Sarah Hedayati

As a large por­tion of the baby boomer pop­u­la­tion pre­pares to retire, call cen­ters in the insur­ance indus­try will field more calls from older cus­tomers. To help agents suc­cess­fully serve this base of cus­tomers, they need to learn skills and spe­cific tac­tics to help them suc­ceed. Use the fol­low­ing five tips to coach your employ­ees in how to suc­cess­fully serve older mem­bers when they call about their insurance:

Tip #1: Speak Clearly and Enun­ci­ate

When help­ing older callers, agents may notice that a mem­ber has dif­fi­culty hear­ing and under­stand­ing what the agent says. Employ­ees need to keep in mind that even some­one with per­fect hear­ing can have trou­ble under­stand­ing what the per­son on the other end of the line is say­ing. As insur­ance rep­re­sen­ta­tives han­dle more calls from older cus­tomers, they need to keep the fol­low­ing in mind:

• Speak louder
• ...

Have you ever had a cus­tomer ser­vice expe­ri­ence that left you say­ing “wow”?

The other day, I had one of those “wow” expe­ri­ences. I was stay­ing at a hotel in Hol­ly­wood for work. The only way to park was through valet. The atten­dant asked me for my name and wrote it on a tag to hang from my rear view mir­ror. I gath­ered my lug­gage from the car and walked into the hotel. I made my way to the recep­tion desk and as I approached the counter, the employee behind the desk said, Sarah? I was blown away! I even said, “Wow! How impressive!”

Work­ing in the cus­tomer ser­vice indus­try has made me extremely sen­si­tive to ser­vice issues. The employee that knew my name wowed me. So how do you go about cre­at­ing expe­ri­ences that wow customers?

Set...

When man­agers hear they need to improve employee sat­is­fac­tion to achieve cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion, they often don’t know where to start.

Employ­ees are at the front line, assist­ing cus­tomers first hand. If employ­ees are unhappy, there’s no telling what kind of ser­vice they will pro­vide. Unhappy employ­ees neg­a­tively impact your company’s earn­ing power. Accord­ing to Gallup Con­sult­ing, unhappy employ­ees can cost the U.S. work­force $300 bil­lion in loss of pro­duc­tiv­ity. My guess is you don’t want to be a part of that loss.

Mer­cer con­sult­ing con­ducted a sur­vey to find out where employ­ees stand. Research shows “…one in three US work­ers is seri­ously con­sid­er­ing leav...

The other night, I went to din­ner at one of my new favorite restau­rants. When I sat down, I couldn’t help but notice the table next to me was not hav­ing a pleas­ant din­ing expe­ri­ence. The two din­ers’ body lan­guage said it all. They both had their arms folded and were clearly try­ing to get the waiter’s atten­tion by star­ing and ges­tur­ing for him to come over to the table. He apol­o­gized sev­eral times for some­thing I could not deci­pher. A few min­utes later, what seemed to be a com­pli­men­tary dessert arrived.

This expe­ri­ence got me think­ing: was the dessert enough to turn the unhappy din­ers into repeat and loyal cus­tomers? Ask your­self this ques­tion: would you rather pay full price for a meal and receive good ser­vice or get a com­pli­men­tary dessert for bad service?

Although I appre­ci­ate, and some­times expect, some kind of com­pen­sa­tion for bad ser­vice, I would much rather pay for a pos­i­tive expe­ri­ence. Peo­ple don’t go to restau­...