One of my pet business peeves is to call a company as a client/customer/member and be told that I'll have to call back. If I'm paying for the good/service/membership I should not have to call back. I should be important enough to that company to have someone call me back.
I was talking with a friend this afternoon about this.
She works for a small company with only two employees. Very often she is out of the office 'selling' her services and servicing her clients. Her administrative assistant, who is usually quite busy, has occasional lapses where she tells the caller she can't help them and they will have to call back and talk to 'my friend'.
My automatic knee jerk response was: that needs to be fixed right now. Because if I am calling to purchase your goods or services I may not appreciate being told [you] can't help me and I'll have to spend more of my time trying to catch the owner in the office. NOT!
So - here is how you do this.
If someone calls and the receptionist or administrative person (or any other employee who happens to answer the phone) can't help them - the script should be something close to the following...
"I'm sorry, the person (and give the name of the person) who can best help you is out of the office (or is unavailable). May I forward you to her/his voicemail to leave a message?"
Or "... May I take your name and phone number to have ___ (give name) return your call?"
The person calling does NOT want to hear: "I don't know" or "that's not what I do" or "that person isn't here you'll have to call back".
They want to hear that you are taking their call seriously and are going to make sure their need or question is handled or at least passed to the appropriate person. Then they want to move on to their next project while they wait on that person to call them back.
The KEY here - is to actually call them back. My friend is very good to call those people back within a business day.
After talking to my friend - I started thinking of all the times recently I've been told the same thing and just went along with it. We are becoming WAY too acclaimated to poor customer service and bad business phone manners. Hhmmm
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