customer service

Phone annoyances that diminish credibility

clown on headset Phone annoyances that diminish credibility When a customer, prospect, or vendor calls your office, the first impression of your business, is how the call is handled.

Is it answered within three rings?
Does it go to an answering service or voicemail?
Is it answered by a live person or an interactive tree of button pushing, before you can reach an actual humanoid?

For me, there are several responses that drive me up the wall. In no particular order, they are:

After going through extensive, interactive pushing of buttons, I finally talk to a human. Only to find out that they need to move me to yet another person, to yet another person. I went through this on Friday, with a grocery delivery from Albertson’s. The delivery window was 11:30am – 1pm. It was now 1:10pm, and I had to leave for an appointment. My request was simple. “I know the driver is late. Since I now have left the house, please have him call my girl friend when he arrives, since she is in a part of the house where she may not hear the doorbell.” It took me three people and nine minutes to get that point, and I was told that their drivers do not carry cell phones. What century are these people operating in?
A more common scenario is talking the receptionist or another person in an office, first. Then, they put you through to the person you want to talk to…. VOICE MAIL!!!??!! How lame is that? Office phone systems should not need line-of-sight to determine whether another person is in the office. As the caller, I can’t tell if someone is being lazy or careless…. or whether the phone system is just making them look that way. Regardless, by the third time I called back, I was somewhat annoyed.

Good phone skills and systems are Wedding Marketing 101.

What phone annoyances do you encounter? Please feel free to share them.

Andy Ebon
The Wedding Marketing Authority

Practice Makes Perfect: A foolish cliche

no bad habits Practice Makes Perfect: A foolish cliche It is often said that “Practice Makes Perfect”. The reality is the “PERFECT PRACTICE makes PERFECT”. If one practices, incorrectly, a person becomes proficient at doing it wrong.

A couple of days ago, I made a stop at local Great Clips location. These days, a ‘haircut’, means getting a buzz cut, for clean shaven head. It is a quick cut, and doesn’t demand loyalty to a particular stylist. On any given day, I might stop at a Super Cuts, or some other competitor.

It is apparent that Great Clips stylists have been trained to greet a customer with moments of entry to the store. I have found that they take this to its literal extreme. When walking in, I was greeted with a screaming ‘Welcome to Great Clips!!’ from the rear of the store. Then, a stylist, working on a customer at the first booth behind the register, started a sentence to me, looking at me… but continued it with the back of her head, facing me.

Somewhere along the line, the greeting training lost the concept of eye contact and connection with the customer. One experiences this in many fast food establishments when completing a purchase. You hear “Thank You!”, but the server is fixated on the register. It smacks of insincerity.

It’s not unusual for management to get frustrated with staff and adopt the approach of “Just do what I tell you. Don’t think!” While this may be understandable, it’s bad business.

To the extent that one gives an employee better context, purpose, and direction, you might be surprised at how the execution of an instruction, improves.

Being impersonal, doesn’t come naturally. It takes a lot of practice. Bad practice…. fueled by poor instructions.

Andy Ebon
The Wedding Marketing Authority