customer service Archives

Unlocking Promise, Potential, and Purpose Through Effective and Personalized Coaching

10 February 2026

Great leaders don’t just want better performance — they want to help their people unlock something deeper: their inherent promise (the spark of talent), potential (untapped capacity), and purpose (meaningful direction that improves lives).

The most effective way to do this? A powerful combination of training and personalized coaching. But too many organizations treat them as interchangeable — missing out on real transformation. Here’s the clear difference, and why both are essential for human-centered growth.

What Training Does — Building the Foundation- Training

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In 2026, the smartest strategy isn’t more tech—it’s better conversations.

21 January 2026

We’ve all seen it: brilliant teams stalled by miscommunication, customer complaints spiking from tone-deaf responses, or internal friction turning small issues into big drama.

The root cause? Most often not lack of knowledge… but how we deliver it.

That’s why Tooty Inc. created WAVE — a focused, hands-on- training that equips your people to master the art of real human connection in every interaction:

Wording Choice → Precise, positive language that builds trust instead of defensiveness Attitudes Projected → Warm, confident energy that makes

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Skills Base Program Improves Your Team and Customer Care

20 May 2025

Tooty Inc. has a solution 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

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2025 Weather Issues Challenge Customer Service

31 December 2024

They are predicting a major storm as 2025 starts and even though environmental services organizations have been through storms before, customers aren’t very understanding when it comes to delays in picking up their garbage. Often-times the only tool the customer service teams have at their disposal is to wait for updates on routes from the operations team and to hesitantly suggest recovery will be attempted “hopefully tomorrow”. You should be better prepared. You can be better prepared. Your team can surprise your customers with their great attitudes and

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Your Customers Detest 3 Things

19 December 2023

People everywhere detest long-hold times, being passed around from one person to the next, and yes- A.I. posing as a real person.

Long hold time stats from your phone system can point the finger at staffing issues but long hold times also diagnose inefficiency. Here at Tooty Inc., we listen to and evaluate thousands of customer conversations every year and have found that often times the calls stacking up in the queue are due to individuals being poorly trained on product and service information and being unsure of the protocols for resolving issues.

Passing

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Customer Service for Municipal Waste Services

4 December 2018

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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Voice, Attitude and Wording Shape Image

18 September 2018

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

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Who Is Your Customer

5 January 2018

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 often people within the office and those from other offices who don’t pay for a service, but count on her to help with something. Internal customers are important.

Recently, a manager suggested that we should remove a Tooty Customer Service score because the person who handled the call was not part of the “customer service department”. I can understand being disappointed by a low score, but the focus should be on how to help the individual and team improve. Not to erase the result.

Casting the vision for customer service in 2018

As a team, define who your internal customers are and agree to demonstrate excellent customer service to them. Consider including:

Response time to emails, etc.
Answering internal calls professionally
Using please and thank you

For your paying external customers, you need to know where the calls are routed and who potentially will talk with them. If you have people on your team who need to be better-teach them. It is the perfect leadership opportunity.

Maybe answering phones is a part of your daily duties. Or, a customer call may be transferred to you or you might be asked to help-out a co-worker when it is busy. Be prepared to serve and be grateful to serve.

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Inspiration for Sales and Customer Service Teams

6 November 2017

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!

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.

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Do Unhappy Customers Scare You?

23 August 2017

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.”

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