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Technology
Saying the right things right
The Telephone Doctor offers customer service training and
communication skills programs
By Nancy Doucette
Have you ever been fired by one of your large commercial clients? Nancy Friedman called her insurance agent and instructed him to cancel all the policies she had with the agency. In doing so, Friedman launched a career for herself that she hadn’t dreamed of. She became the world’s only Telephone Doctor®.
“I was upset after experiencing repeated episodes of poor service from the agency staff,” Friedman recalls. “We treat our wrong numbers better than you treat your customers,” she remembers telling her agent.
Naturally, the agent attempted to salvage the account; after all, it was one of the agency’s largest accounts. As he conversed with Friedman, she says, he acknowledged that when he called her business, where she was in charge of customer relations, every person he spoke with made him feel like royalty.
He invited Friedman to come to his agency and share some of her customer service savvy with his staff.
She agreed to do so. During her 15-minute presentation, she noticed members of her audience nodding and making notes as she told them about the benefits of using simple courtesies. “Customers should be treated as a welcome guest when they call, not an interruption,” she noted.
As she was leaving, the president of the agency stopped Friedman to thank her for coming. “We learned some new things,” he confided. His comment gave her pause. No one had ever educated them in these techniques, she realized.
Common sense isn’t common
What Nancy Friedman shared with that agency back in the early ’80s was common sense, she says. But what she discovered that day, and what continues to be true today, she observes, is that common sense isn’t common. “There are hundreds of thousands of dollars leaking through the phone lines because of how employees treat customers who call,” she proclaims. “When organizations hire customer service representatives, too often management assumes the prospective hire has solid customer service skills. Check for yourself,” she emphasizes.
Claire Mead, CPCU, ACS, AIS, CPIW, MBA, does. As director of underwriting, Specialty Lines Service and Support for American National Property and Casualty Company (ANPAC®, based in Springfield, Missouri), Mead oversees some 118 team members. Everyone on the team has telephone contact with either insureds or the company’s exclusive agents.
When ANPAC was preparing to launch its Client Service Center in 2007, Mead wanted to find some customer service training programs. A colleague recommended the Telephone Doctor. After Mead conferred with one of the Telephone Doctor’s customer service reps about the types of training issues that were occurring in ANPAC’s fledgling call center, the rep recommended five DVD programs from the Telephone Doctor’s 18-module Training Library. Mead was able to preview them on a trial basis. She chose “Five Forbidden Phrases®”—the five things customers never want to hear—along with the positive alternatives.
Mead appreciates the “do this, not that” approach used on the DVD. “Nancy Friedman shows you how to respond in a given situation as well as how not to respond,” Mead says.
Friedman elaborates: “When you invest in the Telephone Doctor material, we’ll give you the right words to use. We’re not handing people a script, but we are showing them how to communicate more effectively by offering some principles,” she says. “For instance, avoid beginning conversations with customers by giving excuses; tell the caller what you can do, not what you can’t do; and take responsibility for the call—guide it to a place where there can be a successful conclusion.”
To illustrate: suppose one of your newer employees receives a call from a client who is inquiring about the status of an endorsement. Friedman counsels that the verbiage to be avoided is: “I’m not sure. I’m new here.”
“Remember,” Friedman advises, “customers want solutions, not excuses. Instead, she suggests a response similar to the following: “Let me get that information for you. Please bear with me. I’ve been on the job only a short time so it may take me a bit longer. Are you able to hold or would you like me to call you back?”
The DVD comes with a leader’s guide and participant workbooks. Mead says she has conducted numerous two-hour interactive training sessions so that everyone in the call center can attend. “Having the DVD makes it possible to take some people into a class while others stay in the call center. Obviously, we can’t shut down the call center while we’re training,” she says.
The sessions include viewing a portion of the DVD to learn about a particular phrase and then discussing the phrase using material from the workbook as well as real-world experience. “You can go through the DVD in under 20 minutes if there’s no discussion,” Mead notes. “But if there’s no discussion, the team members don’t get as much out of it.”
Mead says the hiring process for ANPAC’s call center includes giving job applicants a case study and then simulating a phone conversation. Prior to coming in for the interview, prospective hires are told that they also need to plan on observing call center activity for about an hour after the interview.
“We weren’t doing this before we started working with the Telephone Doctor,” Mead explains. “It’s made a significant difference in the quality of the applicant, and it’s lowered the turnover in the call center.”
Online training
Matt Jackson is vice president of customer care operations for Vertafore, Inc., a technology vendor for the insurance distribution channel based in Bothell, Washington. He’s responsible for some 130 customer care representatives who are based around the country.
