Philosophers have been asking this question for ages. How many people should you hire to answer your business lines? What do you think Socrates would say?
Socrates – First of all, I need to tell you that my time machine is parked in the back, and I can’t spend too long here, because I have things to do back in ancient Greece. You understand, right?
Business owner – Okay: How many people should be trained to answer my phones?
Socrates – What do you have to lose if you don’t answer a phone call?
Business owner – Potentially, I could lose a million dollar sale.
Socrates – Wow, I am in the wrong business. What is it that you do again?
Business owner – I am in the call center business. We are very good on the phone handling our clients’ customers. However, when clients call us about OUR service, we seem to never be able to answer the phone. How ironic. A call center that can’t find a way to answer their own phone! It sounds like good material for a Seinfeld episode.
Socrates – Hmmm. You mean you use those little plastic devices with the wires, and you can talk to people across the world. I never could figure out how those worked. We didn’t have them in my time in ancient Greece you know. We just yelled really loud when we wanted to communicate with someone far away — or sent a messenger. To answer your question, it is that important that you answer your phone, so you don’t lose any sales, I would recommend this philosophy:
Train a dozen people to answer phones. Train them everything they need to know to answer many different types of questions. It doesn’t matter if they ever use their skills or not. The point is that they will be ready, just in case the phone rings with that million dollar client. It is sort of like a security system in your modern houses. In ancient Greece we just bought a mean looking dog to scare away burglers. But, in your world, you need an electronic security system with motion detectors. The system very rarely gets put to use, but when it does, you save yourself from losing all of your priceless art work, jewelry, etc. If you find that some of the lucky dozen are not so good at phone answering, then you narrow it down to a few. But, take the training seriously, because you can lose clients that would revolutionize your business. And it’s not only about the money, it is about prestige as well. What if you got a famous multi-national company on board? You could brag about it to all of your other prospective clients (whose calls you are currently failing to answer) and impress them.
Business owner – That sounds like a great philosophy of business. You are right when you said you are in the wrong business. You should open a messenger service back in ancient Greece. You will become the richest philosopher in all of the Mediterranian. You will accumulate so much money that you have time to be idle all day long and entertain yourself by asking your students ridiculous and meaningless questions.
Socrates – That is an interesting point you make — because, that is what I am doing all day long right now on a philospher’s salary — and loving it too I might add.
Business owner — Well, if I took your advice and hired people to answer the phone, I would accumulate so much business that we wouldn’t know how to handle it. And, we would be so busy that we wouldn’t have time to answer the phone — which incidentally is exactly the position that we are in right now!
You might also like:
Call centers who don’t answer their phone
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2013/10/08/call-centers-who-dont-answer-their-phone/
Better training for call center workers
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2013/10/05/how-to-get-more-business-for-your-call-center-better-training/