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 from start to finish with the veteran there for additional coaching.  If you don’t have a training head-set, order one.
• Sign up for one-on-one coaching and/or training with Tooty Inc. to speed up the process.
• Second string representatives should be scheduled to help in customer service once a week (every week) for 30-60 minutes. Use them to manage high call volume periods.

Preparing for high volume days, vacations and sick days

Mother Nature, equipment issues or people calling off sick will take us by surprise but, you can plan ahead for just about anything else that comes your way.  Many customer service managers will attest to the fact that when the accounting department sends automated phone calls out to customers they will be slammed with hundreds of additional calls a day. Better planning and cooperation between departments can prevent a customer service disaster. Create a quarterly master calendar that is agreed upon by every department where known events can be scheduled, and the second-string customer service team can prepare.    Avoid scheduling multiple events at the same time.  For example, suspension notifications don’t have to be sent out to every customer the same day.  Consider spreading them out which will lessen the severity of call spikes.

• Billing hitting the street
• Price increase to the customer
• Collections/suspension call blasts
• New business; acquisition
• Holiday

If you have a phone system that provides stats on hold times, abandoned calls, talk time, etc. and you are unsure of what to do with the data or how to use it to your advantage, reach out to us at 708-478-5772.  We are happy to help you find ways to better utilize your staff and technology to better serve your customers.

Tooty Inc. is celebrating 30 years in business.  We have listened to and evaluated close to a million conversations and trained thousands of people to be more effective with their customers.   Our training is proactive, positive, and full of useful information.