» Customer Service

Customers are what make just about any business function.  Without customers, there would not be any businesses running.  We all either give customer service or receive customer service in one form or another in this life.  Being that a large sum of my work involves customer service, where I offer customer service, I need to make sure I offer the best customer service I possibly can.  Offering customer service and offering the best customer service is what sets a business apart from the rest.  Customer service is the primary determinant of the quality of service that a company delivers. Working for an inbound call center, the type of customer service we offer can either further us or it can take us down.   A good customer service practice in our environment, since we focus in self storage, is to let the customer think they are in control of the situation as they are speaking to us.  They are the ones who called needing storage, and thus they will assume they are making the decisions.  While they somewhat are, we can also sway them into reserving because of the availability. Hiring the right sort of people to work in customer service is also crucial.  If you don’t hire the right sort of people your customer service needs will not be met.

Written by Carmen Huff

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PhoneSmart is your offsite sales force and call center in Columbia,  Missouri.

Rent self storage at 1900 Emerton Rd, Bel Air, MD 21015

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Working in the call center may not seem like hard work but it is serious business. There are a lot of callers who are pleasant and some are unhappy but, because I am trying to make a living, I do my best to treat them with respect and to have fun.  There are crank calls and prank calls and sometimes it is a bit aggravating to answer the same prankster for several calls in a row.  Generally, I get the last word with the little cuties having nothing better to do than to ask how many dead bodies can fit into a 10 x 10 storage unit.  I generally find a way to encourage them to stop calling. 

Last week there was a caller who was not in the category of a harmless prankster.  The first time I spoke with him I felt that something was off in his conduct.  He was slurring his words, breathing heavily and his questions and responses were not focused.  He gave a name and telephone number and sort of half-sobbing sigh before he hung up.  I had a queasy feeling as though a rodent had run across my foot and related the experience to my coworkers.

My coworkers remarked that they were getting hang up calls on that same line and it was getting annoying.  We all sighed over the quirks of human nature and laughed it off.  Then he called again.  Sometimes people do not realize that if you are on the phones all of the time you develop a memory for voices and speech patterns the same way that you would remember faces.  I knew it was him even though he gave a different name and telephone number.  I resisted the impulse to give him the satisfaction of reacting to him.  After the third conversation with him there were no more calls.  I mentioned the caller to the on-duty supervisor.

Last night a police officer called asking if anyone at this number had received disturbing calls so the supervisor transferred him to me.  The officer advised me that they had a juvenile in custody and that many women in that area had complained about receiving these calls and his conduct.  Evidently some women had become distraught on the phone as his conduct became more aggressive, vile and threatening.  He had an extensive diary of the calls he had made. (How stupid can you get?)  The officer was calling all of the numbers to let us know that the young man had been arrested and to gather any details we could provide and to assure us that this would stop.  I thanked the officer but assured him that I am an uppity old lady with considerable distance between me and the storage facility; I was not concerned but did ask the officer, if he could, to give the little brat a thump on the head for me.  I hope that while he is in custody he has the opportunity to read this business blog.

Written by Kay Johnson PhoneSmart call center old timer

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We are PhoneSmart your off site sales force call center in Columbia, Missouri.

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We understand that sometimes a person is just calling to get price quotes. The nice part for the caller is that it does not cost them anything to get a price quote.  Giving a price quote is a service we are rendering a caller without a fee.  A free service, unheard of!.  Of course the smartest thing for the caller getting quotes is for them to go ahead and place a unit on reserve.  While we are more than happy to give out price quotes for a self storage unit and go over all the amenities, reserving the unit is always wise, being that storage units are pretty much always limited.  Also, the caller aside from getting the price quote, can find out about any specials that may be available.  So yes, calling to get price quotes is still free of charge.  If you call to get your daily horoscope, you pay a fee to get that information. Administering information to a consumer does take time and manpower but giving price quotes for free is a good start to get that reservation for the caller.

Written by: Carmen Huff

Thanks for reading our self storage blog. We put sales and self storage together.

PhoneSmart is your offsite sales force and call center in Columbia, Missouri.

