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Posted By: Service Doc Your Call Taker, The Business Bottleneck - 11/17/08 09:58 PM
As business consultants for the service industry, we work with many contractors and although their advertising budgets range from a few hundred to tens of thousands of dollars per month, they all have one thing in common...customer service reps (CSR’s) with limited knowledge in our industry.

After spending so much money on getting the customer to call in, so little is invested on how the call is dealt with, how the customer is educated on why your shop is better than the one mentioned in the Yellow Page ad on the next Google link. At the moment when you or yours answers the call, the potential customer hinges his entire decision on the way the call is handle and the credibility the CSR projects.

Most of our customers have nice, polite people taking the call but no effort is really being made to let the customer know that you not only understand the issue they are having but can also deal with it quickly and for a fair price. Service agreements or safety inspection contracts are not discussed, which would preempt the techs job of letting the customer know of an immediate cost savings while providing a service that assures the safety and well being of their home and family. No issue is expanded upon providing the customer a feeling that the CSR is well versed so they can only imagine how good the service tech would be.

So many lost opportunities to not only close the calls at a higher rate but bring up the average invoice by educating the customer of peripheral services and alternatives before the techs even show up.

So we have decided to write a program that will allow any call taker the ability to click on any topic discussed to reveal a script appropriate to the subject at hand. So when your customer calls, you can virtually transfer your knowledge base to the call taker allowing for better identification of the issue, better customer preparation while conveying to them just how credible your company is since the first contact they had was able to put them at ease while booking the call. How would that compare to your competition?

The system will also draw statistics on closing ratios per CSR, per call types, where your CSR is excelling and where they need to improve, which scripts work and which don’t, what are your busiest times, how many calls are lost because of your “diagnostic fee” and what fee level works best? Much more can be tracked and your input will let us know what’s important to you.

My question to you all is “what would you like to see in a program of this kind?” We would welcome a limited number of you to even help us out in creating the appropriate scripts so that any new contractor can start using this program immediately with little or no customization. Anyone willing to help will benefit from the software free of charge for up to one year. It will be entirely web based and cost only around $50.00 per month. We believe it will revolutionize our customer's ability to close calls and yield a higher profit while providing a better and more professional service to their clients. And considering that one additional closed call per month pays for 3 months of service, we doubt cost will be an issue.

Any comments are more than welcome; the release date is slated for the first quarter of 2009. We are in the final stages of programming but are still flexible enough to modify the code based on your input. So instead of wishing the program “did this or that" after purchase, you can help shape it from the start. I look forward to your input and thank you for your time!
Service Doc,

It's against the policies of this forum to advertise goods or services.

You're welcome to use the Free Classified Section on this site to sell your software.
Like electure said Lets leave the marketing issues aside ...
Marc has his email listed and PM activated.
I dont see a link on google for numbers cruncher anymore ,except for one of the flat rate Software companies.
My wife is thinking about putting together a seminar for small businessmen, simply based on the trades and vendors she has fired and why.
#1 "call the customer back"!
#2 "show up when you say you will"
#3 "bring what you need to do your job"

She is amazed that in this economy people still will not return a call, they don't show up on time (or at all) and they show up without any materials.
This is a customer with 800 resident/members who have money they want to spend.
Sorry about my email being to elaborate from a sales perspective, it was not my intent. Having evaluated and distributed third party software for some time, I was excited about gathering contractor feedback on what they would like to see in a new solution prior to it being finalized.

So let me reiterate my original message. Anyone who would like to provide there expertise and opinions in regards to the conceptualization of scripting software solution, I welcome your input. Anyone wanting to provide assistance in designing the scripts, let us know so we can contact you and make it worth your efforts.

We truly want to provide a tool to greatly improve first and subsequent contact with your customers, anything anyone has to offer is very much appreciated. Thanks!
I suppose the first thing I want to say is .... I HATE scripts. period. I think the only thing worse are the automated call directing canned "push #7 to hear if we really care" voice-mail mazes.

I want the phone answered by a person. I want the persons' greeting to be SHORT and clear. I want that person to know exactly where the call needs to go.

