Transcripts
Hello, welcome to the Close The Loop podcast.
Kevin Dieny:Today, we're going to be talking about fielding inbound calls.
Kevin Dieny:And to dive deep into this exciting subject is Matt Widmyer.
Kevin Dieny:He's a colleague of ours.
Kevin Dieny:He has been working with me here for a while, and, but he's proceeded
Kevin Dieny:me at the CallSource for, you know, quite a few quite a while.
Kevin Dieny:How long have you been here Matt?
Matt Widmyer:Going on 10 years here.
Matt Widmyer:Yeah this is...
Matt Widmyer:a long time.
Kevin Dieny:Yeah.
Kevin Dieny:And one of the great things he does in our team is he manages
Kevin Dieny:a bunch of call handlers.
Kevin Dieny:He manages a team.
Kevin Dieny:We, uh, their roles are, you know, encompassing the SDR.
Kevin Dieny:They take inbound and they work outbound.
Kevin Dieny:And so I thought he'd be a really great person we could talk to about managing
Kevin Dieny:the inbound side, managing how, you know, call handlers are taking calls.
Kevin Dieny:Not only that we, you know, drink from our own, well, here we use all
Kevin Dieny:of our products to achieve this.
Kevin Dieny:And so we'll be talking about all the things Matt's doing, everything
Kevin Dieny:you can do in your business to better field inbound calls.
Kevin Dieny:So, Matt, this is just off the cuff here.
Kevin Dieny:Why do you think we're talking about this?
Matt Widmyer:Because we are trying...
Matt Widmyer:there is...
Matt Widmyer:this is a podcast about attribution, right?
Matt Widmyer:So money is being spent to drum up leads and they're going into this process of
Matt Widmyer:fielding, and talking to these leads.
Matt Widmyer:So yeah, if money's gonna be spent, we want to make sure
Matt Widmyer:it's going into a good system.
Matt Widmyer:So yeah, this is absolutely, um, important that we, that we dive
Matt Widmyer:into the subject because not, you know, it doesn't happen a lot.
Kevin Dieny:Correct.
Kevin Dieny:Yeah.
Kevin Dieny:I also see it as if a business is growing and you take phone calls today.
Kevin Dieny:If you're planning on growing, that should mean that more calls
Kevin Dieny:should be coming in, hopefully.
Kevin Dieny:That, that hopefully does equal, that more people are looking
Kevin Dieny:for you and your business.
Kevin Dieny:As you expand, as you grow, as you add to your offerings and to your
Kevin Dieny:products, your services, as you add more locations, as you add, you know, greater
Kevin Dieny:accessibility to consumers, patients, and whoever it is that you're going after.
Kevin Dieny:And phone calls are really unique.
Kevin Dieny:I think that's something we also quickly want to highlight in the beginning here.
Kevin Dieny:Is how unique a phone call is, and that is unique amongst all the conversion types.
Kevin Dieny:All the ways you interact with the consumer.
Kevin Dieny:And there's a lot, right?
Kevin Dieny:There's emails, there's social media, there's chats, there's in person.
Kevin Dieny:You can interact with someone in a zoom virtual meeting.
Kevin Dieny:You can have someone on the phone and you can have some buddy who you're
Kevin Dieny:texting with someone who completes like a form or a letter, direct mail, like
Kevin Dieny:hear you on the radio, the television.
Kevin Dieny:There's so many ways.
Kevin Dieny:I'd say a consumer of yours could potentially interact with your business.
Kevin Dieny:In a phone call, it has a lot of unique components to it.
Kevin Dieny:So Matt, did you want to touch on any of those?
Kevin Dieny:What makes a phone call so unique compared to other things?
Matt Widmyer:Yeah, so we live in the age of research, right?
Matt Widmyer:So every decision we make is not calling up and not knowing anything.
Matt Widmyer:I feel like most people, they do their investigative research before even
Matt Widmyer:picking up the phone and deciding to call.
Matt Widmyer:By the time they've got to that point they're far better and they want,
Matt Widmyer:they want help right then and there.
Matt Widmyer:They, they don't want to get put on some callback list or something like that.
Matt Widmyer:Otherwise it would just fill out a form on the website or, you know, a
Matt Widmyer:contact me form if they're picking up their phone and making it a point to go
Matt Widmyer:through whatever menus and everything you have set up to talk to somebody that
Matt Widmyer:they're wanting to get something done.
Kevin Dieny:I think a lot of businesses that don't have phone calls, there's
Kevin Dieny:a good reason for not having it.
Kevin Dieny:I mean, it's costly to have people who are going to take the calls.
Kevin Dieny:You also have to make them available for either your business hours or 24
Kevin Dieny:7 from whatever you're going to do.
Kevin Dieny:So you may have to find a call center.
Kevin Dieny:You may have to, you know, hire someone to be able to take those phone calls.
Kevin Dieny:And then there's the performance of that person, the training,
Kevin Dieny:making sure they know all the products and services you have.
Kevin Dieny:You don't want that to be the gap you're spending all this money
Kevin Dieny:on, marketing, like Matt said, and then no one's, no one's setting
Kevin Dieny:appointments, no one's buying your stuff.
Kevin Dieny:So there are companies who are like, ah, it's easier for me just to not
Kevin Dieny:have a phone call, just to not have a phone number and consumers go,
Kevin Dieny:well, how do I contact this business?
Kevin Dieny:What do I have to do?
Kevin Dieny:I have to submit my request in writing.
Kevin Dieny:Do I, what do I have to do?
Kevin Dieny:And it's just so costly, but it's also such an intimate
Kevin Dieny:place to talk to a consumer.
Kevin Dieny:In my opinion, it's possibly the best conversion type that exists.
Kevin Dieny:Because you have them in real time, you can ask them questions,
Kevin Dieny:you can find out from them exactly in their words, what is going on.
Kevin Dieny:They're not, there's not form fields for them to populate and fill out.
Kevin Dieny:It's, you know, obviously they're not going to be able to select
Kevin Dieny:from a dropdown of options.
Kevin Dieny:They're going to just tell you straight what their problems they are having,
Kevin Dieny:what thing they're looking for, why they bother to make that call.
Kevin Dieny:A lot of people are anxious about calling a business, calling someone,
Kevin Dieny:and they're like, oh, I don't want to have to talk to someone.
Kevin Dieny:What if they try to sell to me, there's all this anxiety around a call too.
Kevin Dieny:So it's a loaded thing.
Kevin Dieny:So on the business end, Matt, why do you think businesses today are failing
Kevin Dieny:at handling and fielding inbound calls?
Matt Widmyer:Yeah, I think, they don't have the infrastructure
Matt Widmyer:for the calls to go into.