Rent storage at 1100 North Point Rd, Baltimore, MD 21222

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Glennetta is one of our call center part time evening college student employees who is studying to be a lawyer.  She is typically quite reserved and hasn’t been with the company very long.  Yet she certainly puts into place, all of the sales techniques that she’s learned since she’s been with us. One evening she took a call from a woman who needed to rent a self storage and she did just that.  Over the next 14 minutes, Glennetta helped her determine the size of a unit that would work for what she needed as well as answer other numerous questions that this caller had.  She wanted to make sure that they understood the storage unit process and took full advantage of Glennetta’s expertise.  To Glennetta’s surprise, at the end of the call, the customer asked to speak to her supervisor so they could “tell them what a fabulous job she did”. 

She told the supervisor:
“She did an amazing job.  I’m a manager for Nordstrom’s and she was so… there’s a difference between friendly and being warm, and she was very warm. It was actually a really nice experience to be on the phone with her.  She just had this warmth to her where you felt kind of connected, especially for speaking with a total stranger.  So I just wanted a supervisor to acknowledge her for that. She did a fantastic job… She was a sweetheart!  Glennetta was very warm and did a great job”.

It’s encouraging to get complimented like this and especially by a “total stranger”.

Written by: Robin Turner, Call Center Manager

Thanks for reading our self storage business blog. We know sales and self storage.

PhoneSmart is your offsite sales force and call center in Columbia, Missouri.

Self storage is waiting for you at 16825 Tye St. SE, Monroe, WA 98272

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There’s a new Taco Bell in my town. It had been there for a while and then one day the building was completely demolished to the ground and they began building it back, from scratch. Unfortunately, I think they did the same thing with the employees they had at the time.

Since the new building has opened, I’ve eaten there twice. Each time some one went through the drive-thru and brought me a meal. When I bit into that first anticipated bite of yummy, spicy goodness, I was distraught to find it was not what I ordered. My baja chicken chalupa did, in fact, have beef on it! Normally, I’d keep eating but Taco Bell beef always upsets my tummy, so I couldn’t eat the rest of it. I looked at the receipt and sure enough, there were the letters “CHK”. I can only assume that those three letters verified that I had requested poultry and not cow.

Yesterday my sister was on her way to my house and called to ask if I wanted anything from Taco Bell; she was in the drive-thru. My mouth watered and I thought about my favorite food from there- a baja chicken chalupa. I could hear her ordering it just moments after I told her what I wanted. She even asked for extra fire sauce. A few minutes later she came through the door, bag in hand, and gave me the taco. I eagerly unwrapped it, poured on the fire sauce and took a large bite. After the taste of the baja and fire sauces calmed down I realized that something didn’t seem right. I could feel my tummy already telling me to stop immediately. I peered into the taco and there it was… COW. Not again!

I thought about calling the establishment and letting them know about both instances in which they’ve put the wrong meat in my chalupa. I didn’t make the call, but I probably should have. What would it have changed at that moment? I’d still have been sitting on my couch with Betsy in my chalupa. I wasn’t going to go out right then and get a replacement, so it seemed futile to make the call.

This particular location is not the only Taco Bell in town. In fact, the other location is closer to my house, it’s just that this location is nearer the places I most often frequent, namely Wal-Mart. I have decided not to go there again. I can drive to the next exit down from mine and get what I want and know it’s the right order.

Luckily for me, there is more than one of the same establishment in my town. Even if there weren’t another Taco Bell, I’m sure I could find somewhere selling Mexican food. Self storage customers probably wouldn’t give a facility two chances to mess up their “order” or treasures. All it takes is sometimes one mishap and they’ll go to the next guy down the road who sells the same thing, or something similar. It’s important to pay attention to each customer and what they need.

Written by: Sarah Little, TQA Executive and Blog Editor.

Thanks for reading PhoneSmart’s self storage blog. We know the customer service and self storage industries.

PhoneSmart is your offsite sales force and call center in Columbia, Missouri.

