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!
