Angie Snow: How to Get the Most Out of Your Call Center | Podcast Ep. 234 | Toolbox for the Trades

Angie Snow, welcome back to Toolbox for the Trades.

Hello, Jackie. Great to be here. Thanks for having me.

I am so happy to have you back. For the listeners who don't know about you or who you are, can you please introduce yourself?

Absolutely. Well, first and foremost, I am an industry advisor here at Servicetitan. This has been such a fun place to get to connect with the trades and I love it. I come from the industry. I have a heating and air conditioning company in Orem and now plumbing, which is a exciting. We just added plumbing. And I'm also a CSR coach and I run the CSR dispatcher group here in the service time community. So this has been such a fun place to come and connect and meet CSR's dispatchers, call center managers from all over the country and Canada as we're. As we're diving in to figure out how to make the most of our call centers. So I love it.

Yeah, I love it too. You and I have collaborated so much on different content pieces over the years. Actually, just as a quick aside, Angie was one of the first owners I ever interviewed for a success story and she did not want to come on Service Titan. And now you're an industry expert. I have a podcast look at how far we've come.

That's so cool. So cool.

I know, it's so cool. But I'm so happy that you joined me back for a new episode of this brand new podcast format we debuted last season called Toolbox on Call. This is a format where we ask listeners of the show to call in with questions and we have our guests answer them. Because you are a CSR expert, we specifically asked folks for questions they have about their call center and they delivered. So for today's episode, we've curated a list of listener questions, also folks who have tuned into the webinars you and I do together. We've pulled some questions there and we're hopefully going to answer some really common questions about how to make your call center work the best for you. So are you ready for our first question, Angie?

I sure am. Let's dive in.

All right, so our first question comes from the folks at Service Plus Heating and Cooling in Ontario, Canada. Let's play that for the listeners.

Hi there.

This is a call from Service Plus Heating and Cooling located in Ontario, Canada. We have more than one question we would like to be answered. The first one is from our office manager, Miranda Deschamps. She is wondering, how do you start the conversation about memberships or over the phone? Are there specific words or questions we should be using. Do you have any tips of how to lead into that?

Oh, I love this question, Miranda. Now, memberships are. They're a special thing, right? As I've trained different companies, there are some companies that allow their CSRs to sell memberships over the phones and there are some that do not. They want the technicians to have the opportunity to sell the membership out in the field. In fact, when we started selling, selling memberships in the office in my own company, my technicians started getting a little upset. You're taking that opportunity from me. Because they would get a nice spiff every time they sold a membership. And so we really had to change the culture that it doesn't matter who sells the membership. You're getting work. You should be grateful the office is selling these memberships so that you have work to do. So first of all, I want to call that out there work. Let the office sell memberships. It doesn't matter who's selling them. If the office is not able to sell them, then technician, please, by all means, sell it while you're out in the, out in the field and get that sell. But let's go into Miranda's question now about how to start the conversation about memberships, right? The thing that I like to tell CSRs when they are thinking about this or trying to get some of those membership sales is think about the value proposition of a membership. Like why is it important to have a membership? Let's start with why. Why would a homeowner or a customer want a membership? They would want a membership for several reasons. And you can brainstorm this. This is a really great brainstorming activity for your office. Like, what's so great about our membership? What is, what is. What are some of the cool benefits from our membership? And just start listing them out. Make a big poster and put it up on the wall. Because if you think about the benefits of a membership, there are a lot. They extend the life of your equipment. It's going to make your equipment last a lot longer, so you won't have to replace it sooner than later. It's going to save you money on a repair call because if you have to go do a repair, Most companies offer 10 or 15% off based upon the membership. So it's going to save money on a repair. Another benefit is that it will. Maybe you'll get buyback funds or some people make their like, you know, business dollars or something to go toward the purchase of a new unit. Another benefit might be that you get priority service. We're Going to put you at the top of the list. So if, you know, we got a lot of people coming in, calling in. Our members get first priority. We're going to help them first. Maybe you waive the diagnostic fee or the service call fee. Think about all the benefits of having a membership and what that entails. And then the second step after you've got all those benefits listed out is you listen to the customer. What are they most worried about when they call in? Are they worried about the price? Are they worried about the cost of the repair? Well, this is a great way to jump in and say, well, maybe the best solution here would be to get you on a membership. Because all of our club members, they get 15% off every repair. So it doesn't matter. You know, we can help you out there and I'd be happy to sign you up right now, or you can ask the technician about it while he's in your home. Be happy to save you some money on that repair. Or maybe their concern is, oh, I'm really just trying to get this AC through one more summer because I, you know, I don't have the money to really. Well, you know what we should do? We should get your AC on a membership because that way it's going to be taken care of every single year. We can extend the life of equipment because we're doing that maintenance on it every year. And then you'll have the benefits and earn some extra credits plus 5% off a new system when you're ready to replace it. It's almost like, how can they say no when you're talking about all of these benefits? So you really, that second part is just to listen to what is the thing they're most concerned about. And then you take that benefit from a membership, insert it into the next line, and let me help you out with that. Let me solve this problem for you. We'll get you signed up right now. And now you're the hero, right? You've just saved the day and you sold a membership.

