks if they have a 100-average score for a quarter. Talair didn’t anticipate what a motivator this was. The fish-tank-challenge brought them all together and stopped negative conversations as they talked about everything from fish food to decorating.
I’d love to hear from you regarding your teaching and coaching challenges and successes when it comes to training millennials versus GenX and Baby Boomers. We all need to implement more effective training techniques. Please contact me: lori_miller@tootyinc.com and I will be happy to share great options with you for classroom training and interactive webinars for 2018.
Do Unhappy Customers Scare You?
What is more intimidating than an angry customer complaining about service? An angry business customer complaining about service! Customer service and sales representatives have confessed that they are nervous when they hear a harsh tone of voice or have a business manager complain that he has called multiple times for the same thing. Costly short-cuts and ineffective solutions are used to get the unhappy person off the line as quickly as possible. Your team can confidently interact with the customers and provide right solutions, but it will take training and teamwork between the departments. It also means everyone needs to take an honest look at the difficult conversations your representatives are having each day and decide upon the right processes and solutions.
Using Tooty to Test Your Team
Do you regularly have customers (internal or external) asking to speak with a manager because they feel they aren’t getting answers or that the representative had a bad attitude? Not all customers are irrational and not all of your representatives have bad attitudes. The truth and the solutions can be found through a tried and tested process of using our secret shoppers to make calls into your departments. Testing each person on the same challenging situations allows you to determine who your best people are, what additional training is needed and whether a certain process is working or not. Tooty has the expertise to evaluate and train the following departments:
• Customer service
• Inside sales
• Operations
• Collections/accounting
• IT/Help desk
• HR
If you have a call monitoring program in place, Tooty has the expertise to evaluate those calls and provide you with fresh insights and new training tools. If your team needs some extra help in handling difficult customers, take the time to role-play demanding situations. The practice is necessary to overcome nervousness.
One customer recently commented that because Tooty secret shoppers projected difficult attitudes in the calls it has helped her to flush out specific areas that her staff needs to work on. Our classroom training is fantastic and helps to overcome the fear of dealing with difficult people. We have great tips including phrases to use to calm a difficult person and point out certain things you should never say to an unhappy customer. Most people have never been trained on how to use their voice to sound confident or calm, for example. Voice training is a regular part of Tooty training. A customer service manager recently shared that, “Tooty Training is excellent and the secret to our success.”
