Serving & Helping Others
Heidi Cameron of Streb Electric in Eastlake, Ohio, finished #1 on the Electricians’ Success International Scoreboard for Call-Conversation Rate by a CCR in 2018 with a stunning 98% of booked calls. Heidi credits her passion for helping others, her lengthy experience in customer service, and her eagerness to always learn and improve as the reasons for her success.
by Bob Houchin
Heidi Cameron is a customer-service professional. If she needs to spend 20 minutes chatting with a customer, handling tough questions, and selling the value of Streb Electric to get a homeowner to book an appointment, it’s all in a day’s work for her. It explains why the office manager for the suburban, Cleveland-based company finished first in Electricians’ Success International’s Scoreboard category, Call-Conversation Rate by a CCR in 2018 with a stunning 98% of booked calls.
“Dealing with people is one of my biggest assets. I’m used to dealing with different personalities, and in other positions, I’ve had to deal with not the happiest of people,” Heidi explained. “When it comes down to it, I enjoy serving and helping people. If you make that your focus, you can work past the rest. I’m at a point in my life where that’s what matters most to me.”
“When I’m not working or with my family, I’m involved with the Girl Scouts. I have nine troops and 36 girls. I don’t get paid to do it—I enjoy it.”
From Food Service to Corporate Office Manager
Heidi is truly a veteran of the customer-service industry. She’s held a myriad of jobs helping and managing people, beginning in high school while working for Burger King. Along the way, she became a seamstress, merchandiser for JCPenney, supervisor for a Carnival, and office manager for her father’s real-estate broker business.
“In all those jobs, I always ended up in a lead position,” Heidi explained. “It was with my dad that I first got a lot of experience dealing with people over the phone.”
Maybe the position that molded Heidi the most was her position with a debt-recovery company where she spent a decade of her life. “When I started with them, there were only 10 of us. I did a little bit of everything—clerical work, answered the phones, everything. Then, we grew and grew. We eventually had seven offices across the country. My boss loved me, so I was promoted to corporate-office manager. I had 110 indirect reports and 35 direct reports,” Heidi explained.
Debt collection is not an easy industry to traverse. “My employees dealt with the people firsthand. You can imagine the kind of irate calls we would get. I had to have impeccable people to answer the phone. When someone sends a letter saying you owe all this money, they’re not calling you in a happy mood. So, we had to teach them a lot of skills in how to manage those conversations and be appropriate,” she continued.
“I interviewed people. I’d bring in some awesome people at entry-level positions. They would do so well, they’d get promoted to other areas of the business. It was great for them, but it meant I was always looking for people. In all, it was a great experience.”
Heidi Finds Streb Electric
Like so many companies roughly 10 years ago, it suffered in the recession. It wasn’t helped by an ownership change where the new CEO mismanaged the company. Heidi could see the writing on the wall.
“I watched a lot of people who I had hired lose their jobs, and it was painful to see,” she said. “I had an opportunity to save myself and move into the marketing division, which was spared. I still had 20-something people under me, and I didn’t want to leave them. I stayed in my position knowing what would happen. I gained a lot of respect from my team doing that. Those people still ask me for reference letters years later.”
When Heidi was laid off, it was almost a blessing in disguise. She had been working 70, sometimes 80 hours. With a large family, she recognized that she had missed some family time. “I took some time after it all ended. I created a good base for myself where I could,” Heidi said. “When I started looking, I didn’t want to work at that level anymore. I didn’t want to commit that type of time. My priorities changed.”
Unfortunately, even though Heidi had an exceptional resume, she didn’t have a college degree. In a recovering economy with many looking for work, companies used that excuse as a barrier to entry. Not one to sit around, Heidi found ways to earn an income. She worked at a daycare and cleaned homes. She was happy. Then an opportunity arose.
Heidi had known Bill and Rolanda Streb for years. They were friends. In 2013, they came to Heidi looking for someone to serve a do-it-all role for the office. “I had always wanted to work for a small business. I thought it would be a good fit, and it really has,” Heidi gushed.
“Working for Bill has been absolutely fabulous. He’s a great boss. He trusts me to do the job, and he invests in me. He just took me to the San Antonio Expo,” she continued. “This is the type of guy Bill is: I was diagnosed with breast cancer three years ago. Bill was the one who picked me up from my first chemo treatment. He’s very understanding. When you have a base like that, when you work for somebody who doesn’t look at you as replaceable, you want to do a great job.”
How does Heidi sell Streb’s service fee? How does she manage a worklog that’s booked out two weeks? And how does she overcome objections and save customers looking to cancel? Let’s learn these answers and more in this issue’s “Learning from the Best.”
Did Bill give you a script when you started?
Absolutely, he gave me a script. I had never scheduled anything before, but thankfully, I had a little bit of a background on electrical. I came in on a Saturday. They told me what I would be doing. Back then, it was just Bill and another guy. I was operating out of their house. I came in that Monday.
Originally, they just wanted me to take names and numbers until I felt comfortable. But no, I went full bore. I had the script. It was a little unusual—definitely different from other scripts I had before. But if this is how they wanted me to answer, that’s what I was going to do. It was funny how the, “How can I make you smile?” question really catches people off-guard. It’s a great introduction. I took off from there.
Did you do any type of training initially?
