When Customers Call
Is there a lengthy and confusing telephone menu between you and your customers? If so, that could be a major sales advantage--for your competitors. Phone menus are mangling customer relations throughout the economy today, but probably nowhere is the damage greater than with those customers who are calling in to try to straighten out or get answers to credit-related issues and problems.
"By the time a customer calls, the situation is already quite serious," notes Credit Manager Mike Delekta of Paramount Cards (Pawtucket, R.I.). "You can figure that if this is a problem for this customer, it is affecting other customers. So it really requires immediate attention." Delekta recommends three major steps in successfully handling customer calls:
- Answer promptly. Paramount Cards has a brief phone menu. Customers who do not find an appropriate listing are routed quickly to the operator.
- Have a "can-do, I'm-here-to-help-you" attitude. This goes for everyone in the organization who has any occasion for customer-telephone contact. "It's got to be in the tone of voice; it has to be up-tempo," he says.
- Consider every call a sales opportunity. "It costs far less to nurture existing customer relationships than to develop new ones," he points out. "Giving them no reason to go somewhere else is a sales responsibility we all share."
The fact that so many of the customer calls coming into the credit department are prompted by problems caused elsewhere in the company strikes him as neither unfair nor unwarranted. Payment-impeding problems, no matter where they originate, are the proper concern of Credit. It is the credit staff's responsibility to resolve these problems to the complaining customer's satisfaction and to ensure that they do not happen again--to this customer or to any others. "Credit gets all the calls that fall through the cracks," he says. "We're an information resource. When you pick up the phone, you have to concentrate on listening, on getting all the facts. Nothing is trivial. If the customer has a problem, you have a problem." Most often, he continues, problems stem from some kind of processing error: a shipment went out too early, or it went out too late; there was missing paperwork; there is some misunderstanding about the contract; or something a sales representative said was unclear or misunderstood. "We have to correct these errors, we have to make certain they don't happen again, and, above all, we have to convince the customer, by what we say and how we say it, of the honesty and integrity of the organization." Calling Out
The calls he and his staff make to customers, Delekta emphasizes, are business calls, not collection calls. "There's no problem we can't work through," he says. "If an account has gone past due, we'll call to see what the problem is and how we can help. Have they run into a cash-flow problem and now need an additional 60 days? We'll work with them. We're not going to put a $50 order on hold for a $10,000 a year account. "It's never so much what you say as how you say it. The better you communicate, the more you get to know your customers and they you. Whenever we open a new account, we call the person within the customer's organization who will be handling it. We also try to get acquainted with the receptionist--the person in front of the person we need to speak with. When we do call, we don't want the reaction to be, 'Uh-oh, here he is again.'" Preparations the Paramount staff went through recently for one new account are typical. A meeting was held among all of the functional areas that would be involved in servicing this account. These included Customer Service, Sales Administration, Manufacturing, Contract Administration, Accounting and Credit. They reviewed the requirements of the contract, verified the ship dates, and e-mailed the key contact in each functional area to the customer. "Preparation, thoroughness, and attention to detail are the key elements in ensuring success," says Delekta. "The timely handling of the initial shipment, especially in the case of shipments to multiple locations, sets the necessary tone and expectation level to the customer. We successfully fulfilled all of the requirements and received the customer's congratulations for 'a job well done.' "Remember, you never get a second chance to make a first impression." Editor's Note: The above article originally appeared in the Credit & Collection Manager's Letter, a newsletter purchased by Credit Today in 2006. This article originally appeared prior to 2000.
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