customer service training chicago Archives

Customer Feedback-Tooty Training

28 April 2021

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

8 December 2020

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

25 March 2020

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

25 February 2019

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

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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Deal Breakers

29 October 2018

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.

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

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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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Training Your Second-String Customer Service Team

26 July 2018

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

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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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Lori Miller, President, Tooty Inc.

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