So I love that this is, this is going to be a very interesting episode. The same time we did Toolbox on Call last season with Eddie McFarland and Tom Howard. This is also the case where I kind of just went back into the background and I let you do all of the talking because you're the expert here. But I love what you started here with membership, like making the, the making the process of selling memberships available to both CSRs and technicians. I really just love in that script you just, you know, Came off the top of your dome of how about I tell you, I'm going to tell you about the membership now, but if you don't want to make do it now, talk to the technician about it because now you've like introduced this concept to the customer. So when the technician was comes to the home and talks about the membership program, they've already been primed for it. And I just have to say I love the, just the concept of why the heck would people buy into our memberships anyway? And doing that brainstorming activity, I think that is really brilliant and that can help kind of get, get Miranda and her team at Service plus really going in the right direction of how do we sell these memberships. Let's move on to the second question because we have quite a few questions. This is from their lead csr, Kiana.

The other question that we have that we would like answered is from Kiana Klatt, our lead csr. She's wondering, how do you encourage customers to leave a review? So currently our company does prompt at the end of each visit for customers to leave a review. We're wondering if there's anything else we should be doing. Is this something that our CSR should be prompting for over the phone when they're speaking to the clients and if so, how can they lead into that conversation?

It's a big part of our business. We need reviews because we're finding that people. We just did actually a survey for our company to find out how our customers are selecting a service company. And the number one thing, 86% of people said recommendations. They want a company that is recommended by other people. So that just goes to show how important reviews are. If you're not actively seeking reviews on every call, then you're missing out on a big opportunity. So getting the reviews is a big job. And in my company, I love to ask the question, whose job is it to ask for the review? Is it the technician's job when he's out on the call? Is it the CSR's job? Is it the owner's job? Like, whose job is it? And Jackie, what do you think my answer is?

It's everybody's job.

Bingo. It is everybody's job. And so the fact that the CSR is kind of the first one to get the job going and they book the call and start building that relationship with the customer, they need to also plant the seed that, oh, you know, we're a company that's going to give you a five star service. Whatever those value props are that you're giving and talking about, we're really going to take care of you. You're really going to enjoy working with Joe, our technician. He takes really, he's got a lot of really good reviews. So you're already planting the seed. This tech gets a lot of good reviews because he does a great job. That's the way you can plant the seed. But when he's finished, make sure that you're completely satisf. And of course he'll ask you that. So you just, you talk to them about that and you're already planting the seed, that this is a tech that gets a lot of great reviews. He's going to take a really good, good care of you. So, you know, you're already talking about that. Hopefully you'll, you'll see that too. And we'd really appreciate it if you give a review. So when you're booking the call, if it feels comfortable to say those things, do that. But you're, you're not really asking them for a review at this point. You're letting them know that this tech is going to do such a good job. He gets a lot of great reviews. I know you'll want to give him one too because he'll take really good care of you. The flip side of that though is your technician, you've got to believe in your team. You've got to know they're out there delivering great service, right? And your tech should know that you're saying this about them so that when they get out there, they, they're, they're in on this, right? They are doing a great job. And when they get finished, the tech should say, you know, have I met all of your expectations? Is there anything else I can do for you while I'm care? And really, because it's that give receive cycle. A review is a give receive. When you've just received something so good, you want to give something back, right? And if they feel taken care of, if they feel like you've done a good job, they want to give something back. And if it's just as simple as giving you a review, I'm happy to do that. And they'll take the time to do that. So I always feel that when I have customers or contractors come into my home and do a good job for me, I really do feel like my expectations are met. I want to give something back to them and so I'm happy to give them a review. But in the office we can get them thinking about it just by building that value and talking about how great the technician is, how great the service is. And I think you're really going to enjoy having him in your home or her. Please, please make sure that I know there are a lot of amazing female techs and plumbers out there as well.