Matt Widmyer:They have not, um, went through a formal process and uh developed
Matt Widmyer:to any kind of a, protocol for how these calls should be handled.
Matt Widmyer:Right.
Matt Widmyer:We don't know who a great customer is to work with versus a really bad customer.
Matt Widmyer:Some of these businesses might be turning people away for one reason or another.
Matt Widmyer:Maybe they don't provide a service.
Matt Widmyer:Maybe they're missing the mark.
Matt Widmyer:I think the due diligence beforehand, when you decide, Hey, I'm going
Matt Widmyer:to spend money on marketing.
Matt Widmyer:The due diligence needs to be done on the front end, before that happens.
Matt Widmyer:A lot of people make the mistake of spending a ton of marketing
Matt Widmyer:before they have a nice operational system for these leads to fall into.
Matt Widmyer:So what happens is they end up with a lot of angry customers right out of the gate.
Matt Widmyer:They end up with some quick learnings and hopefully they're able to
Matt Widmyer:apply those before its too late.
Matt Widmyer:But yeah, I think just the main reason why a lot of businesses struggle is
Matt Widmyer:because the focus is too much on like, Hey, how can we make the most money in
Matt Widmyer:the shortest amount of time possible?
Matt Widmyer:And you will, you'll get, you know, you'll get customers even
Matt Widmyer:go through a poor experience that will still end up being customers.
Matt Widmyer:You're not gonna, you know, you're not gonna miss all of them, but I feel like
Matt Widmyer:these are the things that need to be kind of like, you know, give everybody a
Matt Widmyer:similar yet, somewhat unique experience based on whatever situation they have.
Kevin Dieny:Yeah, inbound is unique in itself.
Kevin Dieny:It's a different than outbound, which is it's, you know, there's two things.
Kevin Dieny:There's people are either coming to you or you're going after them.
Kevin Dieny:So what, what really comes down to the difference there between
Kevin Dieny:an inbound fielding of calls and an outbound calling strategy?
Matt Widmyer:Yeah.
Matt Widmyer:So the outbound is you're telling them basically whatever you want
Matt Widmyer:them to hear and inbound is there's a lot more variables involved, right?
Matt Widmyer:So we have to kind of a little bit wild and unexpected at times, and you have
Matt Widmyer:to kind of wrangle it in and distill down, see if whatever pain point, the
Matt Widmyer:potential customer calling in, if that's something you're able to help with.
Matt Widmyer:And then, you need to be able to get, be able to get, verify their information.
Matt Widmyer:On an outbound perspective, you're presenting solutions versus trying
Matt Widmyer:to figure out what solution.
Matt Widmyer:So you're coming with, your anticipating that they might
Matt Widmyer:have some sort of an issue.
Matt Widmyer:And you're presenting a couple proactively presenting a couple
Matt Widmyer:solutions, to their potential problem.
Matt Widmyer:The idea of an outbound is you're kind of loosening up the status quo and from
Matt Widmyer:an inbound perspective there, something is going on that they need help with.
Matt Widmyer:So a little bit too, from an inbound perspective, there's
Matt Widmyer:a lot more variables, I think.
Kevin Dieny:Yeah.
Kevin Dieny:And you can only control so much around the kind of quality of
Kevin Dieny:calls they're going to get inbound.
Kevin Dieny:They could come from a lot of places.
Kevin Dieny:So if we were to take what a business can do to set up their inbound team.
Kevin Dieny:To set up everyone who is taking calls in the best possible way.
Kevin Dieny:So everything that you're going to do before they start taking calls,
Kevin Dieny:like the pre-call stuff you could do, what kinds of things help a team be
Kevin Dieny:prepared for taking inbound calls?
Matt Widmyer:Yeah, sure.
Matt Widmyer:So there's a few different things you can do.
Matt Widmyer:Some of the things that we have in place are, we practice, we role-play
Matt Widmyer:with potential customers and kind of do a mock inbound phone calls.
Matt Widmyer:This piece is a little bit more important.
Matt Widmyer:It's a little more of a, like a handle with care type thing
Matt Widmyer:versus an outbound approach.
Matt Widmyer:Right.
Matt Widmyer:So you'll, you'll want practice.
Matt Widmyer:You'll definitely want role-playing in there.
Matt Widmyer:But I think a nice little, you know, always running in the background
Matt Widmyer:way to control the quality is, but to have some sort of a scorecard.
Matt Widmyer:And you know, this is my plug for what we do here as a company, but, there are
Matt Widmyer:best practices on what should be should and should not be said, over the phone.
Matt Widmyer:A quick and easy way of QA'ing calls, is having call handlers measured, in
Matt Widmyer:terms of what they're saying versus what should be said in the best case scenario.
Matt Widmyer:And then that way we can identify skill gaps and work with our
Matt Widmyer:teams on how to get better.
Kevin Dieny:That's a really good point.
Kevin Dieny:The idea of the scorecard, right.
Kevin Dieny:Is what kinds of things do you break down the call?
Kevin Dieny:What kinds of things do we want said either in the beginning,
Kevin Dieny:what kinds of things do we want said in the middle and the end?
Kevin Dieny:And obviously an inbound call can go in a lot of directions.
Kevin Dieny:There's a lot of things, where that call could go.
Kevin Dieny:It could be towards sales, support.
Kevin Dieny:It could be a wrong call.
Kevin Dieny:Wrong dialer could be someone trying to sell.
Kevin Dieny:It could be someone trying to reach a family member or trying to get hired.
Kevin Dieny:There's so many possibilities for calls.
Kevin Dieny:Once that phone rings, it's like picking it up and roulette'ing, okay.
Kevin Dieny:What kind of a caller am I going to get right now?
Kevin Dieny:And there's so much going there.
Kevin Dieny:Are, are you when you, when we talk about scorecards, are we talking about scripts?.
Matt Widmyer:Not necessarily scripts.
Matt Widmyer:I think the only thing you could really script on the inbound or
Matt Widmyer:outbound conversation is really the first thing you're gonna say
Matt Widmyer:to them, the positioning statement.
Matt Widmyer:Right?
Matt Widmyer:So, um, you can absolutely open with something as you should.
Matt Widmyer:So that way, again, all guests get a similar experience.
Matt Widmyer:So, hi, thanks for calling X, Y, and Z.
Matt Widmyer:This is Matt.
Matt Widmyer:How can I help you today?
Matt Widmyer:Or some other businesses?
Matt Widmyer:How can, how can I brighten your smile today?
Matt Widmyer:Or how can I make you feel better or whatever it is, um, it's that, you
Matt Widmyer:know, around that company's brand.
Matt Widmyer:So they have specifics, in terms of what to say and what not to say.
Kevin Dieny:There's some, the way I like to look at it is, especially in it.
