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Health & Fitness

Do your Sales and Customer Service Functions Meet 911 Expectations?

When you dial 911, you expect a certain level of service so what happens when you company # is dialed by your customer?

When you dial 911, you may not necessarily think of what is happening behind the scenes, you only know that you need the services that 911 provides and you need it fast.  Your focus remains on the reason you dialed number in the first place and then a series of events happen that are out of your control….hopefully with a great outcome.

Why does dialing 911 work? First of all, people know to dial 911 because the message has obviously been promoted well.  Secondly, before the number existed, countless hours were spent on planning and training to make sure execution would be performed flawlessly to deliver their “product” once they were called. Not to diminish the responsive and important role 911 plays in our lives, but what happens when one of your customers dials your company phone number and has a need for something you offer? 

With proper planning and training, your company can implement the same standards to be just as responsive:

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  • People: Do you have the right amount of people to service your customers?  Do you have the right people to service your customers? As the relationship between the organization and the customer becomes more involved, most companies have more than one person involved in the delivery of their product.
  • Positions:  Do you have the right people in the right positions? People have different skill sets and matching those skills to job function is essential for an organization to ensure the delivery of their product to their customer.
  • Procedures: Anything that is able to be duplicated has a well defined procedure in place that is able to be replicated with the same result.  This holds true for organizations that want to increase their customer retention and revenue per client.  Any deviation from a well defined procedure could end with very bad consequences.

No one ever wants to plan on calling 911 but hopefully your marketing has been effective enough that customers plan on calling you when they have a need.  By having the right people in the right positions with the right procedures, you can deliver your product as flawlessly to your customers as 911 professionals do when their product is needed.

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