If you work as an organizational consultant, you are sure to hear all types of request from clients. Instead of consulting with you the client actually brings you a solution that he or she wants implemented. You know that it is the wrong thing to do and more importantly it will not provide them the results that they are look for. So, what do you do?

This is the story of one of my favorite client engagements. I call it "Disconnecting the Phone Doctor." Take a look at the client's request and you'll understand why.

THE TRAINING REQUEST The manager said that he had 125 people in the technical center and that they had recently experienced an 8% drop in our customer satisfaction and responsiveness ratings. Customers reported that the phone rang too many times before being answered, the hold times were too long, and sometimes there was no answer at all. The customers said that they had to call back to get an issue resolved.

Could you please deliver "Phone Doctor" training?

The "Phone Doctor” is a training class to teach people better phone etiquette. This was a sophisticated telecommunications network center staff with telecom specialist, engineers, and systems professionals. The center was responsible for building client networks, monitoring the networks, and troubleshooting network failures.

MY IMMEDIATE THOUGHT If performance was good what caused the 8% drop. I don't seriously think that it is because people don't know how to answer a ringing phone or speak when they answer it. After all they all had telecommunication or information technology degrees and they had communicated well enough to get the job.

THE FINDINGS This manager had hired 15 new people within a 45-day period. Someone had the bright idea that the best way to get the new people up to speed was to immediately expose them to the types of issues that they would be handling. Management decided to assign the new people to phone detail. They were to answer very technical telecommunication network calls from experienced technicians at their client locations.

Without knowing what to say, the new technicians would place people on hold and walk around the center looking for assistance. Though they would try to repeat what was told to them much was lost in translation. They did not know the job, the processes, the terminology, or the needs of the clients.

THE RECOMMENDATION I immediately refused to deliver Phone Doctor or any other type of verbal communication training. I suggested people be removed from the phones. The manager agreed with the first part but said it would take time to reassign people.

THE PLAN

I grabbed two more team members from my group and

asked the manager if we could have eight hours to gather information from the people. He agreed.

In about six hours we conducted face to face meetings with the five top people in the group. We learned that there are five common technical problems and reasons why customers call into the center.

We spent time with five new people to understand their challenges and what they absolutely needed to know.

We created job aids for each of the five call types. We developed the 5 questions that are usually asked by the customers and prepared the answers. We included directions as to when the "newbie" should go for help and how to position that with the customer.

THE CLASS Two days later I returned and taught a full-day class on the 5 primary calls and how to handle them. I made sure that the new techs had the right tools to answer the questions and also knew what to do when they were stuck. I allowed 1-hour for them to interact with existing techs to ask questions.

THE RESULT 1 day of assessment, 2 days of development, 1 day for delivery. On hold times went down. Calls were answered in fewer rings. Customers were more satisfied with the answers. Customer made fewer calls back.

Employee confidence went up. Employees were more engaged. Employees learned a great deal in a short time. Employee increased their own learning with every call.

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