Answering Service Blog | American Inbound

Top 10 lists on the internet? You don’t say. People love these lists online. They make issues seem very simple, even if the topic is not. With that being said, I found a couple of pretty good ones in the last few days.

Listening is one of the most important skills an operator can possess. Here are ten ways you can improve your listening skills and help your company keep customers!

Call center operators can be hard to manage. At times, I’m sure managers wish they could employ whips. Well, whips did not make Call Center Cafe’s list. Sorry!

2008 will be a year to focus on customer service. Fear of a recession has led many businesses to start making cuts. As the economy slows down, businesses will be trying harder and harder to keep the customers they have. NewsReleaseWire has commented on this, as has Precision Marketing.

Harvard Business school has an interesting article about “The New Math of Customer Relationships.”

Desperate to improve customer service many companies are going online and utilizing various social networking services to reach their customers. 

Twitter seems to be the network of choice.  It’s by far the simplest social networking site, and simple can be a great thing sometimes.

Comcast Cable’s twitter account is getting a lot of online buzz.  If you have a twitter account all you have to do is type in @comcast and then your message, and you should shortly get a response from a technician. 

Dell is on twitter as well. So is SouthWest Airlines; they offered customers $50 back if they booked their tickets through twitter.

Many business have “community managers” who monitor twitter. These companies include:
Linkedin, Yahoo, Lego, Mozilla, Microsoft, Flock, Oracle, Coserve Electric, and the Los Angeles Fire Department.

So if your company is looking for another conduit for customer service, go on and sign up for a twitter account.

It seems someone at Verizon is looking after the customers.  However, it is not management!  The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 824, is Verizon’s largest employee union in Florida, and they are planning to picket on Monday.

“Verizon is not letting us do our jobs, and not letting us take care of the customer,” said Doug Sellers, president of the union. “Customers are waiting up to 10 days to get their phone lines fixed … If you have something as simple as static on your line, that could be out 10 to 15 days.”

The picket will only be ”informational,” meaning that no one is on strike and no one is quiting. It will take place Monday morning, before the day begins.

Newsfactor.com posted an interesting story today about Indiana becoming a hotspot for call centers.  Eight of the 13 largest job deals last year are call center related, and many companies that outsourced their customer service overseas are deciding that Indiana (not Indian!) call centers can better serve their customers.

There are several reasons for this.  Time zones in states like Indiana allow them to manage calls from both coasts easily.  There is also the idea of the Mid-West disposition.

“The perception is that Midwest states have a more friendly base of people and a common-sense way of dealing with the world.”

Come to think of it, I know of a great answering service in Indiana.

Anyone could tell you this.  It’s pretty obvious.  No one wants to have to resort to email to solve a service issue.  There is great uncertainty in getting a response, and when and if you get a response, who is to say it will fix your issue.   After sending back and forth email, it may be over a week before your  problem is solved.

Researchers at Transversal have come to the same conclusion.  They have found that only 46 percent of emailed questions receive an accurate reply, with the average response time being 46 hours. Transversal also showed that 28 percent of businesses do not respond at all.

If all your business has for tech support and customer service is an email,  it’s clear your customers are calling for changes.

The fourth quarter of 2007 showed a decrease in the number of Americans satified with customer service experiences. 

The Peformance Improvement Blog attributes this to a weakened economy.  Businesses simply have less to spend on their customer service options.   If you’re in customer service, it’s time to buckle down.

Ah, headsets.

Our answering service is in the market for headsets, but we’re having a rough go of it.  We have tried several, but all have had problems. 

CRM news explains that the most important factor you need to look at (other than price, I suppose) is durability.  They explain that headsets go through great beatings at call centers.   Headsets are also traded around call centers and adjusted several times a day.  This constant strain can lead to breakage.

I would like to add to this.  Firstly, try to get a headset with an external mute button.  When an operator has a sudden sneezing fit, the mute button is the first place they go.  They would never put a customer on hold just to sneeze. 

Another nice feature you can find is volume limiters.  If you answer phones for businesses, you know that many of the calls you get are intended for fax machines.  You know this because there is an ear peircing ‘BEEP’ followed by modem chitter-chatter.  However, if your headset is filtered, you will only hear a small, tiny, heartwarming  ’beep.’   These limiter are very effective and trust me, your eardrums will thank me.

This is an interesting read if you answer phones for attorneys.    In this riveting, legal tale a criminal defense lawyer recounts his years of service and how he has dealt with his clients’ after hours needs as they have changed over the years. 

He uses an answering service to screen out non emergencies, then for real emergencies he is always available. The most telling bit of the post is this:

“We come to appreciate that no one dies thinking that they didn’t spend enough time at work.  We realize the need to set limits, and are fully prepared to suffer any negative consequences as a result of those limits.  It’s a trade-off, but a trade-off that we are happy to make.  ”

Yes, lawyers are people too!  Maybe you should give yours a break (especially if it is 3 in the morning).

Echoditto blog has posted an interesting read.  They follow the life of a dot com start-up, zappos.com and discuss the strategies that have made them a success.

Their plan has focused on two main ideas:

1)  Put customer service before marketing

2) Favor long-term investments and short-term financial sacrifice over short-term investments

 This includes many different tactics, but the most interesting one deals with their call center.

“They don’t measure average call time, they don’t up-sell, they refer to competitors, and everyone who answers the phone is already authorized to do what it takes to make you happy (even if that means, in one case, looking up local pizza parlors).”

Clearly, they take customer service seriously.