Have you noticed recently that when you are on the phone speaking to one of those customer service people about your credit card bill or your appliance repair that when you say that you don’t understand, he/she simply repeats exactly what was just said over again sometimes more slowly and emphasizing certain words? It reminds me of years ago, before the term politically correct was invented, when someone would say, “No Habla Ingles” and we would repeat the sentence we had just finished louder and slower than the first time–like suddenly THAT would make the difference. In the same way when we say, “I’m sorry but I don’t understand” we are asking for an explanation not just reiteration.

For instance, I called my credit card company a little frantic because my statement for January showed my bill from December was unpaid. I had incurred a late fee and a finance charge. You have to understand that I am one of those people who pay all my bills in full every month because I don’t want to end up on Oprah talking to Suze Orman in front of a live studio audience. I am very careful to not spend more than I can afford every month, making me a nerd in the eyes of the world. So after ripping my husband up one side and down the other for not paying the bill on time, I find that in our checkbook is indeed a check written on December 17th, a full 10 days before the payment was due, for the full balance on the card. I also see that other checks written on the 17th have been cashed.

I am now convinced that in the rush of Christmas mail at the Post Office my envelope containing my precious card payment was lost. Either that or the credit card company was sick of not making any money off of me and conveniently tossed my check. So I dial the elusive 800 number on my statement and after pressing the seemingly endless configuration of prompts required to speak to a customer service representative, I am finally connected to a what I believe is a live person. She was pleasant enough and listened to my tale of woe, explaining that if I pay in full over the phone she will waive the late fee this one time but cannot waive the finance charge. I accept her terms and then she launches into her pitch to sign me up for a payment deferral service for this card. It costs $.89 per every $100 charged to the card per month but I can defer my payment and pay anytime I want to. Now, I’m from the school that “if it sounds too good to be true there has to be a catch”. So I start asking questions, one of which is, “How will this service help me to avoid the situation I was just in with the lost payment?” This is where the live person on the phone turned into what sounded like a prerecorded message. She repeated her sentence! I said, “I’m sorry, maybe I didn’t make myself clear. I didn’t understand you. If I buy this service and my payment gets lost in the mail again, how does the service work?” She then repeated her sentence again–something about having to activate the service for payment deferral. I then explained that I had no intention of not paying my bill ever but in the unfortunate incidence that a payment is lost again, how does this service help me? Would you believe that she repeated the same sentence again only more slowly and louder? Now I understand English perfectly well but this was getting ridiculous. Then the light bulb went off over my head! This representative did not have a clue how the service she was trying to sell to me worked–she was reading from a script! The credit card company had not trained her to understand the service nor how to sell the service just how to read about it. Can you effectively sell a service that you don’t understand?

Now I’m a client services manager at a training company but I am not a trainer. I don’t begin to understand all the nuances involved in training nor coaching but I have to say that as a consumer in this case, there are questions that I need answered before I buy. For instance, what is so great about this product? What’s in it for me-will it make me more secure, save me time or money? And why should I buy it now? I still don’t know any of the answers to these questions and apparently the representative I spoke with doesn’t know them either. If anyone can answer these for me, let me know and I will buy.�

Technorati Tags: customer service, sales, sales training,

Welcome to “For the Face of Your Business”. My name is Ronna Caras. In this blog I plan to share many ideas for reinventing relationships with customers, prospects and front line staff.We’ll talk about fresh models that improve sales and customer support. And how to train and coach front line staff to use these models in order to be successful when representing your company. So they sound right and say the right things. So they hear the opportunities and use what they hear to make customers more loyal.

My first thought to share is for everyone involved in training and developing staff. Particularly if your staff includes young new hires - the millenial learners everyone is talking about - who come from a world where everyone gets a trophy. And perhaps even more so if your staff includes older new hires - baby boomers - beginning second careers when they thought they would be relaxing in Florida.

Elliott Masie, the genius behind the Masie Learning Center, reached out to his network to ask for wisdom and wishes for 2008. I will tell you what I said to him via email.

I hope that 2008 becomes the year of achieving greatness for our learners. We know that companies need to look toward the future and educate their teams to outperform last year’s work. But I hope that there is a renewed focus on the impact we as trainers have on the humans who participate in our programs. They need to catch the vision of themselves using new techniques and tools to do better and be better at work. The promotion, the raise, the chance to shine and thrive in their workplaces can be a direct result of what we teach them and how we make sure they can use it on the job.

If you have thoughts to share about ways to help our learners in class, on line, at their desks, in their stores… please feel free to share them here at this space. I look forward to being one of the many learners you educate.

Technorati Tags: training