So amazing. I love everything you said in regards to the folks questions over at Service Plus Heating and Cooling in Ontario, Canada. They did. I think these are really great questions for folks who run the call center to be asking. And I think the common thread between both of your answers here is that you have to close the gap on the technician side. It has to be a holistic way that we're looking for it. So it's like the culture has to be. We're looking to get people great reviews and we're also looking to sell more memberships. Like you have to make sure that those goals are aligned between your call center and between your technicians.

It sounds like, yeah, absolutely. The tech should know everything the call center is doing. A lot of times we feel siloed. The call center feels like they're working in their own bubble. The technicians feel like the call center. They don't know what we're doing out here. This is when it's really good to do ride alongs, even for the text to sit in the office for a little bit and see, see what the office people are doing to really set them up for success and vice versa. It's great for the office people to see what a technician does during the day and it really, it kind of really levels the playing field and builds kind of that bridge there to help them support one another. Now I'm here to support you. I'm going to back you up and I know you're backing me up. I'm going to help you get great reviews and I'm, we're going to help each other sell memberships. You know, if I don't sell it, I'm going to toss it over to you and see if you can sell it. But it's your team and it's building that cult. That culture is so, so important.

What do you think is the appropriate cadence for ride alongs or for the text to sit in the office? Because I can see a world right? We talk about onboarding at companies a lot on this podcast and I feel like when employees come into the company, they're given in a good, not a good company, but a company that really has their onboarding on lock. Like they come in, they get a full view of how the company works, then maybe they go off for 23 years do great things, but now they're living in that silo. So what kind of cadence do you recommend for ride alongs and for text being in the office?

For sure, yearly, but I'm going to tell you so I would say like once a year. Because things change, right? People change, personnel change. It's good to keep that freshness of making relationships and seeing what's happening. Processes change. So staying up to date with processes in the office and in the field, one thing that I saw that was amazing when we did our toolbox live down in Phoenix recently, we were visiting Luke Hobaika and his company and something that he does because it's difficult to pull your office people out of the office, especially if you're a small company, it's difficult to do these ride alongs, right? Like it's who's going to answer the phone if you're out riding with the tech. I want you to see what they're doing, but I can't really pull you out of the office because I need you there answering phones. So he started doing videos. They would do video ride alongs. So they would go on a ride with the tech tech. They would video the experience. And then the CSRs then have that as part of their onboarding or part of just an ongoing learning where they watch this and they see how the technician is approaching the customer, how they're communicating with them, how they're assessing the situation, how they're presenting options and solutions to the customer. They get to see that customer and technician back and forth interaction without actually physically being there. It's documented and this is a great way to scale, right? And then if you're like, okay, now let's take you on a sales call. So he has videos of all these different calls for his office people to watch and understand. I think the more, I think the more difficult side is bringing the technicians in the office because we need them out in the field producing. But why not do the same thing? Why not take some video of the CSR or get some call recordings and let the techs listen to that and some of their monthly or weekly training as well so they can hear how the CSR are interacting with customers over the phone and understand what they're doing and how they're really setting that call up so the technicians can be really successful in the field.

