“Thanks for calling Picklepepper Heating & Air. How can I help you?”
How does your company answer the phone? You have a set policy, right?
Have you given much thought to it? Do you have a system/policy in place that helps convey an initial thought or feeling to customers and potential customers?
One of my first mentors in this business, Pat Benton, taught me my favorite:
“Thanks for calling Picklepepper Heating & Air. This is Pat – I can help.”
It’s grateful. It gives a person a name to put with the voice, and it’s reassuring.
Reassuring, I guess, as long as the person you have answering the phones can actually help.
Katie Wilson, one of our awesome receptionists at Call Ruby, wrote last month for Ruby’s blog:
Treat each caller like an influencer. Every caller’s experience has the potential to go viral. Whenever possible, keep screening questions simple, and use a familiar style and friendly tone to put callers at ease and show them you care about their call.
In fact, Call Ruby has an entire category on their blog, The Watercooler, dedicated to Receptionist Tips.
I suggest you give your receptionist an assignment today:
Have him or her or them read through all the posts then prepare a presentation for the rest of your company on what he or she or they learned.
Then, treat him or her or them to dinner after they successfully present.
You want to keep the talent happy, after all.
Trust me on this.
I can help.
Love it, Tim.
One thing to keep in mind for service company’s, since you used Heating & Air as an example, involves what happens AFTER the initial greeting. Eventually, the receptionist is going to transfer that person to someone else: a dispatcher, technician, or customer service rep, or such. And when they do, why not practice what I was taught as “Managing Up.” See, the person on the phone doesn’t know the next company representative from Adam. And in the absence of information, may assume you’re just passing her off. So instead of letting that happen, introduce the person who’ll be handling her next and talk him up. Give the caller a 10 second spiel on the next company rep and their qualifications to take good care of her. For example: “Well, I’m sorry to hear you’ve been having trouble with your A/C, and before we schedule someone to come out and take a look at it, it’ll help if we get the best possible diagnosis of your problem over the phone, so I’m going to hand you off to Tom Brady, who’s one of our very best technicians. Tom’s been with us over 10 years and just recently completed advanced diagnostics training, so he should be able to figure out the general problem and schedule you for the very best technician.”Of course, maybe you don’t do phone diagnostics, but hopefully you got the point: the receptionist didn’t just dish the lady caller off onto some stranger in diagnostics, instead the receptionist told the lady who she was being transfered to, and talked Tom up as an expert. This makes the whole transaction much better for the prospective customer AND much better for Tom.
It’s called Managing Up, and I highly recommend it.
Tim, excellent post. It’s amazing how little thought is given to the Caller Experience!
Call Ruby has some excellent insight on what makes your caller happy and comfortable.
(And I love your reminder to treat my employee to dinner…)
Thanks for highlighting this!