tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22311364.post4166847573030629130..comments2024-03-29T02:13:29.411-07:00Comments on Small Biz Thoughts by Karl W. Palachuk: SOP Friday: Phone Procedures 1 - Philosophy and General RulesKarl W. Palachukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10854725002875547297noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22311364.post-19454009708489328372012-03-29T06:58:55.836-07:002012-03-29T06:58:55.836-07:00Good question, Nick.
The first thing I would ask ...Good question, Nick.<br /><br />The first thing I would ask is: What size is your business? If you have 1-3 people (maybe 1-5), then it doesn't make sense to run a "help desk." A help desk exists so you have someone just grab calls and address problems. If you have enough employees, that's fine. If not, you're spending a lot of time having interruptions and a lower level of work all day long.<br /><br />The second question I'd ask is: What do your CLIENTS think they bought? You think you sold them this. But do a survey and really ask them why they signed and why they keep you. Good service and quick response time are not the same as getting a technical person to answer the phone. We have a human answer the phone most of the time, and it's almost never a technician. Our clients are very happy with our response time.<br /><br />In a good managed service business, virtually all of your daily problems are minor. That means you rarely get a call for a server down or a failed system. You may have designed a system for the worst case scenario. But do clients really still need that?<br /><br />If you're making money hand over fist, then you need to document the processes and procedures that make that happen. And don't change based on my advice! But if you aren't able to track time spent on each client, you're not logging hours in real time, and every day is a scattered disaster, then consider making changes to be more profitable.<br /><br />If you have always provided good service, you will not lose clients just because of a policy change. One of the greatest quotes I ever heard from Arlin Sorensen is "Don't worry about what other people think about you because they probably don't." Your clients might not know you have this policy. But even if they do, you can simply tell them that the business is changing. Computers are more reliable. Managed Services makes everything easier. Having a help desk setup no longer makes sense.Karl W. Palachukhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10854725002875547297noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22311364.post-26472847722100136862012-03-29T00:23:40.147-07:002012-03-29T00:23:40.147-07:00Interesting post and comments Karl. One of our USP...Interesting post and comments Karl. One of our USPs is an immediate response to technical queries, we answer more than 95% of incoming calls. We guarantee that the client will speak to someone technical when they call in and in the rare occasion that they get voice-mail we guarantee to call them back within 60 minutes.<br /><br />A number of your posts and other material I have read make me think this isn't a great solution due to the way engineers are constantly interrupted. However, it's what we've sold to our customers and it's therefore difficult to move away from this model.<br /><br />NickNick Lloydhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01069035551686195423noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22311364.post-68717157299182758102012-03-20T08:28:54.209-07:002012-03-20T08:28:54.209-07:00It took us a long time to realize that clients wil...It took us a long time to realize that clients will simply accept the fact that they sometimes get voicemail. We dropped one client over this. (She got a callback in 7 minutes but wanted a live person when she called. We decided that we could not do that.)<br /><br />Remember this:<br />There are times when you don't answer your phone. When you're in a meeting. When you are deep into a project. When you are at lunch, at a concert with your wife. Clients leave a message.<br /><br />The key is: Do you call them back within a reasonable amount of time? If the answer is YES, then clients will be happy.<br /><br />Remember also:<br />Your clients deal with lots of people other than you. Voicemail is very common. No one's happy with a massive voicemail tree that goes on forever like a bank or insurance company. But everyone's okay with "Hi. This is Karl. Please leave a message and I'll get back to you as quick as I can."<br /><br />I don't know where it is right now, but somewhere I wrote a blog post about <b>having both sides of the conversation</b>. <br /><br />Don't assume that your clients expect something unless they have specifically told you that. You have trained them to interrupt you all the time. You can train them to wait 15 minutes, 30 minutes, or an hour. This already happens sometimes, and the world does not grind to a halt.<br /><br />I recommend you have an actual handout to give clients that explains your process for handling service requests. See the post on <a href="http://blog.smallbizthoughts.com/2011/08/sop-friday-how-do-service-requests-get.html" rel="nofollow">"How Do Service Requests Get Into Your System?"</a><br /><br />Tell clients that you will do everything you can to respond to them in 15-30 minutes, if you think that's necessary. But 60 minutes is much more reasonable. It is very important for them to know that you are <b>already doing something</b> for someone else. You would not stop working for THEM to address another client. And you won't stop working on another client's problem just to answer the phone.<br /><br />Most phone calls are NOT urgent. You can't design your company policies around the unusual. You must design them around the common tasks that need to be performed every day. You can make exceptions during a crisis. But don't assume everything's a crisis. It isn't.<br /><br />I know there's a lot of fear about this, but 100% of all companies that grow beyond one person have a system for managing the telephones -- other than "answer ASAP."<br />:-)Karl W. Palachukhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10854725002875547297noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22311364.post-70699947782970827512012-03-19T19:50:06.495-07:002012-03-19T19:50:06.495-07:00I'm also interested to hear how you set those ...I'm also interested to hear how you set those expectations - we find it extremely hard (especially with new clients). It has taken years and years to get our long time clients to not expect to get through to a technician on every call and still it causes problems.Nigel Moorehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16267984791474847191noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22311364.post-90869726156943427422012-03-19T16:31:47.560-07:002012-03-19T16:31:47.560-07:00Karl, very interesting, however most customer expe...Karl, very interesting, however most customer expect to speak with a live person and not voicemail. How did you set customers expectations to find it acceptable to leave a voicemail ?Typhoonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12648751749798023609noreply@blogger.com