Ooh, fun idea for a technician meeting maybe once a month where, you know, most folks will pull up their techs who get the most reviews during, you know, a quarter a month, whatever. Maybe if you pulled the call recording from ServiceTitan and showed how the CSR set that technician up for success. Perhaps that could be really fun. I love that idea out there. So again, I want to really thank Service Plus Heating and Cooling for calling in and leaving us a voicemail. If you guys are like, wow, I can just get free coaching from Angie Snow on these toolbox on Call episodes. Hopefully Angie will do this again, but we're going to continue to have subject matter experts do this. The number to do that is 818-600-7185 and I will give that again at the end of this episode, so don't worry about that.

Jackie, before you move on, I do want to give a shout out to Miranda and Kiana because both of those people are very active in our CSR dispatcher community on Service Titan. They come there often, they share ideas, they ask questions. So I just want to give a big thank you and shout out to them for being such great members of that Service Titan community where they get more tips and tricks there. So thank you for letting me.

Wonderful shout out. No, of course. It's actually a really great spot, the Service Titan community. And that is where we mainly posted this number for folks to submit their questions. So I highly recommend you join that and we'll link that in the show notes of this too. Now let's go into a few other questions that we've gotten over the last few months from your personal trainings and from the webinars you and I have done together. This is one I pulled from Megan at Wastewater Services and she wanted you to go briefly into sales tactics. They get a lot of customers calling in for current pricing, you know, a lead, but they'll call other companies and just settle for the cheapest price. We're priced a little higher. So Wastewater Services is priced a little higher than their competitors. How do you persuade customers who are trying to save a few dollars to go with your company?

I think, I think it goes back to why. Why are you priced higher than your competitors? I know that my pricing is higher than some of my competitors and it's lower than some. It, it's higher. And like I'm, I'm kind of in the mid range there, but I think there go the office staff needs to understand why you are priced the way you are. Do you know the value of why your company is in this area and in this range? If you don't know where you are, that's maybe a conversation you need to have with management. But I love that Megan knows she is priced a little bit higher. As CSRs. Do you know why you're priced a little bit higher? If you don't know why you're priced a little bit higher, then that's going to be a really hard question to answer when customers call in. I know for my company, I know the amount of training and certifications and the extra things that my team is investing in and doing so that we can come out and do a thorough assessment the very first time that we're out there. I know about the extra things that we're doing for our team to take care of them so that I can get high quality professionals at my, at my company. I know about all those extra things because I'm an owner, right? Like I know that all the extra things that I'm spending money on to make sure that we're, we're doing well and so I know why we need to be priced at a certain price point. I know the amount I'm spending on parts and materials. I know a lot of those things. Customers don't tend to care about a lot of those things. You, you got to run a business, right? So it comes down to scsrs. We have to be able to ask the right questions because they're going to ask a price and they might want to just save. What you have to realize is there are a scale of a scale of companies to choose from in your area, right? You have these really high priced ones, you have low priced ones, you have mid priced ones. Where are you on that scale? That was what we just talked about, understanding what that is. But then you also have to realize we have a scale of customers out here who want high quality and they know high quality is going to cost high $. You have some out here who just want a quick fix. I just want the quick fix. I please just, I want the lowest price. If you're not the lowest price, I'm not going to book with you. We talk a lot about booking rates, we talk a lot about getting high booking rates. But I think booking rates matter for the right customers that are willing to pay the price. I made a lot of mistakes early on where I would lower prices just to get this whole spectrum of people and book every single call that came in, right? The people that are willing to pay high, willing to pay low, willing to pay middle, whatever. And I would do whatever I needed to. I was burning out my technicians because I was booking every single call for them. And then when I was booking some of these people that are not going to Pay premium price. They'd get out there, they'd quote the thing and the people wouldn't pay it. And so I just burned a whole service call and all they collected was a dispatch or a diagnostic fee. And they would get frustrated because I'm not, I'm not selecting customers who are willing to pay high value. And so part of that is knowing that you get to be picky with your customers too. You want the customers that will pay high value, but if they don't see that high value, they're not going to pay the high value. So it's about presenting the high value and presenting what is special about your company. Why are your prices the way they are? What are you delivering that the other companies aren't? And why, why is that value the best? And then you will be able to kind of weed out the customers. Get those higher level customers that are willing to pay those prices. I tell you what, I, you know everyone, you're going to get the realm of customers. Not everyone is your customer. But you, you do. You can't make assumptions because just because someone sounds like they like this is, this is also a thing you want to be careful of. Don't make he sounds like he doesn't have money. I don't need to book this call. You don't know what kind of money people have. You have no idea what kind of money people have. Do not make assumptions. It's about sharing the value and what your company is going to do different on that call. Is your, is your company licensed? I have a lot of people that have a neighbor that can come and fix the ac, but that neighbor doesn't have, they're not licensed or insured. They don't have their contractor's license, they don't have the insurance. If something messes up. And I know you're going to be calling me back later. Of course I'm not going to say that as a csr but you know, if they're like, well, I've got a neighbor that could do this. Well, you know, just make sure your neighbors license and insured because that's, you know, we back up everything we do. We have a no warranty. You talk about your guarantees, you talk about the a thing that makes you different and you add all that extra value in there and they're like, will they pay for that extra value? If they will, they're your customer. If they won't, it's probably okay not to book that call.

