Career Articles
Lead the Way to Success Through Your
Telephones
As managers, we are required to efficiently
and effectively utilize our technology, processes, and people. The various
components in any organization must support the company’s values, vision, and
beliefs. To learn how well your organization is doing, look to your telephones.
Whether those phones are friend or foe is connected to your corporate values
and beliefs.
- Does your current phone system make it easy
for your customers to do business with you?
- Does your company have respect for your
customer’s valuable time? What is the maximum amount of time that a customer
should have to “wait on hold” for service?
- How much phone system-related stress is
acceptable for your staff members to bear?
- Who is more important to your business: the
customer the staff member is personally
serving or the customer on the other end of the ringing phone?
In an ideal world…
- What is the maximum number of rings the
customer should have to endure before the call was answered by a competent,
knowledgeable person?
- How long should it take for a staff member
to return a voicemail message from a customer?
Recently, one of our clients decided that voicemail
would be the saviour for all of its telephone challenges. On the new voicemail
system’s first day of operation, the business received more than 100 voicemail
messages before
Successful communication strategies don’t
occur by accident; they happen by design—and that includes every aspect of your
phone system and phone manner protocol.
Designing your strategies requires you to
examine three areas. This process will also reveal your current values and
beliefs in each sector.
Technology
This area involves investigating whether
you have the correct telephone hardware and software to meet your needs.
- Can your people effectively use your
current phone system? The best way to find out is to ask several staff members
at random to show you how to transfer a call internally.
- Do some members of your staff have
hands-free sets?
- Can you add more lines and extensions to
your existing system?
- Is one particular staff member qualified as
a “phone system guru,” to help train less knowledgeable staff members?
- Can your system be expanded to suit the
growing needs of your business?
- Ask each staff member if his or her
phones—and the way the phone system functions in general—are a help or a
hindrance to doing the job properly. For example, ask if adding another phone
extension would help them answer the phone more quickly. Where should the
extension be placed, etc.?
Processes
Again, ask key questions.
- Start with the receptionist. When staff
members go away on vacation, training sessions, or are off sick, does the
receptionist know about their absence at the very beginning of their absence?
- Is the person who covers for the
receptionist during lunch and break times a knowledgeable replacement?
- Are messages for staff picked up in a
timely fashion?
- If you have a voice-mail system, does each
staff person change his or her outgoing message daily?
- When one person’s telephone is not
answered, what happens to the call? Does it ring back to the switchboard? How
many calls are not answered because staff are busy serving customers, or are on
the phone?
People
Once staff members are talking on the phone
with customers, are staff skilled in knowing what to do?
- Telephone one of your sales consultants.
Pretend to be a customer asking for information about a product your business
provides. Your criterion for success here is: could the sales consultant
convince you to make an appointment to see the product? (If your voice is
easily recognized, ask someone else to conduct the phone call on your behalf
while you listen to the way the call develops.)
- Call each of your salespeople, pretending
you are a potential customer. Are the salespeople welcoming and forthcoming
with information about the products? Most important: are they successful in
getting you to want to visit your place of business?
- Using a fictitious name, call each of your
managers and leave a message for him or her to call you back. How long does it
take each to return your call?
Once you understand the way the people in
your business are actually using your phone system, you will see where things
can be improved. Four critical steps will help make the change permanent.
- Each department must establish a
phone-improvement committee. It is important to also create a team to study the
phone system as a whole. Teams should be comprised of staff, managers, and the
general manager or principal. The involvement of the general manager is vital
to the successful implementation of any changes. Without that involvement, the
situation
will soon slip back to the old, unsatisfactory way.
- Establish a technology group whose function
is to understand how your phone technology works. This team should stay abreast
of new developments that could impact your business, positively or negatively.
- Set up an ongoing training program for new
and existing staff. New staff-member orientation should include the following.
- Comprehensive training in using your phone technology
- Education about the commitment of your business to return messages
- Ways to handle the situation of serving a customer vs. answering a ringing phone
- All the checking you just did to find out
how your phone system is working for you—or is not working for you—must be done
at least once a year. Share the results of your investigation with your people
and have your people offer ideas for improvements to the technology and
processes.
Long-term change requires commitment,
effort, and monitoring.
Good leadership means inspecting what you
expect.
Ken Keis is the president and CEO of
Consulting Resource Group in Abbotsford, B.C. (www.crgleader.com). He can be
reached at (604) 852-0566 or ken@crgleader.com.
