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Improving Customer Service at the Headoffice:

Since competition is getting increasingly more intense and sophisticated, it is paramount to maximise all advantages and improvements in one’s own sales organisation. With this concise investigation of the company’s head-offices we highlight, step-by step, the important details that make an organization stand out and being appreciated by the customers.

The first contact with our organization may be by telephone. There must be no such thing as a synthesized voice and/or recorded messages about which buttons to press and how excellent the company is in the field of customer service. After all, this is up to the caller and he may beg to differ…..

A friendly and eager voice needs to answer, starting with the correct company’s name, followed by the stating of the person’s name. This establishes a friendly connection at the start. 

Should there be a state holiday in the location of the national office, provision needs to be made for an ‘emergency’ service, that is, a person still needs to answer any phone call as it may be from interstate and unaware that there is a local holiday. Otherwise the caller may think the company had gone out of business and promptly phone a competitor.

In the customer-friendly decorated offices, we now shall turn to the most important person in the building, the customer service officer.

She need to be an outgoing person, with a friendly voice, sounding relaxed and yet professional. She Must Have all time in the world to assist a customer and make him feel glad that he phoned this company and not a competitor.

It is always uplifting to start a conversation with a compliment. ‘Nice to hear from you again!’ or ‘Oh, you sound cheerful today – you must be very successful!

Sometimes, a superior may judge this person by the number of phone calls they manage during the day, which is utter nonsense. This customer service officer is the company’s first sales person and the company’s customer satisfaction is the only criteria by which to measure her performance!

She must be able to converse professionally about various aspects of the trade, being chatty and a source of knowledge to the caller.

She needs to be forthright and true. When promising to ring back it must be so. ‘I would like to go to the warehouse and check the stock personally and ring you back!’ will always convey the feeling that things are being taken care of.

Or phoning a customer with the message that his goods he has been waiting for, have just arrived in the warehouse and will be delivered tomorrow, will always impress a customer.

After closing the sale and before terminating the phone call, she needs to say: ‘Thank you for the order!’ Remember, the customer does not have to place an order with your company.

Such a customer service officer should attend all sales meetings and sales conferences and, at business functions, mingle with the customers. She should qualify for educational overseas trips, if available, and also for sales training seminars.

This person is indeed part of the sales team and not merely a glorified clerk.

He or she should accompany the representative once in a while on his round of calls and observe him selling and promoting the company’s business.

When the customer personally calls at the offices, in any matter, he should be encouraged to ask for this sales coordinator for personal service.

The general attitude must be one of total sales support for the representative on the road, that is total teamwork in fitting in with the customer.

Once a day, this customer service officer should ring the representative on the road for a quick business-chat about who rang the office, who placed orders, which customer aired a grief. This total sharing of team work is necessary for positive team spirit.

We must always remember, when a customer calls on the offices, it is not an interruption of your work but an opportunity to show our appreciation of his business association with you!

Only when the field forces and the customer service officer totally integrate and closely cooperate with the customer, a superior sales organisation will be achieved and commercial success assured.

PETER FREDERICK

http://www.life-on-the-road.com

peter.frederick@life-on-the-road.com

About the Author

ABOUT MYSELF

For most of my working life I have been in Sales, either retail, wholesale or manufacturer’s representative. Because of this I have met a lot of people from different cultures and organisations and observed their psychological make-up, and how people interact with one another. This has given me a chance to observe and discover some positive and not so positive fundamentals in contact with one another.

During this time an opportunity presented itself for me to start writing, and since then, I have written a lot because of the pleasure I get from writing. I like the challenge of finding the right words to craft the perfect sentences which, in turn, convey a perfect story. .Whilst I have not achieved this stage of perfection, just to think and be able to write down my thoughts, is for me something very stimulating and satisfying.

How to Protect yourself and Your Customers From Phishing

Phishing is the use of fraudulent emails, websites and other techniques to get people to give away confidential information such as credit card details and other personal information by acting as a respected company. You may have encountered phishing if you received a suspected email from PayPal asking you to update your details that turned out wasn’t from PayPal at all – since PayPal has a strict policy of not asking for this information, that wasn’t from PayPal. In this article we are going to look at how you can prevent your customers from falling victim to phishing and stop phishers from using your reputation to steal people’s personal information.

The first thing all companies should do in protecting their customers from phishing is to start a customer education campaign. Most of the steps which need to be taken in order to prevent phishing lies with the customers but often customers are not sure of what they should be doing. They need to be taught not to give out their personal information in response to an email, to install anti-phishing software on their computer, and to inquire about any suspicious emails. If you want to protect your customers from phishing you need to start by educating them and teaching them about these steps.

The second thing you can do as a company to protect your customers from falling victim to phishing is to implement a policy in which you never ask for personal details, log in details or credit card details via email. Publish this policy and regularly ensure that your customers know about it. Tell them what type of emails they may receive from you and what emails (including the sharing of personal information) they will never receive from you. Let them know who they should contact if they ever receive an email which appears to go against your company's policy in this regard.

If a customer alerts you to a possible phishing incident take this seriously and do everything you can to get the phishing website shut down and alert your clients to this incident in order to protect them from giving out their personal information.

Going into specific details on how to secure your website is outside the scope of this article- so we recommend you speak with your IT manager or hosting provider to make sure unauthorized users do not have access to your database and that this is checked regularly.

Stop phishers from stealing your customers’ personal information and stop customers from falling victim to phishing by educating your customers about the steps that you are taking to protect them and the things that they can do in order to protect themselves. Today, people not only have the ability to ruin your reputation but also enrich themselves in the process and harm others in doing so. Protect yourself and your customers by putting an anti-phishing policy in place today.

About the Author

Chris Meacham is Managing Member and owner of Now IT Works. Now IT Works provides computer networking services with fixed fees and response guarantees to small and medium sized businesses throughout CT, MA, RI and NY.

Find out how you can save money with a managed service support plan from Now IT Works by emailing info@nowitworks.com.

Also, visit www.nowitworks.net for more useful technology information from the staff at Now IT Works.