We're talking about who is your customer, right? Because if we Ask you who is your customer? And if you're an H VAC company and you say anyone in the my area who has an air conditioning unit or needs to be cool, that's not the right answer. You need to figure out who. What type of market you're aiming for, for. And if you're looking for that high value customer, how are you communicating that high value in your marketing and in the way you meet, you reach out to those customers. And one thing you said that just really stuck with me because I could hear everyone listening in the future reacting to this. It's like, we focus a lot on booking rate, but I really think that you should be focusing on booking rate for the right customer. And I just find that very interesting, especially for folks. And you talk about booking rate a lot. You talk about, you know, getting a high booking rate and whatnot. So I don't know, is there anything else you can tell me about measuring? Like, does this booking rate reflect the fact that we're booking the right customer?

Right. I mean, that's. And you sum that up also so much nicely nicer than I said it to begin with. So thank you, Jackie. I appreciate that. I think when it comes to booking rate, this. And I go back to that experience where when I was the csr, I was the office. I was everything. And I had four or five technicians out on the road and my husband was out doing sales. And so I was everything in the office, and it was hot. And I'm like, the phone is ringing. Calls are coming in. I do not want to miss a call. I'm going to book every single call. And that's before service time. So of course I'm filling out my little paper service tickets and sticking them on a bulletin board, right? And I just keep putting more and more up there because. Because I'm like, oh, yay, another call. And I had a. I seriously had a technician that was like, angie, stop for a minute. He'd been doing this for much longer than me and he's like, like, you need to ask better questions and make sure these are the right customers, that these are qualified leads, that these are actual calls that we can do. You know, they get out there. And I was so happy I booked the call, but it was a type of assistant. It was like a boiler system. We didn't even work on boilers. And he had no idea how to do that. And I had just wasted his time. And he was already hot and already tired and already. You know what I mean? And so it's through all of my mistakes over the years that I've learned so many of these important things that you have to be doing, what questions to ask, asking the right questions, qualifying that these are even your customers, that they're in your service area, that they're willing to invest, that they, they're willing to work with your company. I remember I had, when I started doing marketing, in addition to this, when I started building out my call center so I can focus on marketing, we had competitors offering $29 tune ups and my tune up was $100 more than that. And I was like, how in the world I either have to completely discount my tune up. How am I competing with these two tune ups? Like, I can't, you know, can you match this? That was always the question. And I had to have this conversation with my husband. I'm like, I'm not booking these calls because they want us to do a tune up for 29. We cannot do a $29 tune up. And he's like, the Angie, we're not talking apples to apples here. What is covered in that $29 tune up versus what is covered in our $29 tuna? So we had to get very, very clear about what was included in the $129. I had to communicate that with my customer and say, you know, I'm sorry, we cannot match this $29 T tuna. But I, I would invite you to please call that company back and make sure that they're doing this, this, this, because these are some really important things that I just don't think you're going to be covered in that tune up. You know, is it just a quick inspection and they're checking it off? Okay, your, your system looks good or are they doing a very thorough cleaning and you know, the 31 point checks or whatever those things are? And so we got very, very prescriptive about what was included in our tuna and what wasn't. And so it became an apples to apples conversation. And so it's just. And then that kind of helped us weed out. Are you a customer that's just looking for the 1, 2, 3 check marks or the 31 check marks? Because if you just want the 3, go, go take the $29 tune up. If you want the 31, we're your guy.

