The Wheel of Storage

Welcome to the self storage blog, PhoneSmart’s diary of its experiences in the self storage business. Today’s blog was submitted by Kay Johnson, a self storage insider. She is one of our many super telesales reps.

“The Wheel”

Sometimes as we sit in our cubicles staring at the screen and waiting for the phone to ring we may feel a bit disconnected from the outside world and from the stores that we serve. We have callers who are happy, polite, nice, sad, angry, stressed out and down right nasty. We answer the same questions call after call, day after day, and count our credit card reservations as the measure of our accomplishment. We fret over our numbers, our percents, and our evaluation scores and develop a sort of tunnel vision that wears down our spirits.

If we start to look and think beyond those numbers we can begin to see a greater importance in the work we do. Just imagine that you are a busy working mother of three needing to retrieve your extra bed from your storage unit for an emergency overnight guest. It is 7 PM and the office at your storage facility closed at 6:30. You know that the gate is working later than that but you don’t want to drive over there if you won’t be able to get in. You call the office number hoping against hope that they are working late and you might luck out. You get a message “press 1 for information” and expecting a recording you hear the friendly voice of a live person who assures you that the gate is working until 9PM.

Imagine that you are tenant of your local storage facility. It is 10 PM and you need to catch a plane first thing in morning. Your bill is due and you are concerned about getting it paid on time. When you call and friendly live person tells you that you can pay your bill online and gives the web page address.

Imagine you are shopping for a storage unit and looking for the best value. You call and call getting answering machines or people who give you a price in a bored voice and hurry you off the line. Then you make one more call that rolls to us and you get a friendly, knowledgeable person who guides you though the selection process and sends your request and your information to the manager so that they can contact you and have the opportunity to serve you.

Imagine that you are a businessman with a very busy schedule and you need to store a sudden influx of excess inventory. You are constantly on the run and cannot spare the time to keep calling if the store does not answer. You call, perhaps expecting a recording and get a friendly voice that helps you select a unit that will work for you, gets the paperwork information started and even reserves the unit you need.

Imagine that you are a tenant and you enter your unit, the door swings closed behind you and locks. You know that the managers have left for the evening. You call out on your cell phone and get a friendly person who calls the alternate number and help is on the way.

Imagine you are the manager of the store that these calls were taken for getting information that will aid in increasing your store profits by having the opportunity to talk with the one that might have gotten away and assisting customers with immediate special needs.

Imagine yourself not a small person sitting in a cubicle in fly-over country staring at the screen, waiting for a call, but at the hub of a huge wheel whose spokes reach out across North America. Imagine the gratitude of the mother of three, the person anxious to pay his bill on time and the businessman with a need, the poor soul trapped inside his unit. Imagine your value to the store that you serve.

Imagine that!

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Disclamer: This entry is intended to promote our partner StorageMart and some or all participants received compensation.

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