10 Minute Training- Three Steps to Improving Your Calls

Hello, CSRs, dispatchers and call center managers. My name is Angie Snow. I am a CSR coach, an industry advisor here at Service Titan, and the group moderator for the CSR and dispatcher group here in the Service Titan community. I'd like to welcome you to our 10 minute training today where we are going to talk about how you can improve your calls with three simple, simple steps. A few years ago, I was on a podcast and I was being interviewed because we were talking about the pandemic and a lot of people couldn't afford call coaching. They were nervous, but they knew they needed to book calls more than ever. Because we were in this time of uncertainty. We did not know if the calls were going to continue to ring. And so the interviewer asked me, if business owners and call center managers could do one thing to help improve their calls, what would it be? And my answer is to listen to your calls. Listen to your phone calls. Now, I know sometimes that we get busy and it gets hard to find time to listen to calls, but that is the number one thing and the first step to improving your phone calls. You don't know what to improve unless you've listened to the call and you can identify areas needed for improvement. So if you're an owner, if you're the call center manager, or if you are a csr, I invite you to set aside some time in your schedule and on your calendar to listen to some phone calls. Now, this is the first step. I said I was going to give you three steps to improving your calls. Step step number one is to take some time and listen to your calls. Now, why do CSRs hate to listen to their calls? I'm going to give you a second why I can imagine you probably said, because I don't like the sound of my voice, I don't like to listen to my voice. I don't like to listen to me. I've heard that over and over and over again. There is something about listening to your voice, whether it's on a recording, a phone call, a video, that sometimes it's just like, oh, I don't really like. I don't like to do that. So I don't want to listen to my calls. Well, I'm going to tell you, it's time to change your mindset about your voice and it's time to start falling in love with your voice and loving your voice and trying to improve your voice. Whether it's the tone of your voice, the pace, the volume of your voice, whatever that is, you have to listen to it so that you can decide what it is you don't like about your voice and what you'd like to improve when it comes to your phone calls. So, number one, listen to your call. After you're listening to your call, I would invite you or while you're listening to your call, I would invite you to get a piece of paper like this, make a line down the middle. On one side make a heart, and on the other side make a star. When we're listening to phone calls in my company and as I coach clients, this is one of the most, simplest, easiest things that you can do while you're listening to a call. I got this practice from when I was a second grade teacher, and at the time, I was teaching students how to write stories. And we would sit down together in an author circle, and each student would take a moment and read their story to the rest of the class. As they read their story, everyone else in the circle would write a heart, something they loved about the story. And then they would write a wish, something they wish would that the author would do a little bit different in the story. Do you love the way that we use the word wish? Not something we didn't like or something that was awful. It's a wish. I wish you would make this little adjustment in the setting or describe the character a little bit better. It's just a simple little tweak that could make the story even better. And so all of the little authors sitting in the author circle would share their hearts and wishes. This is what I would love you to do, too. Listen to your phone call and write down the things that you love about your phone call. You know what? I really love the tone of my voice. I was very empathetic with that customer. You could write down things like, I sounded friendly. I was very patient. I asked really good questions. I got all of the information I needed. And I love that I booked that call because that might have been a tricky call. You write all the things down that you love about your call and then listen for things that you wish you would have done differently in your call. Now I wish I would have slowed down my pace. I was talking too fast, especially to this customer they needed. I probably should have slowed down a little more. Or you could write down, you know, I wish that I would have not interrupted the customer or talked over them. I wish I would have used their name a few more times. I wish I would have had a little more energy. I noticed I sounded a little bit tired on that phone call. Or I noticed that I said the words over and over or the words okay over and over. I wish I wouldn't have done that. Once you have your list complete of your hearts and your wishes of things that you liked and you wish you would have done better on written down, the third step is to take a look at this wish list and determine what, which one or two of these things am I going to work on this week? Now, don't get weighed down by the length of this list because it's very easy to find negative things about a phone call. Do not get weighed down by the length of this. Pick one or two and determine and commit to working on those couple of things. Be very intentional and very focused on your phone calls for the next week on those one or two things. Perhaps you might say I spoke too fast, so I'm going to slow down this week. I'm going to watch my pace. I'm going to speak slower as I'm talking to customers so that I'm not speaking too fast. Maybe that's one that you, you do. Maybe another one is to try to use the customer's name at least twice in the phone call. And that's a wish that you make for yourself. So these hearts and wishes are very, very important. So choose one or two and use them throughout the week. Okay, so let's review the three steps. Step number one, you listen to your call. Step number two, write your hearts and wishes. And then step number three, choose one or two wishes to work on throughout the week. And then if you do this at the end of the week, listen to another call. Re evaluate yourself. How did you do? Did you improve on those couple of items? If you did, Wonderful. Now it's time to pick 2 more items to work on. And I can promise you if you continue this process week after week after week, you will get better, you will love your voice, you will feel more confident, you'll recognize those things that you personally need help with and you'll be able to do these things better on a regular basis. If you're an owner or the call center manager, you can do this experience together as a team or you guys can do this individually. You can do it with a partner. Partner up with another CSR in your company and work on improving your phone calls as a bonus assignment. So for your assignment for this week, I invite you to go through this three step process. And as a bonus assignment, I would also invite you to use your phone and make a voice recording about your day. Just journal about a voice recording of what you did throughout the day and practice some of those things with your voice to help you start to improve and love your voice. Listen to your recording. How are you doing with those things? This is a fun little bonus assignment, so I'm excited for you. I am excited to see you progress over the weeks. I'm excited for you to listen to your calls, listen to your team's calls. Make this a fun team activity together. You can learn a lot from your own calls, but you can also learn a lot from the calls of other people. And do not skip those hearts. Celebrate what you're doing. Great on the calls. Celebrate the great things that you're doing and the amazing CSRs that you are. I hope you have an awesome week and I will see you next week in our 10 minute training. Bye. Bye.