I really like that a lot. I just, and I love the way again, you have these, these scripts, these call scripts, they just come out of you like nothing. It's like you're, it's like they're second nature to you. Of like, I'M so sorry, we cannot match that. But I would invite you to call back that company and make sure they're checking for XYZ abc, because those are really important components to keeping your equipment running smoothly. And so you're not telling them, you're not being rude, you're, you're apologizing for not being able to meet their request, but you are offering them information that can help them make a more informed decision. So I think that's a beautiful way to create a connection with a customer who may not become a customer now, but maybe when they, they have more of a budget in two years, they may come back to you.

Or when they have the company come out and do the $29 tune up and realize that it was not what they thought, then they call us back and we go out and we do the more in depth tune up. And this also goes back to our very first question of selling a membership. Actually, you know what we could do? We could get you on a monthly membership for $20 a month. We could go out and do all of these things. It'll cover all of these pieces of equipment or whatever that is. You know, it's, it's just, it's listening and understanding what the customer wants, who they are, and knowing what you offer and the value of what you offer. If you know the value of what you offer and what they want and it's a good fit, then your job is just to be able to communicate why this solution is the best solution for them.

Angie, we've been talking for almost 30 minutes and I have so many other questions I want to ask you, but I also want to be mindful of time. So I'm going to select a few more questions that came from a recent training from you of yours that you thought were really relevant and a lot of folks would get value out of. So this one is, what are some ways we can upsell from the office over the phone so CSRs can earn commission, skip commissions, or spiffs? Are there any tips or scripts for this? How do we do, how do we do more than just simply book in a service call or maintenance?

Love this question and I wish we would have had more time on it on a previous training to really dive into this. In fact, Jackie, we should take a note because this could be a really cool future webinar or something on spiffs and upselling from the office. But short, short answer here. Just to be mindful of time and to make sure that we, we give some, some good information still, it Goes back to, like, where is your focus and what is your goal as a call center? If you don't have a goal, it doesn't really matter, right? Is your goal. Booking rate is your goal. The number of calls is your goal. You need to sell duct cleanings. Is your goal to sell, number of memberships, Whatever the goal is, and the KPIs that you're tracking that, those are the outcomes, the desired outcomes. And I might limit it three to five. These are the top things that we are working toward as a call center. And those can change week to week, month to month, depending on weather, depending on demand, depending on whatever you're looking for in your business. But know what outcomes you're trying to achieve in your call center. And those are the things you spiff on. Whether it's the number of calls booked, whether it is, I need, we need to sell 30 memberships this week. Whether it is, we need to have set five leads. We need to do. We need to do outbound calling. Maybe it's a certain number of jobs that we need to book from outbound calls. When those are the goals of the call center, those are the things you spiff on, whatever the desired outcome is. Don't just make, like, memberships a goal if you don't even have calls on the board. Like, start with the basics, like, what are the things you need? And then let's set a goal. Let's give them tools and training, teach them how to do this. Don't just throw them out there and expect them to do it. Give them the tools and training so that they know how to do it, and then set the goal. And if they hit it, let's spiff them a lot of different ways to do this. Like when we talk about tactics and different ways to spiff. You can spiff per call booked. You can spiff per length of call. I was visiting call center who had kind of all their KPIs, and then they would track which CSRs were hitting those KPIs, and their names would go into a drawing. And then they had this huge tv. Like, that was the prize for the month. They had this big TV up on the shelf. And then they had a couple of other prizes too. Now, this was a very, very large color center, but they had. They had different prizes. And so they would. Once they hit their KPI, their name would go on a ticket and then they would have drawings for all these prizes, which was a really fun way to incentive incentivize without having to have a spiff now, if you're a call center manager, it's also important to know what your. What your people want. Some of them just want another day off. You know, is that something we can incentivize? Hey, hit the school. I'm going to give you guys all Friday off, or I'm going to give you Saturday or a week, a day off next week. Or some of them want, you know, like those PTO hours. Some of them want money. Some of them just want some public recognition. Some people want, you know, put my name on the wall as a CSR of the week or something. Like, think we always tend to go to spiffs, because that is kind of, we're in the spiff world. That's how we spiff text. But this goes for your technicians, too. They all want different things. All of us have different values and things that really drive us and motivate us. And so think about ways to spiff. That's not always money compensation. Maybe it's a prize. Maybe it's public recognition. Maybe it's just private recognition. Maybe it's a raise. Maybe it's a pto. Like, there's so many different things that we can do to incentivize our team. And so just understanding, incentivizing and. And the best way to incentivize and what to incentivize on is. Is really, really important for your call center and for your technicians.