Yes, Bill had me take a class within that same week. It was online, and it had a book. I still—from time to time—refer to that book.
I just discovered what kind of a resource Your SGI HUB is. Back when I started, I had to struggle to look for videos because they weren’t customized for certain positions. You had to fish for them. It’s developed a lot since then.
You recently attended Expo, too, correct?
Yes, Bill took me to [the San Antonio] Expo for two days recently. He said to go to this class and that class. I sat in there. I’m a very open-minded person. I thought, “Maybe I’ll pick some informational things from it.” I was blown away. I was texting [Bill’s wife] Ro, “Did you know this! Did you know that!” I was so excited about every class I attended. I told Bill, “You’re sending me again to Expo. If you don’t want to, I’ll pay for my ticket myself. I have to go again.” I felt like I learned so much.
Did any Expo presentation really leave an impression on you?
I heard Gus [Antos] present. I thought it was going to deal with technicians. I went into that meeting blind, but I thought maybe I’d get something out of it. And I was about crying the whole time. He talked about his background and what his people meant to him. And I was blown away. He talked about how half of your day is your job, so if you hate your job, you hate your life. It was eye-opening. I love working here, but I never heard anyone talk about life that way. It was so impactful. It makes you more grateful for what you have. I had to talk with him afterwards. I always look for inspirational stuff, and it was so incredible.
In terms of training today, do you listen to your calls?
If calls go through Vital Storm, I have gone back and listened to those. I’m very conscious about my tone of voice when on the phone. If your tone doesn’t come across right, someone can totally misunderstand you.
Short story, years ago, I left a voicemail for my husband. I got home and listened to it, and I was shocked how I sounded. I sounded mad, even though I wasn’t. It was a big education. So, I go out of my way to always have a big smile on my face [when on the phone], and I say thank you a million times throughout the conversation. I’m so cautious about coming off the wrong way.
Talk about charging a Service Fee, especially when you first started. What was that like?
We first started charging service fees on job, but not estimates. We had to work on our scripting to make sure people understood that we weren’t coming out for free. It didn’t go well at first. But I kept that script in front of me and kept working at it. Eventually, I got very comfortable explaining why we have a service fee, as well as selling the company, even though the guy down the street doesn’t.
Now we’re charging a service fee on estimates. That’s a bit more challenging. People seem to be shoppers here. I had a guy on the phone for 20 minutes, and I couldn’t get him to schedule. He was upset that we were charging a $69 service fee. He said, “I’m going to get 10 estimates. I can’t pay everyone that!” I explained to him the value he’s going to get. My technician is going to spend two hours with you. He’s going to sit with you and go over each option, so you understand the choice you’re making. He said, “Well, I don’t need him to be here two hours.” I said, “Well, that’s how we do business. We make a connection with our customers and put an emphasis on delivering service.” At the end of the day, not everyone is your customer—and that’s okay.
Is that the hardest part of the job—selling your service fee?
Absolutely, you have to learn how to overcome those objections. You really have to sell your company. If you get someone and you have all their information, they just refuse to pay a service fee, and there’s nothing more I can say, I will send them a thank-you card for considering us. I’ll send a card to people who cancel that I couldn’t save. In that card, it will have a $10 off the service fee coupon and I send them a magnet. You never know, someone might call you back—or they’ll call you three years from now because of it.
Walk me through a conversation with someone who calls to cancel. How do you handle those calls?
When they call to cancel, I always assume they just need to reschedule. I’ll offer a couple of alternate times. Then, it depends on what they say. We’re booking two weeks out now. So, people will say that they could get someone sooner. We have an “Urgency List” that we got from Hearn Plumbing, Heating & Air. I use it all the time.
Explain this Urgency List to me?
I’ll book them out for May 20th. So, that’s two weeks out. Then, I’ll say, “More times than not, we can get to you sooner. But you need to book an appointment to get on our list. One of two things will happen: One, someone will call and cancel or have to move their appointment, or two, a technician may finish a job early and we’ll call you to see if you’re available. It’s worked really well for us.
How do you handle people who want estimates on actual work?
We tell them that all our technicians are trained on StraightForward Pricing®. What that means is we can’t give prices over the phone, because we’re not trained electricians. There are too many variables on each project. For their benefit, it’s why we send an electrician—so they get an accurate diagnosis of their home.
Anything else you say to those people who push?
When I was at one of those SGI classes [at Expo], we were talking about how to handle situations where people ask for pricing. Say someone calls looking for a price on a panel. You should have five questions to ask that type of customer. For example, how old is your panel? Is it properly grounded? What’s your AMP service? Suddenly, the customer realizes they don’t know what they’re really looking for. It becomes much easier to say, “That’s why we can’t give you a price over the phone.” We don’t want to give you a price and then disappoint you when we find out it’s going to be much more involved and much more expensive.
What advice might you have to someone who is just beginning in a customer-service representative position?
Change is hard, especially if you’ve been in customer service before and you see this unique script. It’s definitely a different script. But change is good. SGI sells itself. I know Bill was in a bad situation before SGI, and it’s made a big difference to him. If you’re in an organization that’s affiliated with SGI, you’re going to have access to all the training you need to be successful. You just have to open your mind and the energy to learn. Run with it. This is a great opportunity for you.