When the nurse told me my blood pressure was 120/70 I felt great.  It seemed as if diet and exercise were paying off for me.  To be honest, the only number I have paid any attention to is the high pressure reading.  As long as I stay within the 120 range I am in great shape.  The low number didn’t mean anything to me until a paramedic took my father-in-law’s blood pressure.  When he said it was 90/30, I casually asked what the low number meant. The paramedic seemed alarmed as he shouted that he was bleeding somewhere.  He told me that the lower the low number was, the more serious the bleeding was.  Emergency surgery was needed immediately.

Your company or location has a customer service pressure reading.  It includes your average Tooty score and the high and low score for your CSRs.  You can find your numbers by accessing the avg/min/max report for your location.  What should an average of 87.70 and the low and high score of 100/3 mean to you?  The 87.70 average score can give you false confidence in the performance of your team.  The goal for all CSRs and all locations is to have an average score of 85 or better.  While an 87.70 isn’t perfect, for many it is good enough.  To have a 100 as the high score is a wonderful achievement because it does show that there is at least 1 CSR who has had a super star performance.  However, that low performance score of a 3 signifies that there is bleeding somewhere and it may be serious.

As a trainer, I do look at the high and low scores for my customers because these scores do flush out that someone needs help. Do a quick check of your performance scores or customer satisfaction survey results.  Do you celebrate the average only or do you dig deeper to see who needs help?   Are you content with providing mediocre, poor or failing customer service to your customer?  That is the end result of overlooking your low scores.

How to stop the bleeding

1)      Sit with your CSRs (even the veterans) once a week and listen in as they take customer calls. This should be done at the very start of the day versus waiting to see if you have time later on.   Have the scripts with you as you listen into 3 or 4 calls so that you can evaluate what takes place and provide feedback immediately following the call.  This is a 20 minute investment that will have big benefits.

2)      If you have back-up people to help with phone calls during your busy times or lunch breaks, make sure that they have received proper training. If you are a back-up person, then you need to lead by example and master the use of the scripts, too.

3)       Low performers should be required to complete a script for each call and turn it into the manager at the end of each day.  This is an important step in training.  The tool needs to be used, not just glanced at during a call to increase the chance of improving performance and changing old behavior.

4)      Consider using Tooty for one-on-one coaching.  Sigrid from Bend, Oregon recently took advantage of this option and said, “I got my 100 on my Roll-off script because I used the script to the “T”.  Thank you so much for your personal session with me on Friday.  I am just so excited now as this is my first 100 and I plan on getting a lot more.”

Remember, you are only as strong as your weakest player.