Find self storage at 958 Portranco Rd, San Antonio, TX 78245

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During my second week at PhoneSmart, I thought my future with self storage was coming to a quick end. I had made a few reservations, but still wasn’t sounding confident enough on the phone. Really, I was psyching myself out, but with Robin and Dana’s help, I was able to find my place at the call center. I began working in the outbound department late in the day on Friday of my second week. I was immediately relieved to find that there wasn’t so much pressure to make reservations in this department as the focus was to make contact with potential customers. Laurie, our fearless outbound manager, seemed very happy that I was joining her team and made me feel very welcome and comfortable with the work I would be doing. I began learning about the research involved with outbound in order to ensure our customers have the most convenient location to utilize. It seemed easy enough since I was already familiar with the Google Earth program at home. However, the trick with outbound seems to be keeping all the work we do organized, because tracking is very important to determine storage trends. Which, in my opinion, is the basis for running a successful business.  Nevertheless, once I started making calls I found that it was much easier for me to work at my own pace and speak with answering machines more than people. Now that I’ve gotten more familiar with the work involved with outbound I feel myself getting better each day with only room for more improvement.

Written by: Elizabeth Travis

Thanks for reading PhoneSmart’s business blog; a diary of a self storage call center.

PhoneSmart is your offsite sales force and call center in Columbia, Missouri.

Self storage is conveniently located at 200 King Rd, Westchester, PA 19380

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Customers in the call center sometimes make unreasonable demands or expect that we have a magic wand that unlocks their delinquent unit, as if we are setup in an outerspace hub with satellites that control the self storage universe.

Our reps calmly bring them back into reality and give them as much help as they can. Sometimes a call like this only takes 20 seconds. Then there are the “others”. They are like a child running through a gift shop, knocking off all the glass figurines, screaming and throwing himself in the floor because he can’t have a candy bar.

The reps handling these calls can sometimes feel like the mother of that child. On the inside, she wants to grab him by the arm and set him straight, but she’s mortified by the public display and aware of all the onlookers. So she says, in a hushed yet stern voice, “That’s enough!” or maybe she gives into him and hands him the candy bar just to keep him quiet until they get in the car. When any human being is treated disrespectfully, they are offended, but it’s the professionalism that comes out of our reps in these situations. They remain calm, cool, and collected. That’s not to say that on the inside we aren’t sometimes appalled by the vulgarity of a ranting tenant, but our job is to control the situation and reach some sort of conclusion.

Kudos goes out to any customer service employee who understands, first-hand, the self control it takes to remain calm.

Written by: Sarah Little, Total Quality Assurance Service Executive and Blog Editor.

Thanks for reading PhoneSmart’s self storage blog. We give you a behind the scenes look of the call center and self storage industries.

PhoneSmart is your offsite sales force and call center in Columbia, Missouri.

Get your spring cleaning started with a storage unit at 980 4th Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11232

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Don’t be a butt about your butts
 
Looking at the title it may seem that I am referring to a part of the human anatomy; actually I am referring to cigarette butts.  I went to a restaurant and saw a host of employees smoking in the designated smoking area, which was okay. What was not okay was the mess I saw when I left the restaurant! There were cigarette butts everywhere on the ground and the grass. I not only reported this to the manager but I escorted him to the area. I did ask for the regional manager contact information, as this was a bad reflection of the restaurant. 

As I pulled away from the parking lot I heard loud disagreement from one of the smokers. I assume the manager asked him to clean the butts up and he disagreed. It is hard to increase sales of your establishment if your facility is not presentable enough to attract customers to your facility; whether it is a restaurant or a self storage facility.

At my place of employment at the call center, we have a designated smoking area. In the smoking area there is a cigarette receptacle. This helps eliminates cigarette butts being on the ground or anywhere else. A simple item can make a huge difference in the presentation of the building. If you are asked to pick up the butts from your cigarettes then do so and don’t argue about a butt that obviously belongs to you.

Written by Angela Perry, PhoneSmart call center trainer.

Thank you for visiting the PhoneSmart call center blog, an insider view of the self storage industry.

PhoneSmart is your offsite sales force and call center in Columbia, Missouri.

Find self storage at 11510 N. Main, Kansas City, MO 64155

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