Kevin Dieny:And it's all, it's all the way through marketing too.
Kevin Dieny:Every time you've got a customer, every time you get their attention,
Kevin Dieny:you get a few seconds of their time.
Kevin Dieny:That whatever you're delivering to them, that value has to be able to sell
Kevin Dieny:them for the next, five 10 seconds.
Kevin Dieny:And so you're constantly making sure that you're listening,
Kevin Dieny:attentive, providing value.
Kevin Dieny:You're asking the right questions, asking questions, you're
Kevin Dieny:trying to solve their problem.
Kevin Dieny:You're trying to figure out what the problem is.
Kevin Dieny:You're like, it could be a lot of things, but essentially every five,
Kevin Dieny:15, whatever seconds it is of every interaction with the consumer.
Kevin Dieny:With the caller at the other end, has to sell the next block of time.
Kevin Dieny:And you mentioned the prop the proposition that the value statements,
Kevin Dieny:sometimes we call it the greeting.
Kevin Dieny:And you did say parts of the greeting that could make it more effective.
Kevin Dieny:So what were those things again, that a business may be thinking,
Kevin Dieny:well, how should my team be greeting callers when they call inbound?
Matt Widmyer:Yeah, I think it should be a combination of introducing your, yourself
Matt Widmyer:and the company who they're speaking with.
Matt Widmyer:Making sure that they have the right company is a good first step.
Matt Widmyer:And then, diagnosing it or at least beginning to diagnose whatever it
Matt Widmyer:is that they're calling you about.
Matt Widmyer:Right.
Matt Widmyer:Which is how can I help you today is, is a perfect way to just,
Matt Widmyer:you know, inquire about that.
Kevin Dieny:So there are certain things you can also do pre-call to make sure
Kevin Dieny:that calls are being sorted and managed or distributed in the correct ways.
Kevin Dieny:And those things are like IVR there's on hold.
Kevin Dieny:Can you explain what IVR technology does and is, and what its purpose is for.
Matt Widmyer:Yeah, I might botch this, but I think IVR
Matt Widmyer:is, interactive voice, routing?
Matt Widmyer:Maybe I got that right.
Matt Widmyer:Interactive Voice...
Matt Widmyer:Response.
Matt Widmyer:Ah, almost there.
Matt Widmyer:Interactive voice response.
Matt Widmyer:All this stuff, by the way, before we were talking about what to say on
Matt Widmyer:the phone, all that stuff, all the technologies should be working and in
Matt Widmyer:place, and it should be tested before.
Matt Widmyer:Before you spend any money on any kind of campaigns.
Matt Widmyer:Right?
Matt Widmyer:So all that needs to be tested.
Matt Widmyer:So this is really the first step.
Matt Widmyer:Yeah, the routing and the reason for these menus is it limits the
Matt Widmyer:amounts and the types of calls that specific departments get.
Matt Widmyer:Right?
Matt Widmyer:If you're calling a dentist office, maybe they have, an extension for either.
Matt Widmyer:If you're an existing customer, press one.
Matt Widmyer:If you're a new customer, press two, completely different questions that are
Matt Widmyer:gonna be asked, on those two phone calls.
Matt Widmyer:I mean, you're going to get some of the same.
Matt Widmyer:You are verifying, the name, the information, all that stuff, but
Matt Widmyer:some of it's going to be different.
Matt Widmyer:I went through this, experience firsthand here when I started
Matt Widmyer:managing the inbound lead team.
Matt Widmyer:Everything was routing to one person and then that one person was
Matt Widmyer:manually routing it out to, some sales teams, some was to the support
Matt Widmyer:team and it just seemed like a lot.
Matt Widmyer:It seemed like a little bit of a bottleneck because if that one person,
Matt Widmyer:you know, a lot of businesses might have more than one person doing it.
Matt Widmyer:But if that one person was to get up and go to the restroom or something
Matt Widmyer:like that, we're missing that call.
Matt Widmyer:Right.
Matt Widmyer:It preserves bandwidth and doesn't disrupt the day from,
Matt Widmyer:from the, businesses end either.
Matt Widmyer:Doesn't, we don't want to keep getting interrupted from calls that we'll just
Matt Widmyer:have to route forward, manually anyway.
Matt Widmyer:We want to, make sure we optimize the calls that we're getting.
Matt Widmyer:And in terms of like, if, if you have a sales team working on leads
Matt Widmyer:and feeling inbound leads, those leads are an interruption inherently
Matt Widmyer:to whatever it is they're doing.
Matt Widmyer:If they're doing outbound or whatever.
Matt Widmyer:We want to make sure that we're not, you know, just creating extra noise
Matt Widmyer:at their desk, for no reason, right?
Kevin Dieny:Yeah, exactly.
Kevin Dieny:And depending on the size of their teams, there's another thing
Kevin Dieny:that's really important and you've touched on it and that's coverage.
Kevin Dieny:So can you explain coverage, why that's important for a business, and
Kevin Dieny:making sure that they're fielding as many inbound calls as possible?
Matt Widmyer:The short version is if you don't pick up your phone,
Matt Widmyer:they're going to call the next business, look down the list.
Matt Widmyer:Most people will just Google a company.
Matt Widmyer:If you don't know any, anything better, or if you haven't been referred to a company.
Matt Widmyer:And if you're trying to solve a problem, if you call business A
Matt Widmyer:and they don't pick up their phone and says a lot about business, A.
Matt Widmyer:Might not have all their ducks in a row.
Matt Widmyer:That's really their first impression of you as a business.
Matt Widmyer:Right?
Matt Widmyer:The coverage, it should be one of those first things that's addressed.
Matt Widmyer:You don't really know how many calls you're going to
Matt Widmyer:get till you start marketing.
Matt Widmyer:So it's kind of like the anticipation of it.
Matt Widmyer:You have to always account for it.
Matt Widmyer:So the coverage includes everything from operating hours, to what time
Matt Widmyer:people are taking breaks and lunch breaks and all that stuff out.
Matt Widmyer:You have to have overlap.
Matt Widmyer:You should never have everybody away during business hours
Matt Widmyer:and the exact same time.
Matt Widmyer:It doesn't make sense for coverage.
Matt Widmyer:And you're going to upset your customers too.
Kevin Dieny:Yeah, there are some really great ways that you
Kevin Dieny:can assess your inbound team.
Kevin Dieny:And there are some really good metrics for that.
Kevin Dieny:We've talked about the scorecard, like how are the calls being handled?
Kevin Dieny:There are other things like how long, is a caller waiting on hold.
Kevin Dieny:How long are they spending?
Kevin Dieny:How many have gone through the IVR?
Kevin Dieny:How many are going into my voicemails?