Love that again. And you're going to compliment me. I'm anticipating you're going to compliment me again on my summarization. But keep in mind, I was listening, so that's why I can summarize. Absolutely. So there's two elements here. There's giving there. Well, no, there's three. There's setting goals for your call call center. There is giving. Enabling your CSRs with the tools to achieve those goals.

Absolutely.

And there's making sure that you are rewarding based on what your CSRs, based on how your CSRs want to be rewarded.

Absolutely.

I love just the idea of, you know, the goal of the call center. If it is like, let's book 30 memberships this week. Do. Are you giving them documents that show, hey, these are some great scripts that have worked. Here's some sample calls that have. Have worked really well. Are you giving them that information? Are you training them? Going back to all of the core things that we're doing that you talk about, especially in previous podcasts and webinars we have done together, but also just like going again back to the culture element of, like, how does your individual CSR want to be rewarded?

Right.

Because I think especially on the show, sometimes. Not especially on the show, but I think in business. And you, please correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like as owners, perhaps you may, like, kind of see everything as like a big chessboard with pawns to be moved. And sometimes you just got to get in there and be like, whoa, wait, this is not a pawn. This is Mary. And Mary is really hoping to replace her old television set. So maybe we have this television prize. I don't know. Right. Like, that seems to be the way.

Or a spa day. Or, you know, she just. She wants a girls weekend. Can I put a girl's weekend package together? If she can hit the specific goal for her, of course I can. Or yeah. Like, what do they want? What's. What's something that would be meaningful to them. And you discover these things through one on ones, through having those one on one individual meetings. Relationships. If call center managers or owners, if you're not at a point where you have someone managing whoever is, whoever they're reporting to, they need to start building relationships. You need to know what they need, what they want. My call center manager helped one of my CSRs get a wedding dress.

Oh, how cool is that?

We had another CSR that was having a baby. And so not only did she put on a. A baby shower for her, but she knew some of the things she needed. And so she was able to not only help provide some of those things, but also incentivize her with some of those things as well, which is really awesome. So giving your call center manager a budget to be able to understand and know what to do with it, because, you know, the easy way is let's just buy a few prizes and put them out there and we'll have a be really intentional about making a difference for these CSRs and how you can help them achieve what they want, whether that's money, their family, you know, I don't know, whatever that is.

Yes. All right. Oh, my gosh, we are flying through time. I do want to ask this question, though, because this came up both on our webinar and on your recent training. Let's talk about customers that will not answer calls, that will not respond to text messages, that will not open the door when you knock on it. How do you get in contact with folks that just will not engage? And as someone who never picks up a number on her phone that she does not recognize, I would love to hear this as well.

