scripts for customer service Archives

I Hate Scripts

21 June 2018

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

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Action Versus Intention

7 May 2018

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.

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Customer Service Training- Eye on the Ball

10 July 2017

In 2016, the Chicago Cubs won the World Series after a 108-year drought. The drought was not only the longest in major league baseball, but according to Wikipedia it was the longest in all major North American sports. They had great players, managers and games along the way and still didn’t achieve their goal of a World Series Win. The Cubs needed something. They were missing the special sauce needed to be a championship team.
Crane Kenney, the Cub’s President of Business Operations said this, “There’s a saying in business that ‘culture eats strategy for breakfast’

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Customer Service Department Efficiency

3 May 2017

I recently had a manager ask me why having a customer hold for over 10 minutes deserved a zero score. She rationalized her location’s long hold times by saying she had waited on hold for 30 minutes with a vendor when she called her corporate office. Although a 10-minute hold is better than a 30-minute hold, long hold times point out inefficiencies within a company or a department. The top reasons for having long hold times include:
1) short staffed
2) phones and/or computers go down
3) new business
How can you know if your customer service department

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Preparing for A Price Increase to Your Customers

25 January 2017

There is a lot that goes into implementing a price increase to your customer base. Operations, sales, accounting and many others need to coordinate what will happen and when. Customer service needs to brace for an influx of customer calls by adding additional staffing, some of whom may be temps or support staff within the office. Unfortunately, some leaders simply settle on a vague directive to the team that they should try to keep as much of the P.I. as possible. They leave the details of what will be said and done to the person taking the call. It has been my

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Scripts, Secret Shopper and Training

30 September 2016

A few years ago I had a prospective customer tell me that they did not need the services that Tooty provides because they had the best customer service he had ever witnessed. He added in that the customer service department was well-run, sales were up and their customer satisfaction scores were all above average. The conversation reminded me of a scene from the movie Elf where Will Ferrell burst into a coffee shop shouting congratulations because he saw a sign outside that stated, “World’s Best Cup of Coffee”. He took the sign at face value and thought the claim was true.

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Automated Messages and Hold Music Can Create Angry Customers

12 April 2016

Having irritating hold music or an out of date or out of tune automated message for your customers is the equivalent of having a sign on your door that says Keep Out. In customer service we often talk about hold time and how long a customer is willing to hold before hanging up. But how many of you have completely overlooked the customer’s experience while sitting on hold?

Many companies use an automated attendant to help during busy times. It is thought of as a way to help manage call volume. The automated attendant and its messaging should present an accurate impression of the company’s

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Get Rid of the Robot

25 February 2016

Five year old Hunter asked me why he couldn’t burp out loud in Chick-fil-A. I tried to keep from laughing as I told him it wasn’t polite. I didn’t know if a 5 year old knew the meaning of polite and I really wanted to make sure he understood that burping out loud was not a good habit for a 5 year old to develop. So I asked him if he knew what it meant if I said he was not polite. He explained to me from his kindergarten perspective that not being polite was the same as not being nice. He understood. In recent training with some millennial CSRs I overheard them using some words in ways

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Let me introduce you to 3 women of action!

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