Kevin Dieny:How many are straight up missed?
Kevin Dieny:Meaning they just hang up.
Kevin Dieny:They don't end up in a voicemail.
Kevin Dieny:They don't end up talking to somebody.
Kevin Dieny:You know, how, how many calls are we getting an easy way?
Kevin Dieny:Maybe just how many calls are we getting where the duration
Kevin Dieny:of the call is very short.
Kevin Dieny:And so those are kind of indicators that there might be something up.
Kevin Dieny:There might be something that could be improved.
Kevin Dieny:And for instance, like, uh so Matt, if you're getting a ton of voicemails
Kevin Dieny:and like, how would you go about assessing that for inbound calls?
Matt Widmyer:Well the voicemail, yeah.
Matt Widmyer:So it's a staffing issue.
Matt Widmyer:A bunch of things are going to voicemail.
Matt Widmyer:So those voicemails, as soon as they hit voicemails as your first priority,
Matt Widmyer:before you do one more thing, one more thing, call those people back.
Matt Widmyer:You listen to the voicemail, write down the information, call the person back.
Matt Widmyer:Most people don't want to, you know, is in terms of being on hold.
Matt Widmyer:By the time something's gone to voicemail, unfortunately has already
Matt Widmyer:gone that far, uh they might already be on their way to the next business.
Matt Widmyer:And that's even if they even leave a voicemail to start with.
Matt Widmyer:So every once in a while, if we see a missed call, but they do not leave
Matt Widmyer:a voicemail, we'll call those back and just make sure that they got
Matt Widmyer:whatever help it was that they needed.
Matt Widmyer:But it could also be the same people calling multiple
Matt Widmyer:times about the same thing.
Matt Widmyer:So if you have this, if you have an issue of people going to voicemails.
Matt Widmyer:And sometimes it's the same person calling back a couple of different times,
Matt Widmyer:which obviously isn't a great customer experience and that's something you're
Matt Widmyer:going to want to try to avoid as well.
Kevin Dieny:So maybe the last question before we get into even more
Kevin Dieny:into what's going on, you know, when you're on the call with someone, is
Kevin Dieny:the distribution aspect, like how it's routed, to who it's routed.
Kevin Dieny:There's things like round robin.
Kevin Dieny:There's things like, you know, it always goes to this person, but then after that
Kevin Dieny:there's maybe a, you know, a daisy chain of things where it's going to go down a
Kevin Dieny:line and call each person if they don't pick up or there's the free for all.
Kevin Dieny:So what what are your comments or thoughts on those different methods of, you
Kevin Dieny:know, distributing the calls to a team?
Matt Widmyer:Yeah, so there's no perfect solution for this because
Matt Widmyer:anytime you have one thing, I mean that what there's a def cause every business
Matt Widmyer:might have a different definition of what's fair and what's not fair.
Matt Widmyer:The difference between what's fair and what needs to
Matt Widmyer:happen is also different too.
Matt Widmyer:People don't want to be hearing the phone ring.
Matt Widmyer:People don't want to be transferred.
Matt Widmyer:People don't want to be on hold for a long time.
Matt Widmyer:Most of the things I've read says most people aren't, you know, two to three
Matt Widmyer:minutes is the breaking point where they basically decide that the business
Matt Widmyer:doesn't know what they're doing.
Matt Widmyer:And they're scrambling around looking for something to do after the two minute mark.
Matt Widmyer:So we want to keep those as low as possible.
Matt Widmyer:So one of the things.
Matt Widmyer:That we've done too.
Matt Widmyer:That has dramatically improved our coverage.
Matt Widmyer:Uh, never been better in the history, probably this company.
Matt Widmyer:Well, before I was here is we now have everyone on my team
Matt Widmyer:that, manages inbound calls.
Matt Widmyer:We have everybody's phone ringing simultaneously.
Matt Widmyer:First person that gets it, gets it.
Matt Widmyer:I know it might seem a little unfair because you can technically just
Matt Widmyer:sit there and wait for calls all day, but you you're held accountable
Matt Widmyer:for outbound activities too.
Matt Widmyer:So you're never going to make everything you need to do off of inbound calls.
Matt Widmyer:We've tried the round robin thing.
Matt Widmyer:The disadvantage of the round robin thing is it will, it will go route
Matt Widmyer:first, usually depending on what phone system you're using, but, um,
Matt Widmyer:You can route first to the person who picks up the least amount of calls.
Matt Widmyer:So it tags them first, which is a little counterintuitive too, right.
Matt Widmyer:Because if they're not picking up, if they're picking up less
Matt Widmyer:phone calls and everybody else, why are we going to them first?
Matt Widmyer:Right.
Matt Widmyer:We should be doing almost the opposite and going to the people
Matt Widmyer:who are picking up the most.
Matt Widmyer:Right.
Matt Widmyer:So we know that the coverage is there.
Matt Widmyer:So right now, yeah, whoever gets it gets in.
Matt Widmyer:And if you're not quick enough, then, then work on that and to
Matt Widmyer:work on your speed, I guess.
Matt Widmyer:The round robin thing, another disadvantage of that method too, is,
Matt Widmyer:If it doesn't get picked up by one person it'll ring two or three times,
Matt Widmyer:and each ring is about five seconds.
Matt Widmyer:Right.
Matt Widmyer:So if it rings to one person, it usually rings two to three times.
Matt Widmyer:So that's 10 to 15 seconds.
Matt Widmyer:If that person is unavailable or they're on another line or
Matt Widmyer:if they're already on a call.
Matt Widmyer:It'll ring to the next person, so they could go through another
Matt Widmyer:ring cycle of 10 to 15 seconds.
Matt Widmyer:And if that person's available, then it goes to the next person, or maybe
Matt Widmyer:it goes to voicemail at that point.
Matt Widmyer:By that time they're, they're already frustrated.
Matt Widmyer:There'll be beyond frustrated.
Matt Widmyer:Right.
Matt Widmyer:So right now I don't even hear the phone ring half the time.
Matt Widmyer:Because it gets picked up so quickly.
Matt Widmyer:I mean, that's, that's the best customer.
Matt Widmyer:That's the best customer experience you can offer is, you know, you know,
Matt Widmyer:being on it right away like that.
Kevin Dieny:Yeah.
Kevin Dieny:So there's a lot that can, that happens now during the call,
Kevin Dieny:you've connected with this caller.
Kevin Dieny:One of the first things I wanted to ask you at this point is the difference
Kevin Dieny:between callers who are interested in like a sales aspect, becoming a new
Kevin Dieny:patient, becoming a customer, wanting to inquire about getting quotes.
Kevin Dieny:Possibly just inquiring about the products and services that are
Kevin Dieny:offered, versus anything else.
