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Old 04-18-2007, 07:04 PM
pemburung pemburung is offline
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Join Date: Nov 2005
Location: Helena
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smalltown, for most very small businesses, customer service is survival. Good comments further up this string as well, but as Roland said, you may want to hire someone part-time for non-customer contact stuff, freeing up time for those calls. In the end, you're the only person who really cares about the customer - staff care about their pay-checks, and the connection between these is tenuous for many workers. But first see if there's a common thread to any of the calls, or parts of them, and get rid of the need for them to inquire. I'm sure there's a bunch of things everyone asks, and so post that on the site in an obvious place. If you talk to customers at time of purchase, ask them then if they have any questions, or answer those common queries without them asking. Answer all the common and even some of the less common questions in your order confirmed email. Lastly, sporadic calls through the day takes up more time than in one concentrated period. Try posting an shorter inquiries hours window: "If after looking over our FAQs you have a question or comment, we are happy to answer blah blah blah. We look forward to serving you on our customer assistance line between 11am and 2pm CT." Or some similar time that reflects a reasonable range for the number of inquiries, and preferably when you can be doing something else - like eating lunch, that doesn't take away from concentration time. Stopping and re-starting to answer a phone call (or an email) jobs takes up a lot of time. When restricting access, make it sound positive, not negative. So phrases such as "we look forward to answering your queries" or, "to better serve you by ensuring your question can be answered promptly by a knowledgeable person, please call between..."

Good luck.
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