Then I want the call answered, promptly, by a real person. I do NOT want to endure 23 minutes of awful music, interrupted by 'your call is important' BS. Nor do I want to answer a dozen questions before getting to the point of "why are you calling us?"

Finally, I want the undivided attention of whomever I'm speaking with. I don't want that persons' attention diverted by other tasks, co-workers, etc. I don't want that person to be watching the clock, worried about their "mean time" statistics. I want that person to actually have some connection with the company ... not be in a call center in Outer Mongolia. And, damn it, I want them to speak ENGLISH. Preferably like Alistair Cooke; failing that, without any accent that you can cut with a knife.

There is no magic software that will cover for sloppy or arrogant business practices.
Now that's what I'm talking about, straight forward input, to the point, with a touch of humor and a picture of a cat! And as a matter of fact, we were thinking of adding an "Alistair Cooke" voice emulator, your feedback now confirms that common desire!

All kidding aside, I agree 100% with what you have said. The most prominent hurdle for small companies is having someone with the required talent to answer the phones, properly and concisely. This of course is a human resource expense that is unfortunately viewed as something that doesn't "directly" provide income, although getting a “run of the mill” CSR, an answering service or worst, a recorded message, hurts the business to a far greater extent. Worst of all, this happens without the owner even knowing since the caller will just move onto the next ad without leaving any feedback.

I agree that reading from a script is sometimes transparent but what we are designing is more of a guide than just plain text. It will go to insure that the facts you mentioned, "short and clear", "undivided attention", etc. are respected for all calls and more directives can be added allowing the owner to decide exactly how each call should be handled. Reading from a new script may be required for the first few calls but we expect the CSR to learn and become familiar with the script and, on the short term, apply the essential components using their own words.

Your post is a template example of how we want to provide business owners with the ability to have calls answered the way they want, time after time, without requiring them to either hover over the CSR or take the calls themselves.

And by the way, the statistics discussed are not meant to "calculate the average time per call" but more to find out which call types are approached successfully and which need reviewing. Another small example would be finding out which “diagnostic fee level” is best, should it be waived if the customer accepts the quote or should it be eliminated altogether? Right now, the entire interaction is one sided, providing very little feedback on how to improve. By allowing certain items to be tracked, the business owner can fine tune their approach to customers providing for better results with future calls.

Bottom line, although your front end may be more complete than the norm, the majority of our clients have someone inexperienced in the industry answering calls and being used as a glorified dispatch board as opposed to providing a human touch in identifying and satisfying the first and most important step of gathering new customers, first contact. Those few minutes spent with your CSR is what the potential customer is basing his or her decision on, usually, more of an overall impression of the call than anything else.
Providing identification with the issue, a certain level of empathy, immediate feedback on how the problem will be resolved, continuity from what the CSR says to what happens in the field, all go a long way in increasing the chances of a customer requesting a visit as well as signing off on the work. They are looking for credibility with a touch of compassion in the first 60 seconds, and we think that the best person to instruct the call takers on how to achieve this goal are the owners themselves, just as you have done in your post. We want to make sure that these directives stick, call after call, that they are flexible enough to change with each individual problem and that they can be improved based on tangible results acquired over any given period of time.

I very much appreciate your input and based on this clarification, welcome any additional feedback. It sounds like you could provide valuable opinions to this endeavor and I look forward to hearing more, if you are so inclined, whether on a post or directly via email. Comments like yours are what we want to use in shaping the final version of this solution. In the event you would like to be a beta site for our initial release, I’m sure we would profit immensely from your hands on feedback.

In any case, thanks again for starting this up!

Marc
Service Guys

This thread may get locked as it seems it bordering on marketing for the OP.
I would like to keep it open , As we really dont have a" Service forum" available.
Right now I am only a one man service company for resi stuff but i sure would like to have a couple trucks on the road one day.

I dont have a CSR at the moment but i do have to dispatch and take calls for 2 business that are service related , and it sure takes a lot of my time seeing how i also have to be in the field working. I spent 3-4 hours a day just taking calls and dispatching the Satellite installer and also my electrical work.