Kevin Dieny:Let's call the, uh, everything else may be support career HR family.
Kevin Dieny:There's a huge bucket there.
Kevin Dieny:So there's sales and then there's everything else.
Kevin Dieny:So what what, what are the differences in the types of calls
Kevin Dieny:in those two groups of calls?
Matt Widmyer:Differences in terms of how it's being routed or differences
Matt Widmyer:of like how they're handled?
Kevin Dieny:In the, let's say the first, like 30 seconds of the
Kevin Dieny:call, like, how are those calls going to be handled differently by
Kevin Dieny:the team who's fielding inbound?
Matt Widmyer:Got it.
Matt Widmyer:Yeah.
Matt Widmyer:So the, again, the initial is just assessing needs and diagnosing.
Matt Widmyer:We'll want to collect, we don't want to get too far into information collecting,
Matt Widmyer:then find out later in the call that, okay, this isn't something we, we don't
Matt Widmyer:become close to doing something like they are offering the service or whatever.
Matt Widmyer:If we're going to ask somebody for something, we just want to give a
Matt Widmyer:little bit in return and let them, or at least let them know why we're asking.
Matt Widmyer:Good example is can I have, uh, kind of the number, the best
Matt Widmyer:number to call you back at in case this call gets disconnected.
Matt Widmyer:Right?
Matt Widmyer:So, um, that's always a good one to ask, but I think, just them answering your
Matt Widmyer:question of how can we help you today?
Matt Widmyer:Well, kind of, you know, take, if you take note of what it is you're asking for.
Matt Widmyer:You know, whatever it is that you provide, if we're on the same page.
Matt Widmyer:Cool.
Matt Widmyer:I'll know that it kind of goes in this bucket.
Matt Widmyer:If it's all I want to talk to my wife or who who ordered a
Matt Widmyer:pizza or whatever, I mean, that's obviously in a different bucket.
Matt Widmyer:And then, um, those you can put on hold and, and figure out what to do with it.
Matt Widmyer:You know, it's not, as, I think those things are a little bit, lower
Matt Widmyer:priority than customers calling in.
Matt Widmyer:All depending on what the wife's talking about or what kind of pizza it is.
Kevin Dieny:Yeah, yeah.
Kevin Dieny:I mean, right now we're kind of getting to the point where we're
Kevin Dieny:talking about businesses who have a handful of phone calls.
Kevin Dieny:They're getting some phone calls.
Kevin Dieny:I think it does make a difference.
Kevin Dieny:If we're talking about businesses who are getting, you know, single
Kevin Dieny:digit calls versus double digit, versus triple, quadruple, whatever,
Kevin Dieny:the volume of calls you're getting.
Kevin Dieny:Right.
Kevin Dieny:How many can you afford to let go of?
Kevin Dieny:How many can you afford to mismanage?
Kevin Dieny:How many, if the, if you only getting like a couple of calls a day, if you
Kevin Dieny:miss one, now that's a huge percentage of your overall calls that are being missed.
Kevin Dieny:And the bigger the volume is, it seems easier to be like, ah, yeah, you know,
Kevin Dieny:letting a few calls go here or there.
Kevin Dieny:But it does add up over time.
Kevin Dieny:There is a big difference that, even one missed call can make.
Kevin Dieny:Especially if that meant that call represents a potential sale for a
Kevin Dieny:business or, a client who's gonna be upset or something like that.
Kevin Dieny:So now at this point during the call how do you coach and train call handlers?
Kevin Dieny:At this point, I mean, after the beginning, the call goes in
Kevin Dieny:radical different directions.
Kevin Dieny:So how can you coach and train a team on like the calls in the middle
Kevin Dieny:of the call or, you know, for the full length of it, how do you help
Kevin Dieny:them to better handle these calls?
Kevin Dieny:So the calls aren't lasting, I don't know, 20 minutes taking up all their time,
Kevin Dieny:but at the same time, they're helping and delivering value to the caller?
Matt Widmyer:Yeah.
Matt Widmyer:So it's, again, I will go back to the scorecard because that's, it's not the
Matt Widmyer:end all be all right, because there's other things like tonality, how you
Matt Widmyer:pick up the phone, the enthusiasm you show and stuff like that.
Matt Widmyer:Not all of these are gradable things are a little bit more subjective, not
Matt Widmyer:objective, but the objective stuff.
Matt Widmyer:Yeah.
Matt Widmyer:We have a laundry list.
Matt Widmyer:There's probably 30 things on our score card.
Matt Widmyer:Things that should be asked or at least mentioned on the phone call.
Matt Widmyer:You need to hold your call handlers, accountable for those 30 things.
Matt Widmyer:Now, a little bit tough for somebody in the beginning, right.
Matt Widmyer:They should be familiar with what they're being.
Matt Widmyer:If you're going to want someone to play the game, you're gonna
Matt Widmyer:have to teach them the rules.
Matt Widmyer:Right.
Matt Widmyer:Especially early on their tenure or even the seasoned people print out a copy of
Matt Widmyer:the score card and know these things.
Matt Widmyer:And then typically what you see is, once you do that, you have somebody
Matt Widmyer:just reading down the list, making sure they check all the boxes then
Matt Widmyer:comes the art of the conversation.
Matt Widmyer:Right.
Matt Widmyer:Having a two-way dialogue, not an interrogation interrogative
Matt Widmyer:interview of the person.
Matt Widmyer:That's not what we're trying to do either.
Matt Widmyer:Ask a little bit, give a little bit, ask a little bit, give a little bit.
Matt Widmyer:You'll be able to find out by doing this QA method of the scorecard
Matt Widmyer:thing, you'll be able to, narrow it down to one or two things.
Matt Widmyer:Because it's, it's really the difference between cookie cutter
Matt Widmyer:general training that could apply to anybody and specifically what is
Matt Widmyer:going on with that one individual.
Matt Widmyer:Cool thing about that is too, if they're struggling with something and
Matt Widmyer:if everybody's being measured the same way, one person is struggling with
Matt Widmyer:something that somebody else on your team happens to be very good at, just
Matt Widmyer:pair them up and have them listen to a couple of their phone calls and see how
Matt Widmyer:they address those things or see the, the way they ask those kinds of questions.
Matt Widmyer:Because it's not, again, we're not reading off a script for
Matt Widmyer:every single of these questions.
Matt Widmyer:We just want to be able to get answers to a lot of these things that we need
Matt Widmyer:or get information where it is needed.
Matt Widmyer:We don't want to do, overkill overkill, the amount of questions
Matt Widmyer:we asked and the things we do.
Matt Widmyer:I know I said, you know, it's between 20 and 30 questions or items of information
Matt Widmyer:that we need on our end, but that doesn't mean we need to ask every single one.
