Add New Services to Better Serve Your Stakeholders By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD Whether you’re an in-house medical call center provider or a for-profit outsourcer, look for ways to add more services to better serve your stakeholders. This will increase your value to them and help your community. It will also increase the value of […]
Offer Call Backs and Customer Service Options By Peter Lyle DeHaan, Ph.D. In thinking about going beyond the call, you may assume this is an article about offering web chat, text messaging, and email response in addition to handling phone calls. Though I’m an advocate of these options, thereby turning your call center into a […]
Make Customer Service a Distinguishing Factor for Your Organization By Peter Lyle DeHaan, Ph.D. Companies are increasingly offering chat services as a way for their customers and prospects to reach them. Not only is this an option that more and more people want to use, but many businesses find it’s a cost-effective customer service solution. […]
Seek Ways to Solve Caller’s Pain Points By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD As a medical call center your job is to answer healthcare-related calls and respond to each one efficiently. Yet what if this isn’t what the patient needs? To paraphrase and old saying, sometimes we can win the battle but lose the war. That’s […]
Seek Initiatives to Stand Out from Your Competition By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD You’re proud of your telephone answering service; at least I hope you are. You strive to serve your clients and their callers well. You do things with excellence. You relish the fact that you facilitate hundreds or thousands of communication efforts every […]
Prepare How to Best Handle Abusive Callers By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD People today, it seems, are more demanding and less tolerant than they once were. They want immediate answers and have little patience to wait. This unfortunate trend may be even more pronounced when speaking to someone over the telephone. This is the reality […]
A Personal Note to Frontline Customer Service Staff By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD Anyone who’s worked in a support role knows how difficult it can be. Yes, some customers—hopefully most—are easy to work with and appreciative of your responses. They may even thank you for your help. Celebrate each one of these wins and use […]
Work to Make Your Support Staff’s Job Easier By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD A common thread throughout these posts is that a person—not a department or an organization—provides customer support. The two exceptions are self-service and automated bots, but even these often require—or, at least, should require—an actual person to back them up. This means […]
Say What You’ll Do and Do What You Say By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD Repeated stories in these posts relate to cell phone companies. It’s a sad commentary on the industry, yet these lessons apply to all businesses. For cell phone companies, a disregard for existing customers and preference for new business drives existing customers […]
Use Names to Facilitate Effective Communication and Not Obscure It By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD In “The Perfect Answer,” we talked about using your name when answering phone calls. This makes a personal connection with the caller and facilitates productive communication to result in positive outcomes. Besides phone calls, names are equally important for online […]