Have You Called You Lately?

Nicole Wiedeman, Training Facilitator at Dead Ringers

Nicole Wiedeman
Dead Ringers

As an owner, manager, or supervisor of your business, our first challenge to you from Dead Ringers is to pick up your telephone, call your office, and ask for yourself or information about your service offerings. Asking about cremation is a good one!

That’s right. Call your own facility from home, outside with a cell, or from the home or office of a friend. Ask for yourself, a product, or a service your company offers. If you’re concerned your staff will recognize your voice, then have someone do the call for you and listen in.

Brace yourself—it can be very painful.

Are you confident that your staff does a stellar job with phone skills? We aren’t. We’ve made hundreds of calls to deathcare businesses throughout the US and Canada, and have been astounded at the outcome. Even the first few seconds of the calls we make are disconcerting.

Our metrics-based process gives us an objective view of what’s happening in our profession—and, frankly, we’re concerned. When you pick up the phone and dial your own business, you may be concerned as well. 

First impressions really are everything. The graph below illustrates the results of a recent survey of over 300 calls to deathcare businesses. Based on our non-biased call analysis process, each call is categorized as “Poor,” “Fair,” “Good,” or “Great.” 

As you can see, there is so much potential for improving the phone time we have with consumers. 

Have you called YOU lately? How do you think your firm would rate? Every call to your firm provides an opportunity to gain business. Are your phone processes opening up the door for prospective clients to dial your competitors? Even the initial answer sets the tone for the entire call. We have the data that shows that the very first seconds of a call are lacking the professionalism and trust-building required to make a connection.

Dead Ringers can help you with the measurements and training to elevate your customer service over the phone. Nancy Friedman, The Telephone Doctor, says it best…”If there is a phone on anyone’s desk, they should be trained to use it.”