Posted By: Service Doc Your Call Taker, The Business Bottleneck - 11/21/08 09:29 PM
I would like to take this a step further to make sure that our participation in this forum goes beyond providing us with your feedback on the subject at hand.

I welcome any member to query us with any business related topic and, with the permission of the moderators; we could start independent threads to expand on any given subject in greater detail. We deal with questions from contractors of all sizes, geographical locations and specialties so hopefully, we can provide some varying perspectives at the least and perhaps, some sound advice from time to time.

I still want to hear from all of you concerning what would help you improve your closing ratios when converting a call to a visit and a visit to a job. We can eventually come up with something that will help enhance your existing CSR resource (or even your own approach in dealing with calls) to a mechanism that will represent your assets more concisely while providing tangible feedback for gradual front end improvement. No matter the outcome, sharing our various opinions and comments on “the art of handling calls” will only go to further our understanding of the topic and, as with any addition of information, better the end result, with or without the use of software.

Marc


Posted By: LK Re: Your Call Taker, The Business Bottleneck - 11/23/08 02:18 AM
Service Doc,

I have no idea what area of the country, you are from, but in some states with licening, you can not play the service rep game, without ending up in court or answering to the state attorney office, there are however states with little or no consumer protection laws, where you can put some unlicensed person on the phone, to read stories to customers.



Nothing like sitting there on the phone with someone who has NO clue what they are talking about. It's obvious they are reading from a script, usually quite poorly and I find it insulting.

Quote
I welcome any member to query us with any business related topic and, with the permission of the moderators; we could start independent threads to expand on any given subject in greater detail. We deal with questions from contractors of all sizes, geographical locations and specialties so hopefully, we can provide some varying perspectives at the least and perhaps, some sound advice from time to time.



That's exactly the scope of what this Business Section of the bulletin board is here for, members helping members.
So I guess you answer your own phones Scott, unless you have hired someone who is well versed in the field and can afford to keep them in the office to answer phones for you instead of, I don’t know, earning income? You are one lucky guy!

Unfortunately, the majority of small contractors who are trying to get office help so they can spend more time where they are most profitable are trying to or have hired a secretary/receptionist to handle many of the office tasks including answering the phones.

Perhaps you have found a well of talent where you can easily hire people that will accept to get paid an average salary (for a CSR) but whose level of talent far surpasses the ones most of our customers employ. From my experience, it’s hard enough to find and afford someone who does a great job in the office and possesses good phone skills. So please Scott, send us a list of available candidates so we can share in your good fortune.

While we wait on that however, it may be a good idea to provide guidelines to that regular CSR to try to improve how they handle those calls that have cost you so much in advertising to generate. And while I agree (see previous post) that “reading a script” may seem transparent, most people, especially the ones under your employ Scott, should have the capacity to understand the “overall message” and make it their own, meaning, incorporating it in their knowledge base.

As an example, when I call your office and hear “Welcome to Scott’s Electrical Company, how may I help you? That sounds scripted but I don’t feel insulted. And when I explain my issue to your CSR and they are able to qualify it in a way that they can relate to the problem while sending the right person with the right tools to take care of it, I don’t really care if they learned that from a trade school or a knowledge source, I would feel like I’m dealing with a professional company that hires qualified people. It may even make me stop calling other shops and accept your services based on the credibility you convey!

I doubt you would want your receptionist or secretary or CSR to handle each call the same way regardless of the topic. I believe that a customer complaint should be handled with a different perspective that a regular service call. When someone asks for a price up front, I hope that you provide them with more than just a price if any price at all, because if you do, that’s all they will have to compare you to the other shop that offers the same service at a cheaper rate. Your potential customer has got to walk away from that call with not only the information they requested, but also a list of reasons why you are the one to resolve their issue, whether you are more cost effective than your competition or not.

It all comes down to perceived value. We all spend more money on certain items because of the reputation the brand name carries or the level of service we can expect after sale. Why is your business any different? And you can honestly tell me that a regular “office guy or gal” has the talent from day one to convey the advantages your company offers specific to the precise reason of the call in the first place? Can anyone really suggest that their call takers are the best they could possibly be?

Unless you want to spend your day coaching your CSR on how they should have dealt with the past call type, hoping they retain that information so that the next time, when the same type of call comes in, they can make use of your exact suggestions, writing it down may be a good idea!

