Contractors losing dollars through phone lines: trainer

摘要

St. Louis — Consultant Nancy Friedman, the self-appointed "Telephone Doctor," told members of Quality Service Contractors July 30 here that plumbers could be losing hundreds of thousands of dollars because of the way they handle phone calls. "We treat our wrong numbers better than you treat your customers," Friedman said she told one of her clients. "Common sense is not all that common. More business is lost to poor treatment and to poor service than to poor product. Call your office to see how your customers are treated." Drawing a direct line between a company's training program and its bottom line, she recommended that QSC members instruct their employees to use the "ASAP" approach when dealing with an angry customer over the phone: 1. Acknowledge that the customer has a problem. 2. Sympathize with the customer. 3. Accept responsibility. "It is your problem if you answered the phone," she said. 4. Prepare to help; too often people are passive.