Matt Widmyer:Right.
Matt Widmyer:A lot of it could be implied, with some of the conversation that's happening.
Matt Widmyer:So if it's implied then we really need to ask it.
Matt Widmyer:If you see their number, come up on caller ID, you can just verify it.
Matt Widmyer:You don't have to ask from scratch what their number is.
Matt Widmyer:Just little tricks like that, you know, in terms of, email address, all that stuff,
Matt Widmyer:he kind of needed to get some of that.
Matt Widmyer:If, you know, whatever, your, whatever type of business you have for whatever
Matt Widmyer:the most important things are, if you're planning on remarketing, then yeah.
Matt Widmyer:Even no matter what happens on the phone, you'll at least have that as a safety net.
Matt Widmyer:If you get their email address or their phone number.
Kevin Dieny:Yeah.
Kevin Dieny:That's where the marketing and the, operational sales side can come into
Kevin Dieny:play, where for marketing to be able to do its job, it may need to know the
Kevin Dieny:address, may need to know the email.
Kevin Dieny:May need to have, you know, things like that asked over the, make sure
Kevin Dieny:we have the name, the correct spelling of the name, uh, is a important one.
Kevin Dieny:Those things can take time.
Kevin Dieny:Those things can feel like they're bogging down the call.
Kevin Dieny:And if the caller's like, look, let's just move forward with this.
Kevin Dieny:So setting the pace of it is also kind of something, a lot of what you've said
Kevin Dieny:is going to come down to a lot of like, experiental learning as you do it.
Kevin Dieny:I think, it's one of those things, the art of it is one of those things
Kevin Dieny:where, you know, it's hard to have every objection, every possible statement
Kevin Dieny:from every possible caller in a big list that they get, they're going
Kevin Dieny:to be able to, you know, memorize.
Kevin Dieny:And then every time that that comes up in a call, they're
Kevin Dieny:going to just snap to the right.
Kevin Dieny:Perfect answer every time, it's not right.
Kevin Dieny:It's not correct to assume that that's how it works.
Kevin Dieny:It's a lot more nuanced.
Kevin Dieny:But if there is a standard for the basics, right?
Kevin Dieny:That's why I think it gets away from a script too.
Kevin Dieny:It's not exactly verbatim going to be like, I think the closer you get to
Kevin Dieny:inbound, the more it's realize it's like man, a script would be impossible after
Kevin Dieny:the first, 30 seconds of, going back and forth, finding out what they need.
Kevin Dieny:It gets really complex.
Kevin Dieny:So at the end of the day, your team's going to have all this information
Kevin Dieny:from having talked to consumers in a one-to-one unique, interactive way.
Kevin Dieny:So there's going to be a lot of feedback that comes from, from that team.
Kevin Dieny:So how much feedback and what kind of feedback has been helpful for you to,
Kevin Dieny:improve the process or improve how your team is fielding inbound calls?
Matt Widmyer:Yeah, I guess it's how, I mean, the main feedback I get is
Matt Widmyer:how receptive, cause we'll, we'll go through revisions of the questions
Matt Widmyer:and things that we need to check off.
Matt Widmyer:And how receptive, I guess people are to the certain questions and stuff like that.
Matt Widmyer:If there's one question that, is like a big turnoff for somebody, or they just,
Matt Widmyer:don't not really typically answering, even when you ask it, it's it could
Matt Widmyer:be another way around or different.
Matt Widmyer:So little tweaks and revisions here and there, but.
Matt Widmyer:And also listening in to some of the calls myself and just
Matt Widmyer:kind of seeing, okay, right.
Matt Widmyer:Is this, is this overkill?
Matt Widmyer:Are we overdoing it a little bit?
Matt Widmyer:I think while this is being created out, you have to define your need to know.
Matt Widmyer:And you're nice to knows.
Matt Widmyer:And differentiate between the two.
Matt Widmyer:Need to know every single customer, it doesn't matter who
Matt Widmyer:they are, they're calling it.
Matt Widmyer:We're getting this information for them.
Matt Widmyer:The nice to knows is going to make it easier down the line.
Matt Widmyer:Not necessarily required.
Matt Widmyer:Differentiate between those two.
Matt Widmyer:Manage to the need to knows other than the nice to knows.
Matt Widmyer:And those are kind of like, Hey, high five, you got those five extra things.
Matt Widmyer:This is going to be a slam dunk now.
Matt Widmyer:Cool.
Matt Widmyer:You have to pick and choose cause managing to like, you know, 30
Matt Widmyer:different things is pretty difficult.
Kevin Dieny:Yeah, there's two questions at this point, right.
Kevin Dieny:That I think a business may still have.
Kevin Dieny:And one of them is, well, I'm not getting enough inbound calls.
Kevin Dieny:How do I get more?
Kevin Dieny:And to that I would take a stab at that and say, well, a little bit
Kevin Dieny:of that has to do with marketing.
Kevin Dieny:Yeah, for sure.
Kevin Dieny:Your marketing is out there.
Kevin Dieny:Hopefully it's not necessarily just focused on creating demand.
Kevin Dieny:It's focused on generating some leads, some calls, some callers,
Kevin Dieny:some, you know, prospects and patients, whatever it is you're
Kevin Dieny:after, uh, who's who you want calling.
Kevin Dieny:Hopefully you have a marketing arm there that is ROI, you know,
Kevin Dieny:responsible measuring, tracking.
Kevin Dieny:This is generating callers.
Kevin Dieny:Now on the other side, and this would be the, where the question comes up.
Kevin Dieny:If a business is like, well, I'm getting a lot of calls, but they're low quality.
Kevin Dieny:So what would you say?
Kevin Dieny:How can a manager, if that's the feedback they're getting right,
Kevin Dieny:these callers are just not great.
Kevin Dieny:So what can a business do to improve that?
Matt Widmyer:Yeah, I mean that, without any other additional explanations, is
Matt Widmyer:it just kind of lazy to start with?
Matt Widmyer:Right.
Matt Widmyer:But what if something, and there are going to be leads that are coming through.
Matt Widmyer:They're not good, right?
Matt Widmyer:Period.
Matt Widmyer:It's going to happen.
Matt Widmyer:But, we need to ask.
Matt Widmyer:And my the first thing I asked my team, if I, whenever I hear that,
Matt Widmyer:is what's not good about them?
Matt Widmyer:Is it a one-off situation or is this happening all the time?
Matt Widmyer:That one day again, I mentioned on one of the earlier podcasts for that one
Matt Widmyer:day, everybody was calling in about, buying a trampoline, those a little
Matt Widmyer:more urgent, Hey, Kevin fixed this, but my phones are getting tied up.
Matt Widmyer:Right.
