When a customer calls your store who answers the phone? There are generally three situations that exist when it comes to answering incoming phone calls.

First is the store that has a receptionist who takes all incoming calls and routes them properly. Some do an adequate job, some do an outstanding job. I recently worked with a client who has a phenomenal lady answering their phones. Not only does she sound happy and genuinely interested each time you call, but on one occasion my call got dropped and she promptly called me back. I was shocked. She apologized, even though the dropped call was not likely to be her fault, and offered to connect me right away to who I was trying to reach. Talk about the WOW factor. Those are few and far between.

The second is when the sales team answers incoming calls. The inconsistency in that process is horrible from the customer’s perspective. I never know what I’m going to get. It might be someone who is already distracted by working with a customer and just wanting to snap up another customer or someone who just lost a sale and is blaming everyone else for their bad day. If you are a service customer, you better be calling the service line direct, otherwise you are going to be frustrated by your inability to be connected properly to the service department.

“It’s like playing Russian Roulette, but there is only one empty chamber.”

Then there are the stores with the BDC answering all incoming calls. If given the choice of the three, this is the one I want to call the least because it is the most broken when it comes to handling incoming calls. The primary goal of the BDC is to make outbound calls to set appointments to drive showroom traffic. That’s in their job description and that’s also how their performance is judged. So rarely are the individuals in the BDC focused on the quality of their customer service on inbound calls. Instead, they are focused on how quickly they can hand off any call that is not a return BDC call to generate that appointment so they can make the next outbound call.

Here’s what usually happens when I call a store where the BDC handles all incoming calls.

“ABC Motors, this is Jane Doe, and to whom am I speaking?”

“Jane, this is Harlene may I speak with xxxxxxxxxx.”

Now if I asked to speak to the service department, it’s very likely it will ring and ring or I’ll sit with no sound until I lose patience and hang up because service is busy. But no one ever comes back on the line to offer me other options. How many times does this happen to your repair customers?

Similarly when I ask to speak to a specific individual in the store. The BDC pages and the individual doesn’t pick up. This may happen a time or two before the BDR just wants me off the phone and asks to take a message -whether or not the recipient ever receives that message is a different point of debate. Worse yet, I find out later that the person I was trying to reach wasn’t even at the store on that day, but no one in the BDC could tell me that.

Your customers deal with this day in and day out. From a customer satisfaction perspective, the only store I want to call is the one with a highly skilled receptionist.

Now in defense of the BDC, it’s not entirely the BDC’s fault. They didn’t write their job description. They didn’t create their performance evaluation criteria. They are also often hidden in the building away from all other departments, or, for many clients in a different building entirely so they can’t even see how busy another department is.

How do you address these customer service issues to fix your broken incoming phone line?

1.) For starters, provide training to all staff answering incoming calls as to the importance of the incoming call to the entire store and training on how to handle them properly

2.) Provide a time clock or attendance system that anyone can access to see who is onsite and who is off, out to lunch or otherwise indisposed.

3.) Have a call protocol cheat sheet for everyone answering the phone. For example, if someone calls for the GM and he is off today, what is the protocol? Take a message? Transfer to voice mail? Transfer all calls to the GSM?

4.) Have a process system in the service department to handle an overflow of calls. If a call is transferred to the service department and it’s not answered within x number of rings or attempts, tell the customer they are helping other customers and you are going to transfer them to the service department voice mail and someone will return their call shortly. Make sure the service department is returning those calls!

5.) Last, but certainly not least, place as much importance on the incoming calls to the dealership as you do on the outgoing calls. The incoming call means someone is investing their time and energy into talking to you. Make sure you make the most of it.