After joining Vertafore in early 2008, he was researching organizations that provide customer service skills training. He was pleased with the Telephone Doctor’s Web-based customer service library, ServiceSkills.com.
The library contains the same material as the DVD Training Library from which Claire Mead made her selection. For Jackson, though, the online access made it ideal for his geographically dispersed customer care reps.
Topics include basic phone skills, coaching, time management, listening and questioning skills, and internal customer service. Each course includes a video section, key points review, interactive quiz and certificate of completion. Managers who select the online option can track employee progress and success through an administrative tracking feature.
“Our customer care representatives are given three months to complete all 22 modules,” Jackson says. All together, he adds, the entire course takes about eight hours. The reps can take time during the workday, if things are quiet, or they can complete a module during lunch, in the evening or on a weekend, if they’d like, because the material is available online.
“The scenarios that are part of the Telephone Doctor modules are great,” he says. “They’re short—between 10 and 25 minutes long—and there’s an element of humor to them, which makes them easier to remember. We were able to sample them online before we decided to subscribe.”
Jackson says he’s heard members of the customer care team jokingly say, “Uh-oh. Nancy Friedman wouldn’t say it that way,” when talking about a customer service experience they have had. “It’s great to know that the skills that the Telephone Doctor offers are embedded in our culture here at Vertafore,” he says.
Because the material is online, the customer care reps can access it whenever they wish. Jackson recalls several instances where a rep has reviewed a particular module after concluding a call—just as a refresher.
Jackson has made the certificate of completion valid for one year for his team. Many of the reps are going through their second cycle of the ServiceSkills.com modules.
He says he’s always thinking about what matters to the customer and appreciates that the Telephone Doctor offers programs on both internal and external customer service. Nancy Friedman explains: “If good customer service skills don’t start within the building, they will never reach the customer.”
A blended approach
Denise Aromando, CISR, started her insurance career as a commercial lines CSR 15 years ago with Bollinger, Inc. Currently she’s the director of education and training for the Short Hills, New Jersey-based agency, which has some 420 employees spread across Connecticut, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania.
To supplement the in-house instruction and professional development courses Bollinger had provided the customer service reps, Aromando purchased several DVDs from the Telephone Doctor Training Library, based on recommendations from her rep at the Telephone Doctor. “The DVDs are available through our corporate library so every employee can borrow them,” Aromando explains. “We have an open lending policy for all of our staff.” She goes on to say that she’s also used the DVDs for small group training sessions for various departments and branch offices.
“The DVDs are a basic training tool that everyone should see,” she says. “We haven’t formalized this to where viewing the DVDs will be a factor in a performance review, but we are considering that for the future.”
She continues: “I’ve been in the customer service environment for years. These DVDs are great refreshers for those who are experienced and a great introduction for those just starting out. Our staff understands that by asking them to view these DVDs we aren’t reprimanding them; it’s something meant to enhance their education further.”
Aromando says she’s also considering having Nancy Friedman as a speaker at Bollinger’s annual sales meeting.
Friedman notes that she does sales training as well as staff training. “I make a lot of ‘mystery calls’ before I speak at a conference to find out how customers are handled,” she explains. “And I always say: ‘I’m glad I’m here,’” she says with a smile. “You can’t blame ‘the girls’ anymore. I can get on the phone with anyone from the receptionist to the president of an agency and hear them say something that ruffles my feathers.”
A whack to the side of the head
Cindy Molnar, CMP, has been with the Florida Association of Insurance Agents (FAIA) for 29 years, so she has plenty of perspective on the industry. She’s been director of meetings for the last 14 of those years.
When she booked Nancy Friedman as a keynote speaker for the FAIA’s annual Convention and Education Symposium a number of years ago, she was impressed by Friedman’s contagious energy and enthusiasm. The agents in the audience told Molnar they were pleased with the skills and tools that they were able to use in their agencies immediately. “Customer service is such a big part of our industry,” Molnar notes.
“It’s not just phone communication,” Molnar says. “It’s face-to-face communication as well. Nancy Friedman will give you tips to help you close the deal.”
Molnar points out that Friedman helps CSRs and producers deal with the increased stress that a troubled economy brings. “Everyone has more stress these days,” Molnar observes. “Everyone has financial concerns right now. Customers are stressed, and the agency staff is stressed. The Telephone Doctor’s programs help the agency staff manage their stress, and they help the staff manage the stress that customers communicate during phone calls or meetings.”
Molnar concludes: “Nancy Friedman guides the audience using real-world examples. It’s good common sense that leaves you saying: ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’”
For more information:
Telephone Doctor
Web site: www.telephonedoctor.com |
