Looking back, I can clearly recognize the focus one of my employers had on customer service by how I was trained to use the phone system on my first day. After showing me how to transfer a call, the person who was explaining the phone system gave these instructions:
- Never transfer a call and hang up. Wait until the other person answers and make an introduction. Explain what the caller has told you about the situation. Callers won’t have to repeat themselves, and you can quickly summarize what your co-worker needs to know.
- Never tell someone to call back. If you can’t reach the person the caller needs to speak with, take a message. Tell the caller that you will have our staff member call him or her. Then personally deliver the message to your co-worker and follow up later to ensure that the situation is resolved.
My job wasn’t directly in customer service, but that organization treated customer service as everyone’s job.
What phone rules do you wish the organizations you call would follow?
[Image Source: Valley Women for Women OBGYN]
Make me able to reach a human in 3 steps (max) when I’m on the phone. Some questions just cannot be answered by automated voice mail messages.
That’s good advice. It reminds me of another thing that irritates me: long menus. I hate to discover after listening to six or more options that number two was probably the closest to what I need.
There was a good article in the New Yorker a while back about teaching kids from disadvantaged backgrounds how to answer phone calls in a business setting. A lot of young people don’t seem to know the basics these days as much of their communication is by text or on-line.
That’s interesting. Employers would be wise to teach all their new employees how to answer the phone and not assume that they know how to do it properly.