Matt Widmyer:This is a good example of like, Hey, you're bogging down my team.
Matt Widmyer:But on the other hand, Kevin you know, the marketer or Kevin,
Matt Widmyer:in this case, he doesn't want to hear about all the bad news.
Matt Widmyer:He wants to also hear about all the things that went really well.
Matt Widmyer:So you can duplicate some of that success.
Matt Widmyer:Because at the end of the day, I'm having a conversation with my team and
Matt Widmyer:if they aren't handling these leads correctly, or if the coverage ends up
Matt Widmyer:being bad, it's not, but if it ends up taking a little bit of a hit or a
Matt Widmyer:call start going to voicemail more.
Matt Widmyer:I know, I already know in the grand scheme of things, your marketer, Kevin,
Matt Widmyer:in this case, is not going to have a solid enough case to go back and try to
Matt Widmyer:increase ad spend and stuff like that.
Matt Widmyer:If we want to, inbound leads are great, right.
Matt Widmyer:They make our lives a lot easier.
Matt Widmyer:And if we want to keep experiencing them, we need to have the operational
Matt Widmyer:things, all figured out on our end too.
Matt Widmyer:So I know that.
Matt Widmyer:A lot of people don't know that, but we're really close to what's
Matt Widmyer:happening with these things and you're close to the generation, I'm close
Matt Widmyer:to the feeling and managing them.
Matt Widmyer:So I want to be able to, to have both of us tell a very good story with these.
Kevin Dieny:So another thing that that I think would come up is how much a
Kevin Dieny:business wants to bring all this in-house.
Kevin Dieny:And the reason I say that is it is a lot to manage, you know, all of this, making
Kevin Dieny:sure that the operational side, all the technological stuff, all the marketing,
Kevin Dieny:everything attached to this is driving calls to the right people, right place.
Kevin Dieny:And it aligns well with your business, that the team is.
Kevin Dieny:Properly answering calls, routing them is handling them appropriately.
Kevin Dieny:You have staffing, meaning you have to continually be
Kevin Dieny:recruiting, be hiring people.
Kevin Dieny:And then people come and go.
Kevin Dieny:Maybe you've had someone who's been there a while, but what happens when they leave?
Kevin Dieny:Does that mean all of your business knowledge goes with them?
Kevin Dieny:There's a lot of threats there.
Kevin Dieny:Getting an answering service, getting a call center, bringing, pushing
Kevin Dieny:all that knowledge out, but at the same time, there's lots of benefits.
Kevin Dieny:There's coverage benefits.
Kevin Dieny:You know, they're going to have amazing coverage cause that's something,
Kevin Dieny:one of their guarantees possibly.
Kevin Dieny:You know, that they're going to be following a scorecard or something else.
Kevin Dieny:And that these people are handling a large volume, meaning
Kevin Dieny:there's a lot of experience.
Kevin Dieny:There for you.
Kevin Dieny:So what would you say?
Kevin Dieny:What were you, what are your thoughts on the in-house versus
Kevin Dieny:a third party call fielding team?
Matt Widmyer:Sure.
Matt Widmyer:Yeah.
Matt Widmyer:I mean, I think it's depends again, age of research people are, by the
Matt Widmyer:time they pick up the phone and call, they want some sort of help.
Matt Widmyer:And I, I feel like it, depending on the urgency, I know, you know,
Matt Widmyer:businesses vary depending on what it is and, and customers vary, depending
Matt Widmyer:on what it is they need help with.
Matt Widmyer:If it's somebody calling in because their mouth is killing them, maybe they have a
Matt Widmyer:cavity or something like that, a little more urgent, than somebody calling in
Matt Widmyer:because they maybe they want a, they're thinking about painting the restroom
Matt Widmyer:a different color or whatever, right.
Matt Widmyer:So that can probably wait, but in both cases, what people are want more
Matt Widmyer:than anything, even if they don't need help right away, or even if they
Matt Widmyer:know help can't happen right away that people want to be acknowledged.
Matt Widmyer:So I think an answering service, if you do not have the
Matt Widmyer:bandwidth internally to do it.
Matt Widmyer:An answering service and maybe an after hours thing or weekends thing.
Matt Widmyer:Could be very valuable just to give that initial, Hey, we hear you, right?
Matt Widmyer:Like we're working on it.
Matt Widmyer:Bear with us.
Matt Widmyer:Your business means a lot to us.
Matt Widmyer:We're we're sorry.
Matt Widmyer:You're going through whatever it is you're going through.
Matt Widmyer:During operating hours we will take care of it.
Matt Widmyer:If it's medical or something like that, they can route it a different
Matt Widmyer:way to maybe they have an emergency service or maybe a pipe burst in
Matt Widmyer:their house or something like that.
Matt Widmyer:And they need help right away.
Matt Widmyer:Typically those answering services, we'll be able to refer them to, um,
Matt Widmyer:somebody who can help them right away.
Kevin Dieny:Yeah, that's all really good.
Kevin Dieny:And I, at this point, I'm curious, what else is there
Kevin Dieny:that we possibly haven't said?
Kevin Dieny:Is there anything else that we've missed or anything else you wanted to
Kevin Dieny:add to this before we wrap all this up?
Kevin Dieny:Because we've really, really gotten in deep into, fielding the call
Kevin Dieny:and handling the call, especially, with a focus on the inbound side.
Kevin Dieny:Was there anything else that we may have missed that you'd like to mention, Matt?
Matt Widmyer:Yeah, I think another very important piece for
Matt Widmyer:the business themselves is just to control the conversation.
Matt Widmyer:This is something that especially newer employees will have the tendency to
Matt Widmyer:get bullied by people over the phone.
Matt Widmyer:Not necessarily them being mean but them taking complete control of the
Matt Widmyer:conversation, not answering some of the basic questions we need.
Matt Widmyer:In our instance, we aren't, if they don't pass that bare minimum, they're likely
Matt Widmyer:just price shopping and they likely may not be the best customer anyway.
Matt Widmyer:So sometimes every once in a while we will have to turn people away.
Matt Widmyer:If we can't even verify they work with a real business or whatever, again, we
Matt Widmyer:are B2B, B2B here, but, if somebody is calling you up and maybe you're running a
Matt Widmyer:dental office or, um, audiology office or something like that, if they're not able
Matt Widmyer:to, if they just give you your first name and can't verify anything else about them.
Matt Widmyer:It might be a little bit of a red flag.
Matt Widmyer:Like maybe there's just like, it can potentially be, maybe they're just
Matt Widmyer:calling down the list and looking for the best price of whatever it is.
Matt Widmyer:You'll get a lot of price shoppers.
Matt Widmyer:Doesn't matter what service you provide.
