Who’s Answering Your Phone?

Many Fortune 500 companies, even those noted for their marketing genius, invest millions in communications. Yet, telephone one of their field offices and ask for a sales representative. Once you actually get a human being on the phone, expect to be passed around, put on hold, or disconnected. Is this any way to treat a prospect?

When companies grow, they often increase the sophistication of their marketing communications at the expense of fundamentals, like answering the telephone.

When executives play customer
HP co-founder, David Packard, was famous for testing the personal communications skills of HP sales offices. He would randomly telephone an HP sales office, start with the receptionist (disguising his identity of course) and ask some dumb questions. How do I buy an HP computer? How do I get service? I’m following up on an order. Or, my personal favorite: “This is the Chairman of General Motors. Can I talk to my sales rep?”

After having a bit of fun, he would write up his experience and send the general manager of the target office a report card. Fun, yes. But did he take it seriously? You bet he did. 

Call one of your sales offices
Go on, try Dave Packard’s little exercise. If you work for a large firm, call one your own sales offices and ask a few basic questions. Hopefully you’ll be pleasantly surprised, but I suspect you’ll be disappointed .. and many of you will be horrified.

These days of course, the human receptionist has been replaced by a call center. If this is your case, listen to what call center expert, Joe Brookman, has to say:

• "IT staffers are typically selected to design interactive dialogue for customer service applications, but they really aren’t trained for this type of work. Get help from professionals that have experience developing interactive voice response solutions that are useful, usable and engaging."

• "Most organizations present themselves to the public through their own eyes (commonly known as “Inside-Out”), which doesn’t always match the needs of the customer. Present menu options that match the reasons customers call."

• "Customers like to feel they are in control of their relationship with you. If your call center puts callers in queues with long wait times (more than a minute or two) give them an option to leave a voicemail with a preferred callback time. Or, let them know where to find you on the web or where to send you email."