And unless you want your CSR to have to go through an immense amount of paperwork trying to find the one appropriate to the call at hand, implementing those suggestions using technology that allows them to click on a link that brings up the appropriate guidelines instantly may not be a bad idea either!

Most major companies provide resources to their call takers so they are able to better handle and qualify calls, providing the people in the field a better understanding of what to expect while immediately generating confidence from the customer. There is a reason why they do this and unfortunately, the cost involved to provide such readily available resources is prohibitive to the small entrepreneur. We are trying to provide the same tools that the “big wigs” use, which are tried and tested, to our customer to give them an edge over their competition. No one can argue that having someone with a better understanding of customer issues is not going to end up with better results on the short and long term.

Unfortunately, the feedback received thus far, with one exception, has been focused on discrediting an idea instead of trying to shape it so that it works for how you do business and the reality of your day to day activities. That sort of thinking is quite rampant with micromanaging business owners who feel threatened by thoughts that don’t fall within the scope of their own existing business practices. Having worked with many of the members of this forum in the past, I know that most of you are here to try to learn from one and other and generate ideas that might improve your bottom line. It’s to those that I address this thread since this effort is obviously not aimed at those contractors that already “have it all figured out”.

I very much look forward to comments that are aimed at converting an idea to a solution that suits your true business reality. When I hear contractor comments about dispatching, flat rate or Numbers Crunching solutions out there, I usually hear about what’s missing or what they would change to better suit their needs. This thread is designed to preempt that constructive criticism allowing you to help shape a business tool that may provide distinct improvements from day 1. I hope we can all take advantage of our common experiences to come up with something that will truly make a difference, as opposed to just saying it will.

And by the way, electure, I understand that the scope of this bulletin board is for members helping members, I was just trying to convey that I’m very thankful to anyone that provides feedback and I’m willing to go above and beyond what they expect by addressing each question with the same fervor as we put in for our regular consulting customers. Quid pro quo Clarice, that was my point.

Marc
Originally Posted by Electricmanscott


Nothing like sitting there on the phone with someone who has NO clue what they are talking about. It's obvious they are reading from a script, usually quite poorly and I find it insulting.



I am not sure if i am reading this Correctly.

Does this mean We need to educate a CSR Better and they can be knowlegable of the trade as it relates to service work.
And your not happy with the uninformed canned response and there could be better a better way for coaching CSR's

I have seen the one to Two line scripts in the past and yes I wouldn't trust that the Company has any Idea of what my service needs may be.


There seem to be two distinct type of "live person" you get on the phone.

The type I believe Electricmanscott was referring to is the one you get after twnety minuts of 'voice mail jail,' some third-worlder who has a sheet of defined answers, and has no idea what's really happening.

The other type is what used to be the norm ... some gal who was actually AT the place of business, and usually knew better than anyone else just what was going on.

For those who think I'm exaggerating ... I once worked for a shop that ran just fine, for over a year, after management quit in a dispute with the owner. No, the owner didn't resume running things .... the leads and clerical staff did just fine without being 'managed.' To this day, I cannot figure out why the owner felt the need to replace his managers ....

Discrediting an idea? I think not .... the idea has had the past few decades to discredit itself. Sure, it's tempting to think of all the money you'll save by replacing your staff with a $9.95 computer CD ... but the results are a disaster for everyone except the management types who award themselved fat bonuses for their 'cost cutting.'

Likewise, using technology to forward calls to non-employees, who don't share the wages and benefits of the firms' employees isn't likely to make any points on the shop floor. Or, for that matter, with the customers.

IF I had a 'gal Friday,' to answer the phone, my own phone number would become a 'state secret.' Yet, that lady would know, minute by minute, what I was doing, what was going on in the company, and have the judgement to know when to call me. I simply can't give a customer my full attention when I'm driving, speaking with another customer, or loading the truck.
Originally Posted by Service Doc
So I guess you answer your own phones Scott, unless you have hired someone who is well versed in the field and can afford to keep them in the office to answer phones for you instead of, I don’t know, earning income? You are one lucky guy!