Matt Widmyer:You always get people wanting know exactly what they're getting themselves into.
Matt Widmyer:We'll ballpark if we have to, but we are not diagnosing the full thing.
Matt Widmyer:It's usually some other followup conversation that
Matt Widmyer:needs to happen to assess.
Matt Widmyer:So I don't want to, you don't want to scare them away with a high number and you
Matt Widmyer:don't want to give them a low number if they're gonna hold you to that low number.
Matt Widmyer:So I think, that's kind of where some of the art of controlling
Matt Widmyer:the conversation comes in.
Matt Widmyer:That's usually typically how I explain it.
Matt Widmyer:Cause again, I, before I managed the team that did this, what's helpful is I did
Matt Widmyer:it for a couple of years, myself too.
Matt Widmyer:So I've, I know all shapes and sizes of people that call in and, um,
Matt Widmyer:they're, they're, it's a mixed bag.
Matt Widmyer:It really is.
Kevin Dieny:Yeah.
Kevin Dieny:It's, we've talked about this before.
Kevin Dieny:It's hard to stay motivated and positive, especially when you're getting yelled at.
Kevin Dieny:One of the things we had not touched on is like spam calls, abusive callers.
Kevin Dieny:There's a lot in that mixed bag that anyone could be pulling
Kevin Dieny:out of and have to take.
Kevin Dieny:And so.
Kevin Dieny:The measurement of it does have to consider all of that, right.
Kevin Dieny:That you do have to have a reasonable measurement protocol around, you
Kevin Dieny:know, what, what kinds of things is it reasonable to expect someone to do?
Kevin Dieny:How many calls should they be taking?
Kevin Dieny:What should be the outcome of those calls?
Kevin Dieny:That's one of the reasons why we have a scorecard is we tell businesses how
Kevin Dieny:their call handlers are responding.
Kevin Dieny:How well they're doing, but we're, we're, we're taking the callers who we've
Kevin Dieny:listened to our bookable, we've listened to our true prospects, true leads.
Kevin Dieny:They are, they do seem like they're a fit for the business.
Kevin Dieny:So out of that group, how well are they handling?
Kevin Dieny:Just how are they handling all callers?
Kevin Dieny:Someone could easily just by random chance to get a lot of, unfortunate callers.
Kevin Dieny:So it's so important to have a standard call strategy.
Kevin Dieny:It's really important to know how your business is going to handle
Kevin Dieny:every inbound conversion type.
Kevin Dieny:Every interaction with the consumer has to be accounted for.
Kevin Dieny:Maybe before you do anything in marketing, how are the leads going
Kevin Dieny:to be handled when we generate them?
Kevin Dieny:If that's an afterthought, that's a big, it's a big problem.
Kevin Dieny:And then at the end, ultimately, Making sure that assessments are being done.
Kevin Dieny:How are things going pre-call?
Kevin Dieny:How are things going during the call?
Kevin Dieny:How is the post-call follow-up feedback engine, how has our improvement of all
Kevin Dieny:of this going on so that the business is continually improving what it has.
Kevin Dieny:The original strategy is probably not great because things change in, in,
Kevin Dieny:like you said, they evolve over time.
Kevin Dieny:Sometimes you're going to need to adjust scorecards here, there, or
Kevin Dieny:improve this whole entire system.
Kevin Dieny:So I think all of that are some great lessons learned
Kevin Dieny:from this, from this episode.
Kevin Dieny:Is there, was there anything else Matt?
Matt Widmyer:Yeah, I was actually just going to say, just to add in one
Matt Widmyer:last thing, I was going to say, if you are going to use an IVR, my team
Matt Widmyer:manages the sales side of the IVR.
Matt Widmyer:So press one for new customers.
Matt Widmyer:If you're an existing customer and you need help and we, anybody who's had
Matt Widmyer:at cable access television knows this.
Matt Widmyer:If you're having a problem with your service, the quickest way to get help
Matt Widmyer:is you press the sales extension.
Matt Widmyer:If you're going to route things to sales and support, have a conversation with
Matt Widmyer:whoever's handling the support queue and make sure that's all buttoned up too.
Matt Widmyer:Because otherwise you're going to be getting the overflow regardless.
Matt Widmyer:And, uh, you're still going to be getting those interruptions
Matt Widmyer:that you didn't want any of you specifically designed an IVR to avoid.
Matt Widmyer:And same thing, you know, and not want to sound like we're perfect because
Matt Widmyer:sometimes if we do miss one and somebody really needs help with something, if
Matt Widmyer:it's, it's usually just that one, right.
Matt Widmyer:That they call back 10 times in a row or whatever, where maybe we're all
Matt Widmyer:in a meeting or something like that.
Matt Widmyer:They do call a support line, if they, if they are looking to do business too.
Matt Widmyer:So we get those every once in a while.
Matt Widmyer:We receive the support calls every once in a while.
Matt Widmyer:So make sure you have conversations, you can kind of tell if it's a one-off thing.
Matt Widmyer:Cool, we'll take care of it.
Matt Widmyer:We're on it.
Matt Widmyer:If it's a, like a constant thing, and sometimes it'll get to that
Matt Widmyer:point because things will happen or people will get tied, tied down
Matt Widmyer:and projects and stuff like that.
Matt Widmyer:If it does become something that you see that you can anticipate
Matt Widmyer:it, starting to get a little out of hand, have a conversation with
Matt Widmyer:whoever's running that other queue.
Kevin Dieny:Yeah, this is all really great.
Kevin Dieny:As a listener, if you're thinking, well, maybe this is stuff I'd like to
Kevin Dieny:have, you can give Matt's team a call.
Kevin Dieny:You can call us on our sales line.
Kevin Dieny:If you want to connect with, Matt, what are some ways that people can
Kevin Dieny:reach out to you and talk to you?
Matt Widmyer:Yeah, so you can reach out to me in LinkedIn directly.
Matt Widmyer:Name again is Matt.
Matt Widmyer:M A T T and my last name Widmyer, W I D M Y E R.
Matt Widmyer:And you can find me on LinkedIn.
Matt Widmyer:I think I have a black and white photo currently, so you'll know it's me.
Kevin Dieny:Yeah, this is great.
Kevin Dieny:I hope that this has given you guys some ideas, something to think about for how
Kevin Dieny:you can improve fielding inbound calls.
Kevin Dieny:Maybe you're interested in doing that at all and tracking it and
Kevin Dieny:getting out your own scorecard.
Kevin Dieny:Hopefully that helps you and get your business growing.
Kevin Dieny:So we appreciate you listening and thank you.
Kevin Dieny:Thanks Matt for coming on.
Matt Widmyer:Yeah, absolutely.
Matt Widmyer:Thanks for having me again.
