secret shopper 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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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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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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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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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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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’ and there were a lot of strategies over the years. The Ricketts family brought a new culture…they told us to think big… to stop cutting corners…hire the best…build the best…don’t settle for second. Do it right…”. Their approach is an example for us regarding culture and creating a winning team.
At bats
In sales and customer service we often compare our representatives and the incoming opportunities to a batter receiving a pitch. In baseball, the batter needs to have more than a good-looking swing. He needs to see the ball that has been launched his way, predict what swing will work and execute all in a matter of seconds. A great swing at the ball isn’t enough. It must be the right swing delivered at the right time.
Your representatives need to be better at discerning what questions need to be asked to get to the root of a customer’s needs. This relates to both sales opportunities and problem situations. No one can predict what the customer is going to ask about when the phone rings, but you can train for it.
Common training mistakes
1) Instructing your representatives to “just follow the script”. That is how you create a robot. When they don’t understand the “why” behind the questions and answers, mistakes will be made. Covering everything, even that which does not apply, makes talk time longer and frustrates your customer. Ultimately, a work order may be created with wrong instructions or a sale may be lost.
2) Assuming your team knows more than they do. Don’t let the lack of questions asked by your team mask their lack of knowledge.
3) Not making time to do side-by-side coaching each week. You need to witness your team at bat and provide constructive feedback and encouragement. Skillful players have ongoing training. That means you invest in veterans and new people equally. Veterans have slumps, short-cuts that are problematic and often-times need a fresh approach.
4) Your skills as a coach are weak. There is a difference between giving a directive or order and coaching someone. If you are uncomfortable coaching, you haven’t implemented anything new or aren’t sure if you are as effective as you can be, I am happy to help you. Ask for help.
Testing

Each week, e-mail your CSRs, sales reps and operation’s representatives a problem-solving scenario or a question that you would like the answer to. It should be based on something that transpired during the week so that your teaching makes a connection. Compare the answers so that you can see whether it is a team training issue or if you have 1 or 2 people who need direction. Provide the correct answer or solution so that everyone is on the same page. Make learning fun by creating an award or giving points towards a reward.

Role-playing is your version of batting practice. Role-playing should be done monthly or in preparation for difficult calls that may come about from a price increase, new product or service.
Finishing the Season Well
In comparing the Cub’s record from last year to this year, a sports writer summarized, “The bottom line is that there’s really nothing wrong with this year’s team that couldn’t be fixed by issuing a few less walks and giving up fewer home runs.” Maybe you are discouraged by your team’s results or you have had a set-back. Analyze what is going on and make some adjustments. Champions don’t give up. They play hard to the end of a game and the season. They ask questions, train hard, consider criticism a gift and improve. Focus your team on today’s game and being the best version of themselves that they can be. There’s a lot of game left.

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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

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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 observation that sales people talk too much and give up too much and that customer service representatives get nervous and go right into rolling back the price completely. Here is an example of a conversation I witnessed during a customer’s price increase.
Customer: I noticed there is an increase on my invoice. Can you explain that to me?
Representative: Sure- I see you did get an increase and that you have been our customer for a long time. I can actually roll that price back to what you were paying before. Is that okay?
Customer: I am happy to have you do that, but I was only calling to verify what the increase was about and to adjust our purchase order. I wouldn’t have argued about it because I haven’t had an increase from you and you do a good job for us.
To prevent this catastrophe from happening at your organization you need your team to be prepared. Remember that for most customers price is A factor in decision-making but it isn’t necessarily THE factor. Helpful and knowledgeable representatives partnered with dependable product or service makes price a detail to discuss versus an obstacle to overcome.
Here is your P.I. preparation check list.
 Scripts– Let Tooty create some effective and concise scripting for those who answer your calls. Often times sales leaders provide talking points, and too many of them, which don’t translate properly in a conversation.
 Training– Both sales and customer service representatives need to practice how they will handle these conversations. The practice will boost confidence and your ability to maintain your increase. Tooty offers customized classroom training and interactive webinars. We also recommend that the training is scheduled within a week of when the invoices with the increase will hit the streets. The timing of the role-play practice needs to be as close to the expected time for customer phone calls as possible.
 Strategy for new customers– You may have competitors who are also increasing their rates and their customers are calling you to compare prices. Be prepared to win those prospects.
 Celebration– Share your goal not only with sales, but customer service. What will you do to celebrate your team’s success?

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Let me introduce you to 3 women of action!

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