I’ve been beating the Customer Service drum for a few weeks now. It is the one biggest advantages we specialty store owners have over our competition.

Every now and then I see stores who get it right.

Every now and then I see reminders of how far we still need to go.

Just yesterday my wife had a moment that made her cringe. She wanted to find the hours of a local store. We needed to make a purchase.

They have a website, but their hours were not listed on it (mistake #1).

She called the store. The person who answered rattled off the hours so quickly that my wife could barely understand her (mistake #2).

Then the person never asked my wife if she had any other questions (mistake #3), if she needed directions (mistake #4), or even thanked her for calling (mistake #5).

Two minutes of interaction and five easily correctable mistakes.

If you do not have phone etiquette in your training program, you need to add it. You can turn a customer off before she even reaches your door with a poorly handled phone call.

-Phil Wrzesinski
http://www.philsforum.com/

PS Along with eliminating the four mistakes above, remind your staff to smile while on the phone. People can hear that smile in your voice. And always end the call with, “Thanks for calling.”

PPS A fun way to approach phone training with the entire staff is to play the telephone game where one person whispers something into the next person’s ear and so on around the circle until the last person relays the now-garbled message back to the beginning. Makes the staff laugh and gets them in the mood to accept the premise of clarity on the phone.