By Nancy Friedman
Telephone Doctor®

In a society in which poor customer service is rampant, a well-trained association staff can shine if everyone adopts and commits to some simple service approaches. The result can mean not only keeping your members and customers happy, but also keeping them period!

What is the biggest and most costly customer service mistake in business today? My answer is simple — "We’re just not friendly enough."

Members should be treated as welcome guests when they call an association; instead, they’re often treated like an interruption or, even worse, an annoyance. More than 90 percent of all customer service starts with a telephone call. That said, customer service mistakes happen anytime and in many ways.

Members can communicate with your association through six touch points, and any one of these touch points can damage a relationship:

1. Email
2. Voice Mail
3. Snail Mail
4. Phone
5. Fax
6. Face-to-Face

Two of these communication tools are what is known as "synchronous;" the other four are "asynchronous."

Synchronous is instant communication, when two or more people are able to communicate immediately between each other, i.e., the telephone and in person.

Asynchronous is one-way information, with a lapse of time between initial contact and the response, i.e., email, snail mail, fax and voice mail.

With synchronous communications, you can easily signal your friendliness because you either have facial expressions or a tone of voice with which to befriend a member. With asynchronous, these relationship-building signals are not available, except perhaps for voice mail, when you can hear a smile. Thus, in written communications you must be an obviously friendly communicator. I’ll focus on the telephone for now, but these tips and techniques are for all six modes of communication.

Over the years, Telephone Doctor customer service training programs have been presented to many association conferences. Several common threads exist between association members. It doesn’t matter where I speak, someone from the audience, a member of the association, comes up to me afterwards and asks if I can help their association headquarters. When I inquire why this is needed, I find that members don’t feel like they are "welcomed guests" when they call the association. They explain that they feel as though association staff doesn’t believe that a member is a customer.

For example, when a member calls or writes after deciding not to renew, it is not "okay." It’s often a failure attributable to disinterested treatment, rudeness, or generally poor customer service. I’m not saying the entire association headquarter staff is bad, rude, or unfriendly. But what I hear most is that the little things — the things that members expect — are missing.

Personal Note: I was a longtime member of an association and eventually became its president. Several years later, I decided not to renew. When I called to cancel my membership, all I heard was the perfunctory, "Okay, thanks." No one called. No one wrote to ask, "Why?" Evidently, no one cared — at least that’s what I perceived. It is NOT "OK" for a member to leave without finding out WHY!!!

Another common thread is the lack of an organized employee orientation program on customer service and telephone skills. The usual scenario is: interview, hire, then train using trial by error — or worse, on-the-job training from someone else who may not have had any customer service training.

Here are some customer service tips to help you start or benchmark your own customer service training program. Bring your staff together at a time when everyone can attend and talk about any frustrating member events. Discuss how they handled them versus how it could have been done. The meeting can be short, maybe 15 minutes, and it doesn’t need to be daily — but it does need to be done. Not having a customer service training program in place can cost the association revenue and members. Also, poor service creates a negative image for the entire organization, no matter how wonderful the programs, products, or publications are that you offer.

And if staff has the attitude that no competitive association exists for members to go to, tell them that may be right, but if one member tells another about a negative experience and so on down the line, more members will cancel. Then staff jobs will be lost, and eventually, bang — no association at all.

Telephone Doctor, recently held a contest. We were looking for the best and worst customer service nightmare, an experience so bad that it could win a national competition. In the hundreds of entries we received, the same final words appeared: "I’ll never go back there or deal with X again." Here are some of the service mistakes we learned are most likely to anger customers into lifelong resentment toward an organization:

MISTAKE 1: NOT SMILING

Solution: Smile. It sounds insanely simplistic, doesn’t it? We’re taught early that a smile can get us a lot. This is true even as adults, especially on the telephone. Since the telephone is the most commonly used mode of communication, your staff must understand why a smile works — because you can hear a smile. Telephone Doctor has tests that can determine if you are smiling on the phone. I recommend keeping a mirror by your desk, so when you pick up the receiver, you remember to smile.

Often, we don’t feel like smiling. Smile anyway. The caller doesn’t care if you feel like smiling or not. At Telephone Doctor, smiling before you pick up the phone is a condition of employment; not smiling is grounds for termination, and, yes, I have exercised that option. With customer service as our top priority, we simply don’t tolerate not smiling before you pick up the phone. Frankly, I’d rather have the caller think your office is closed than to have you answer the phone in a negative mood. (YES the caller CAN HEAR the smile.)

MISTAKE 2: NOT ACKNOWLEDGING A CALLER’S REQUEST

Solution: Rapid responses. We have a so-called "mental stamp" at Telephone Doctor that reads "RR," which means, "This request or piece of information needs an immediate and rapid response." When we receive a fax, employees immediately send that fax back to whoever sent it with the words, "Received and will handle." That way the person who asked for the information knows you got the request and will work on it.

Another good habit to get into is to ask the caller, "When would you be needing this Mr. Jones?" Our surveys found that when a caller is asked when he or she would like to receive the needed information, 80 percent did not automatically respond, "I need it now," as you might expect. Thus, you don’t have to promise, "I’ll get that to you right away." Often, callers won’t need something until tomorrow or next week. Asking for a timetable is good customer service.

And remember, "as soon as possible" is not a time. Confirm a date.

MISTAKE 3: IMMEDIATE REJECTION OF A REQUEST

Solution: Be a "double-checker." It’s so easy to tell people, "It’s too late to register for the conference," or "we ran out of that report." Instead, try: "Let me double-check on that for you." It’s a wonderful way to defuse any disappointment about you not having what they called for in the first place. This simple statement immediately defuses some of the tension of not being able to fulfill a request completely. And often when we do double-check, we find a way to get what the person wanted after all.

You now have three techniques (simple that they are) to kick-start or benchmark your customer service training program. Remember, the entire staff, from executive director to mail sorter, must embrace the customer service program, or it won’t work. Be firm. The association’s entire image is at stake since it is unlikely to get a second chance.

Don’t have time? Make time. What or who is more important than those members and customers? You’ll be surprised at how much fun it is to hear a caller say, "Thanks, you’ve been super."

Nancy Friedman is president of Telephone Doctor®, an international customer service training company, headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri. Nancy is a KEYNOTE speaker at chamber & association conferences and corporate gatherings. Call 314-291-1012 for more information or visit the Web site at www.telephonedoctor.com.

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