I can see right through your sales pitch here.

You asked for opinions you got them.

Keep your sarcasm to yourself.
Scott,

You can see right through my sales pitch? We are in the process of designing a business tool to help call takers improve their performance. How can I be selling something that doesn’t even exist yet? By the time we have finished fine tuning this product for electrical, probably end of 2009; these posts will be a distant memory at best.

Our marketing will be centered in trade magazines, IEC meetings, etc. The only reason why I opened this thread was to provide electrical contractors with a say of what would work best in the design phase of a new product. And although you probably won’t sign up, you are not our market. Contractors who are trying to use technology to improve their business are who we will be focusing on.

Historically, software for the electrical industry started off as something for the plumbing and hvac markets and was then patched up, usually badly, to be distributed to the electrical segment to make a few quick bucks. It’s a comment I have personally heard over and over again with flat rate solutions, dispatch software, etc.

For once, someone is contacting you directly to allow your input to shape the future of a software solution and all you can do is criticize instead of taking advantage of the opportunity to design something that may actually help you.

Our most successful customers have become that way because they have improved their marketing, field procedures and their front end, the latter being one of the most essential towards success. We have customers with posters on the wall that guide their call takers to respond to common hurdles such as up front pricing, diagnostic fees, competitive pricing comparisons to name a few. They have these since they know that some answers are better than others when dealing with specific issues.

They also make sure that the information provided from a customer who is not as well versed as a tech in describing their problem is properly conveyed to the field to allow for optimal problem resolution, which usually leads to better performance and more time for the tech to take more calls. If your call takers approach to repetitive issues is always different, I can guarantee you that your business’s front end is hit and miss at best. If their answers to repetitive issues are well thought off and successful, then they should be repeated every time the same issue comes up, and no matter if you like it or not, that’s called a script!

For some reason, you think providing the right answer to your customers time and time again requires some 3rd grader reading in a monotone voice from a post it note. That’s not how most companies do it. There are right answers to specific questions and our goal is to provide as many right answers to the most common issues that are brought to you by using technology to bring up a “guide” to approaching any given question. Imagine the advantage you would have if every phone call was dealt with using the knowledge you have accumulated over the years. Now imagine if you could get the same results without requiring you to answer the phone yourself, that’s what we are trying to do here. In addition, we want to then report on which calls were closed successfully providing you income and which weren’t and why, allowing you more information to better your responses to those failed opportunities. What the heck is so wrong with that?

I’m sorry if I was sarcastic in my last response but I’m getting a little frustrated reading post that serve only to criticize something that falls outside the purview of the poster. If you took the time to read my previous posts, all the way back to 2005, this is the first time I have asked for input on a developing product. All the other posts were written to provide the same information to any given query that we share with our paying consulting customers. So instead of bringing out your torch and pitchfork and accusing anyone who is not a contractor as being a “snake oil salesmen”, do a little research and you may find out that not everyone is out to take advantage of you. And be careful because it’s usually those who can’t be trusted that don’t trust, the image you project in your comments say more about the person posting it than the recipient of the post.

I may have read you wrong and if so, I apologize. I ask that you examine your conclusions based on my history as well. Perhaps we can start off with a clean slate and offer some input that will be beneficial to all concerned.

If not, then let's agree to disagree and leave it at that, as you said, everyone is allowed an opinion no matter if you agree with it or not.

Marc
I'm just a one man shop so my opinion may not matter much but....

There are policies in place on this board that discourage members from offering advice or worse yet, step by step instructions to DIY "electricians" on the basic premise, as I understand it, that this dangerous business we engage in is complex enough that there is almost never an easy, black and white answer to any electrical question. It always involves an experienced person asking the questions to even get a clue as to what the real situation might be and it usually involves having a look at the job to know for sure what the true scope is.

With that in mind....

Most of my service calls come from people who don't know a switch from a "plug" and a game of 20 questions is needed to have any hope of showing up with the necessary material in my van to complete the job. That would be # 3 on Greg's wife's list (I am unfortunately guilty of violating all 3 at one time or another but mostly # 3) and no program or flowchart is ever going to nail it.

Just my 2ç
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