Your shop is open. You have technicians. You have trucks. You’ve spent money on advertising. Will that get the tech to the house?
NO! All these things will contribute to the one thing that will get your tech to the house, and that one thing is your phone ringing. By the way, do you know what it takes to make your phone ring? Are you tracking your marketing costs and comparing them against the phone calls taken? Are you source-coding your marketing to maximize the dollars? (We’ve talked about this at Executive Perspective and at Expos, and we’ll talk about it here!)
So, now your phone rings. Will that get the tech to the house?
NO! That phone call must be answered professionally, by an empathetic client-care representative who can get that call set and met! If you want to realize your dreams of success and profitability—profits are good—IT ALL STARTS WITH THE CALL!
How are you answering your phones? Your phones need to be answered live, in real time! Think about it…the person dialing your number is in some level of pain: “My roof is leaking!”; “I have no heating/cooling!”; “The basement’s flooded!”; “My panel is sparking!” Any one of these situations is a threat to people and property—and any delay in addressing them makes it worse! People are calling you for help and they can’t leave a message and wait for your call back. Answer your phones live, all the time.
Answering phones live takes people—good people. Your CCR is your frontline brand ambassador and provides impact for your business. Positive impact gets the call set and met. Negative impact drops the call and loses clients.
DON’T STOP READING! YOU NEED TO HEAR THIS!
Answering the telephone and getting the call set and met is an art. It requires attitude and skill. The attitude is one of empathy, leadership, knowledge, and reassurance. Top CCRs know how it feels to have the problem(s) mentioned above, and they want to help the caller. Top CCRs take the caller through the steps by detailing what will happen today, and lets the caller know they’ve contacted the right place. The attitude comes with hiring the right CCR. The skill required grows out of the right attitude and the right training. Because the work of the CCR is an art, Learning Alliance provides the right training with the “Telephone Essentials” course. Your SGI membership provides access to top-notch training with Learning Alliance.
Learning Alliance provides the steps to booking a service call, building value in diagnostics and StraightForward Pricing®, planting the club-membership seed, addressing client concerns, and reassuring the caller so the call is set and met.
It is critical that you hire the right attitude and provide the proper training and environment for your CCRs. As with any skill or art form, training must be constant and progressive—use it or lose it! Send your team to training and build a training plan for them. Implement weekly meetings that provide a forum to discuss your challenges on the phone, role-play for success, and recognize your team’s achievements.
When your phone rings, it costs money. Every ring on that call moves the caller closer to hanging up—calls must be answered promptly. If the call does not get answered and service booked, you’ve just—at the least—doubled your marketing costs. That doesn’t take into consideration the negative experience for the caller or what they’ll tell others about your company.
So much can happen on a call: You can get the call set and met, gain a client for life, and build profit in your business. On the other hand, the caller can go to voicemail, or he/she talks to a call-taker who can’t help, and the caller hangs up. That caller then tells everyone about the bad experience.
It all starts with you, because it all starts with the call. Here’s to your success.