Appletree Answering Service

When it comes to Customer Service, our front line agents take the prize.  Here at Appletree we are very proud of the product our agents deliver to our Customers and their Customers.  Managing the efforts of our front line staff is an elite group of individuals we refer to as our Team Leaders.  The Team Leaders’ job is to educate, hold accountable and cultivate our front line agents.

The week of January 5^th, Appletree brought in 30 Team Leaders from all of our 12 sites for an aggressive training, tour of the Corporate Office and Management Presentation sessions.  The focus was to drive home the value our Team Leaders add to the organization, while giving them additional tools to do their jobs.  John Ratliff, CEO states, “The number one way to create a culture and pass down the company’s DNA to our front line agent is to empower the people that manage their efforts.”

Several modules were developed in an effort to support and educate our Team Leaders.  Human Resources and Employee Fulfillment Directors presented on many topics to share risks, techniques and legal regulations associated with managing people.  Information Technology Directors presented on the do’s/don’ts with our systems and the Q and A session was valuable as our managers began to share best demonstrated practices.  With the recent roll out of Salesforce (our Customer management tool), our Team Leaders were granted access to the system with a very detailed process to assist with consistent documentation and Customer Service.

The bulk of the time was spent with the Operations Directors, who focused on industry specific education.  Opening the lines of communication and introducing this level of management to one another to help with overflow traffic, sharing of resources and training techniques on difficult accounts. 

The investment back to the company and the service expectations that our Customers can expect from this experience are simply put, worth it!  Measuring employee turnover, Customer attrition and quality will be the tangible evaluation and reward.

With growth comes responsibility.  And with an intense focus to deliver exceptional service, Appletree has restructured our Company Core Values.  Our Mission Statement, “Enhancing the lives of our Customers and Employees one interaction at a time”, demonstrates the overall commitment we are striving for; our core values help us define how we are going to deliver on that commitment. 

•   Employees are Critical

•   Think like a Customer

•   Integrity Matters

•   Small Details are Huge

•   Be Quick, But Don’t Hurry

•   Take Care of Each Other

With 12 sites and 350 employees, the deployment of our Core Values had to be perfect.  We created small laminated pocket cards that included our Mission Statement and Core Values, and were distributed to all of our employees.  John Ratliff, CEO of Appletree, recorded a video that was posted on Youtube.com defining the value and importance of a company standing for something and getting behind a common goal.  Finally, we posted descriptions of our Core Values on our internal Intranet to help the employees understand at a detailed level why we chose the Values that we did.

There are a multitude of efforts being put forth this year to build an organization that strives for excellence.  Education programs, people development, benefit and recognition programs, as well as personal interest programs such as Dream On, are a just a few.  Appletree believes that building a family of employees who have the knowledge and tools to do their jobs well will create an environment that is ready to deliver that exceptional experience.

We are all affected in some way by the current economic slowdown.  The key to success is managing through these tough times with minimal strategic impact.  Companies lay off workers, cut back on resources, reduce wages and freeze benefits.  General anxiety leads millions of companies to hunker down and stop spending, which slows the economy even more.  However, your business does not have to suffer during these hard times.  During times like these, there are still several ways for companies to thrive and continue to grow their business.  Below are some tips from experts on how to save money and still grow your business during an economic downfall.  Along with some suggestions on how Appletree can help. 

Get your Finances in Order
It’s important to keep your business costs low and maintain cash flow.  Save money on jobs by eliminating non-profitable areas and outsourcing in order to use money where you need it the most. 

As your receptionist, you don’t have to pay Appletree a salary, benefits, sick and vacation days, taxes, or workman’s comp.  You don’t have the expenses of office space and you only pay us for service when the phone rings.  Appletree provides significant bottom line savings in comparison to full time employees.   

Keep your Staff Happy
During down times, management needs to place absolute focus on the core business.  Take care of the people that are going to carry your business through this tough time. 

In order to avoid hindering your employee’s productivity, Appletree can help your employees focus on their jobs and fulfilling their responsibilities.  By screening their phone calls, we can transfer their urgent calls and relay the messages for the others.  In addition to taking calls, Appletree can also answer your employee’s emails around the clock. 

Increase the frequency of communications with existing clients
Another key element for thriving during a recession is to focus more on customer satisfaction.  By focusing on delivering more than you promise, you are putting the customer first.  This helps reinforce their decision to buy from you.  Personalized attention makes your callers not only feel important, but also makes your company stand out.

Appletree will address client concerns, take orders, and answer their questions one-by-one, all while providing you with 24/7 customer support. With Appletree, you can increase your productivity, while still providing your clients with the personal attention they deserve.

Invest in Your Business
Promote, promote, promote!  Look at effective ways to market your business. When people are ready to buy, they want to talk to someone now.  To get an answering machine or voice mail gives them no sense that they have made any contact at all with your company.  Many feel that if they cannot reach someone when they are ready to buy, surely they may not reach anyone when they have a problem. 

An answering service can give your callers the impression of stability and professionalism that they look for in a company they want to do business with.  Appletree will always be there to answer their calls and can help you generate new business by making outbound phone calls or fielding and screening your incoming sales calls.  Your image starts with the person who answers your phone.  Show your prospects that you are a customer service oriented company.  With Appletree, all of your calls are handled with accuracy and expediency. 

I just returned from an industry trade association board meeting.  On the flight home I found myself wondering about the value in serving on voluntary boards, both within your industry and for charity.  Many successful CEO’s spend at least some time in voluntary service roles, and I was examining the value of that activity. 

