Supervisor Snacks

 Very few of our clients visit our office; therefore, the senses that help to form an image of a company are not all used.  Clients can’t see the colors of our space; they can’t smell the potpourri; they can’t touch the fabrics.  Nor can they identify the people they have spoken with on the phone.   All those key components of the essence of our company are missing for people who only speak to us on the phone.   The things they can’t touch, smell, or see, are things that would help them to have a visual of our company.  Their image of our agents and their clients is formed by the things they see in their messages and hear in their conversations with us.  Our agents then, help form the mental image our clients have of us.  As an employee in this industry – you create the image our customer sees in their mind.  How does it look and sound? Our Visual Image is provided by your message – our product; how does it look?  Are your sent...

 Nothing saps your energy like negativity can!  Whether caused by outside influences or self-generated, negativity causes mental and physical stress.  As a customer service representative working in a call center, negativity and stress are sometimes unavoidable.  But, are we inadvertently adding to those feelings through our own response to them?  Are we “snowballing” our feelings?  When we build a snowman, we begin with a small, hand-packed snowball and then we roll it in more snow, picking up layers of the white stuff as we go; eventually, we have a huge ball.  Negativity can be layered like that; sticking one event or negative thought upon another until all you can “see” are the negative aspects of every situation. Imagine leaving for work and discovering that you have a semi-flat tire.  Are you happy because it isn’t entirely flat?  Or unhappy because it means a stop for air on your way to work?  Positive feelings or negative feeling...

“Hello?  Hello!?  Are you still there?” DEAD AIR on a phone call is, well, just deadly to the caller.  It is so frustrating to ask a question and hear silence.  Even if one asks a question and the response is, “Let me check” and then silence - it can’t go on too long or the caller will think they have been disconnected. Nearly all call centers have some accounts where time is needed to look up information.  In almost every instance we are careful to let the caller know we are looking something up and we let them know fairly frequently that we are still looking.  Occasionally, agents become so involved in the search for information that they forget to let the caller know what they are doing. It is difficult to break your concentration when you are searching and/or reading, but the caller hearing dead air should not be left wondering what is happening for 2 or 3 minutes at a time – even 30 seconds is too long.  When you need time to search for informatio...

Astronaut Scott Kelly spent most of 2015 in space and has just finished his memoir of the 340-day journey. In his book, Endurance – A Year in Space, a Lifetime of Discovery”, he writes, “I’ve learned to better compartmentalize, which doesn’t mean forgetting about feelings but instead means focusing on the things I can control and forgetting what I can’t.” The ability to compartmentalize feelings is one of the most important personal skills we can acquire. To understand what we can change and what we can’t, and to bury that which we can not change, gives us the power to do more and better things in life. When our brain is busy fighting the frustration of negative things, it uses energy that we could be putting to good use for growth. Those conversations we have in our heads, the woulda, coulda, shoulda that are out of our hands should also be out of our heads. Some people imagine a box in their heads where they stuff negative thoughts and lock it with a key. Others use self-discipline t...

  It’s inevitable, eventually, you’ll find yourself dealing with someone who is angry. It comes out of the blue, and you are just not ready to have someone begin ranting at you right after you’ve politely asked, “How may I help you?” Take a deep breath; see if you can turn this around. First, empathize in your mind. “POOR GUY, something has happened to make him miserable!” Your job is to help him. Now, listen without judgment until the story is out. There are a lot of things that can cause out-of-control anger, and you must remember the anger isn’t personal. You are just caught in the crosshairs. Never admit fault, when everything is out in the open, it may not have been the fault of the answering service or your client. So, you can’t say, “I’m sorry we did that.” But you can say, “I’m so sorry you had to go through that.” “I’m sorry that happened.” “I would be unhappy too if that happened to me.” Establish that you care how he feels. Anger is an emotion; so, the incident its...

 I ’m late, I’m late for a very important date…   Being punctual is important in most jobs. Whether we work for ourselves or someone else, out in the field or in an office, with clients or alone, most of us work by the clock. And that clock keeps on ticking regardless of lost keys, telephone calls, spilled drinks, traffic jams, and all the other things that cause unexpected delays. Tardiness is difficult in all businesses, but it is especially difficult in the call center industry. We schedule our team members to be available when our client’s call traffic picks up. The calls come in whether an agent is ready to answer, or not. If someone isn’t there, the calls overring or wait on hold too long; and clients become upset. Those clients pay us to answer their phones; it’s their business! We all recognize that; so why are we late? Some people are never late, others are chronically so. How do we break the pattern? If you routinely walk in the door between one and five minu...

  Most answering services acknowledge that their worst, and most frequent mistakes, are the result of improper delivery of a message. Even with all the new technology and automation, we still need to THINK when we are dispatching. It’s SO important! Imagine you are the technician on-call for a small service company. Being on-call rotates every three weeks. No one especially likes being on call; having their days and nights constantly interrupted, middle of the night service calls, unable to make personal plans for the week. It’s all a hassle to begin with, but it’s part of the job so you do it. But you don’t like it. Now, you are on-call, hoping for a quiet night; the baby is cutting teeth, but is finally asleep. You’re ready to crash when the phone rings…it’s the answering service. As you answer the baby starts screaming; the agent begins talking, #%@&%@! THE CALL ISN’T EVEN AN EMERGENCY! The temporary instructions say, “TEXT all ER calls” but the agent automatically cal...