Ep #285: Communicate Better! The Doctor is IN! – with Nancy Friedman

Today's episode of The ShiftShapers Podcast welcomes The Telephone Doctor Nancy Friedman on the show to share her thoughts on customer service, how it goes wrong, and the best ways to fix it.Nancy discusses common phrases customers hear which simply do not encourage good business, and moves on to the more modern modes of communication like email and chat. She also highlights quick solutions for companies to boost their customer service relations--all in just one call. What You’ll Learn From this Episode:02:34 Three words that started The Telephone Doctor: Your People Stink05:24 Five phrases customers don’t want to hear on the telephone08:29 How to diagnose your own poor customer service13:23 Top frustrations with email20:08 Quick tips: How to make your customer service greatQuotes:“I believe in my heart that there’s a direct correlation to good customer service training and great customer service. In the companies that we complain about, I would say 99% of them do not have some sort of customer service training in place for new employees and ongoing training for all employees.”“You will never exceed anybody’s expectations with ‘as soon as possible’ because your ‘as soon as possible’ is different from my ‘as soon as possible.’ So the phrase just needs to be ‘and I will return your call.’ That’s the only statement you only need.”“Go ahead and call your own office and ask for something simple. And if you do have a recognizable voice, some of us have an accent or a voice that is so recognizable, have somebody else do it for you. Stand by the speaker phone, put it on speaker, listen to it, get on an extension. There are nine ways to Sunday that you can listen and call and find out how your customers are handled.”“For first impressions, the great experience, it absolutely starts at the top and at the beginning.”“There’s a huge gap between where people are and where people want to be. And that’s what Telephone Doctor and Nancy try to fix, is to give you information, give you ammunition, I should say, to fill the gap between where you are and where you need to be. And every company needs that.”