It was never something that I actively examined, so it made for some interesting thought time.  I truly feel that all of my board involvement has furthered my career and my company, but not in the ways you would traditionally think.  It has not really been about networking and connections, although they have certainly helped.  I think the real value for me has been in the underlying exercise of solving strategic challenges for other organizations.  We become so focused on the day to day interactions and challenges in our own companies that we can lose sight of the bigger picture.  The ability to step into another role and work on different problems, is very energizing. 

There is a fine line with volunteer time, and board negativity can really suck the energy out of you, but overall I think it is a valuable and worthwhile endeavor!

Have a great week!

How do you communicate and educate 400 people across 12 sites nationwide?  You go on a Road Show!

I know it seems silly, but I will tell you, aside from the topic of my traveling expedition, it is as real and worth while as any project I have worked on.

The overwhelming objective that came to light pretty quickly after speaking to a few of our front line agents was they were not aware of the company’s goals, how they impacted those goals and the importance of their role within the company.  So with those initiatives in mind, I created a presentation that was not only informative, but drew from real examples in their everyday lives and experiences at Appletree, and tried to make it fun. 

The presentation kicks off with a very clear description of the company’s goals, the respective site level goals and drills down into how each individual person impacts those goals.  We talk about initiative, attitude, respect and the tangibles, like showing up to work on time, being efficient on the phones and taking accurate messages.  The combination of communication, education and tying the two together seem to be the missing piece of the puzzle.

We expect a lot from our people, and work towards aggressive goals to service our customers well.  In my experience, I have found that the more you share with people, the more apt they are to feel part of the big picture.  A company is only as successful as each of its individual employees; it’s my job to arm them with the tools and information necessary to be just that.

This blog was written by guest Blogger Candy Myura.

I am often asked the difference between a Call Center and a Telephone Answering Service.  To be frank, the lines have been very blurred in recent years.  Let me offer some insight into how Appletree segments it’s business between Call Center and Answering Service.  One hint, it is not by customer size!

It really comes down to the complexity of the customer needs.  We have very large customers that have very simple name, telephone number, message type needs, and we would clasify them as traditional Answering Service.  They are processed on our state of the art call center platform, and have access to all the same services and features, it is just that their needs are simpler.

In contrast to that, we have some small customers that have highly customized needs.  As an example we have an emergency response account that responds to tractor trailer accidents that occur within their fleet.  There are a multitude of notifications and forms that must be completed when there is an incident, and we have built out a complete call handling script to cover all possible combinations of events.  The script took over 100 hours to build, yet this customer averages about 5-10 calls PER YEAR!  Certainly not a big customer in terms of call volume, but definitely a Call Center type of account.

Essentially, the Telephone Answering Service Industry, in partnership with our equipment vendors, have brought high level Call Center type services to companies of all shapes, sizes and configurations.  We are proud to service members of the Fortune 50, many of the Fortune 500, as well as sole proprietors and thousands of small businesses.  At any level of sophistication…

Have a great week.

I am just back from a 2 day Sales and Marketing Summit that was co-hosted by Fortune Small Business Magazine and Verne Harnish of Gazelles (Gazelles.com). What an amazing 2 days. They brought in an array of great speakers and delivered excellent and timely content. The networking was very good and you can always count on some great peer sharing when Verne gets a group of entrepreneurs together!  But what really hit home for me was how important it was to stay educated. There were CEO’s in the room who have achieved, by all standards, the pinnacle of success. Yet there they were side by side with their team continuing to learn. I am proud of the fact we have made learning such a huge priority at Appletree Answering Service and even went as far as to set some standards by quarter on how much time EVERYONE in the company should spend on education. It is a top to bottom initiative as well. Everyone in the organization is responsible for meeting education goals.I look forward to expanding our intiative in 2008 and continuing to develop our learning library. It is the best gift we can bestow on an employee, the gift of new knowledge. My goal is to deliver knowledge that everyone in our organization can take with them for the rest of their career and life, not just for their time with us. We are trying to develop people one by one and live up to our mission statement…Improving the lives of Customers and Employees, ONE interaction at a time.

There are lessons everywhere about the differences among people, customer service, sales and innovation. In my role I have to travel a great deal, often three or more weeks per month on the road. Therefore I have been identified by my principle airline as one of their most “frequent” customers. While we could debate the merits of whether or not to stratify your customers for hours, we will set that argument aside since the airlines spend millions to stratify their customers. It works too, because with the perks I receive I am VERY loyal to my particular airline. But I can tell you it is a false loyalty. Given any opportunity to get a better experience elsewhere I will take it in a heartbeat. But as of now they have me in golden handcuffs with frequent ugrades, free trips and special extras.

Where they fail me though is in service. They spend all this money to trap you as a customer and then they fail at the most critical part. For the most part things are uneventful when I fly them. They lose my bags (they say “delay”) about 30% of the time when I check bags, but I have grown accustomed to that and rarely check bags. More often than not things go well. But let me tell you when it goes south it goes so far south that I am often found shaking my head and cursing their existence. Here it is, they know I am in their top tier of customers, they spent millions to identify that and create loyalty. Then, when they get the chance to serve me during a bad experience they completely fail. They use words like “policy” and “nothing else I can do”. I am often left so disgusted that I use their competitors for a few months and forgo all my extra perks, only to return. I guess the golden handcuffs are working, but I can tell you I am not happy.

Many times what they would need to do to make me happy would be so ridiculously simple a 3 year old could figure it out, but then policy rears it’s ugly head and the answer is NO to my simple request. Next time you travel take the chance to learn some lessons about business and service and reflect back on your own company. Are you creating these experiences and don’t even know it? I ask myself this question all the time. We fight like hell to avoid it but I am sure it is happening. If you have any experience with Appletree that sounds like the above I would like to hear about it personally. My email is jratliff@appletreeanswers.com.

Have a great week.