Right. So, I mean, I don't, I don't know that there's really a silver bullet, golden answer, whatever. For this question, you can only do so much. But number one, I think it's making sure that you actually have the right contact information for that person. Can we make sure we're calling the right phone number? Are we just gonna say, well, they're not answering the call. This is probably not a great this. I just don't know how to help them. There's email, there's chat, there's the phone call, there's sending letters, there's knocking on the door. Right. Let me tell you about a really cool report I just found in Service Titan. It is a report on bounced emails or emails that are unable to be delivered. I set a trigger on that. So every time an email does not get delivered to a customer, it triggers and sends me a notification. Do you know how many notifications I've got in the last month since I set that up? Over. Over a hundred. My, my emails are not going through. Whether it's just the wrong email address. There was a typo, there was something that's not happening. Like, how many times do we think we're communicating, but the communication is not really going through? So double check contact information and if you're looking for a good outbound call campaign, let's call and just confirm contact information. Let's call, let's send an email. Let's find a way to do that. But if, if they're not answering, if you're trying the voicemails, if you're messaging, I mean, really, you can only do so much that you can. So don't waste too much time. I say maybe, you know, after four tries and you've tried to confirm everything, don't, like, move on. You don't want to be wasting time on something that's not going to return on you. So just do your best, but don't, don't get hung up on it. But verify you have the right contact information first.

Yeah. And nice, nice idea for a good outbound campaign. Hey, we're just checking you've been a loyal customer for, you know, X amount of years or we noticed you just joined. We want to just verify that you have the, we have the right information so we can contact you. I think that's a beautiful way and a soft way to open with an outbound cadence.

Absolutely.

So I also just want to wrap this up. I just want to share, not just not a question, but just a great comment we got from, from Courtney at Absolute Plumbing of Wisconsin. On a recent webinar, she said that her team just started tech training with csrs with our service manager once a month where our csrs, she calls them ccrs. But csrs request a certain thing that they feel will better help the csrs understand the services our techs are going out to. For example, our service manager just trained us on sump pumps, discharge and storm sewers as that will soon be calls that are coming in. It empowers our CSRs to feel more knowledgeable when the call comes in. We love it. So they're actually training them on the services that the company is providing, which I think is just so cool. It's like you don't actually have to know anything about the sump pump, but just this is how it works.

Absolutely. I huge shout out and kudos to them for doing that because I think it is, it's empowering. I remember when I first sat down at a phone as a brand new CSR slash owner of my company and they talked to me about they think the capacitor, they think there's a leak in something. They think and I'm like, I don't know what any of that stuff is. Okay. I felt very unqualified to do my job because I, I didn't know how to help them. My husband had to keep continually remind me like your job is to not solve their problem. Your job is to book the call. But I will tell you, once I start started learning and understanding different parts and the more I heard him talk about it, the more I started to feel more confident. And so I made it very intentional when I started building my team to have once a month, just like they're doing a technical training for your CSRs. And so it was like one day we took them out to the warehouse and we showed them some broken down units and we're like pointing out like this is where the coil is and like that's what a coil looks like. I didn't know a coil looked like that. Well, how does it get plugged? Because we talk about plugged coils and so it was just, it's great. Like so do not like, do not underestimate the value of a technical training. And when we think about training for our teams, there's a technical side. You should also be giving your CSR sales training, communication training, just good soft skill training with empathy listening, voice training. This is a performance job. You're like on a stage, you're performing and so all the tone, the pace, the word choice, all of those things training on all those soft skills are critical but I love that they're doing the technical training. I would invite everyone out there to get their CSRS involved and be intentional about this technical training. What's coming up, what season is upon us and so thank you for bringing that in and thanks for that comment comment. Awesome job Courtney.

Yeah I also just want to say I'm thinking about even just giving technical training to your marketing person or the people running your marketing. Like all of the puns they could come up with and they're in there. It would be so much fun. Angie thank you so much for giving me some of your time which is so valuable. You are a wealth of knowledge and just a delightful person and I love spending time with you. I hope you'll come back again but thanks again for joining me for Toolbox on Call. I so appreciate it.

Oh pleasure is all mine. Thank you. Jackie.