Entry bubble Poison Prevention

By: Joanne | March 16, 2010 | Category: Health

poison symbolIt’s one of those parenting nightmares – you find your baby sitting on the floor with an open bottle of medicine. My story went something like that, but instead of medicine, my 1 year old got her hands on a bottle of cleaning solution for our CD’s. It has no child proof cap and she found it while rummaging through the stereo cabinet. Small children are curious little explorers and it’s amazing what they can get themselves into when you turn your back for a moment.

So there she was, sitting on the floor happily holding the open bottle. I didn’t see her drink any of it, but there wasn’t much liquid left in the bottle. I just didn’t know what to do, so I called the Poison Center.

The people at the Poison Center asked me some questions about the situation, and luckily the cleaning solution was alcohol and the quantity (if she had any at all) was small enough that it didn’t pose a serious threat. They told me what to watch out for, just in case she had a bad reaction and were calm, comforting and helpful. *whew* Everything turned out OK.

Needless to say, a child safety latch was installed on the stereo cabinet – pronto! It’s hard to make your home 100% safe, but if you have small children or animals around your home, do your best to prevent poising.

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Entry bubble Calling the 800 Number

By: Joanne | May 06, 2009 | Category: General

Bloggers at the Government Customer Support ConferenceHave you ever had a good or bad experience with a call center?

Sometimes good stories come out of call centers: An employee call center received a call late on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Her personnel office closed for the day and she needed proof of insurance because her young daughter died and the funeral home would not perform the services until they had proof of life insurance. The agent started calling personnel offices to find someone who could help. Because the agent wouldn’t give up, personnel found the information, contacted the funeral home and sent the appropriate documents. The agent stayed on the line with the employee until they heard from the personnel manager that she succeeded.

Sometimes the stories are not so good: A friend once told a story where the director of a software manufacturing company was recorded informing a caller to send a product back for a full refund as the caller was “too stupid” to use the product. Luckily for all future callers, the chairman directed a personnel change so this director would no longer be taking calls.

What contact center managers have to know is, how do you make the contact center experience a good one?

A few ways that come to mind: One way is to ask probing questions so if someone called and asked how to do a name change, we might also ask a follow-up question like, “Is that due to a marriage or another situation where you might need to change your benefits?”

Or maybe if someone called with a question and the answer could be easily found on our website. We might stay on the line and guide them to where the information is shown.

Both these examples make the caller feel like they had a valid question, and that someone cares about their situation. Usually the caller might even say to me, “Oh, thanks I didn’t know that was right there.”

What makes your call to the 800 number a good one?

Note from Joanne: I just did a workshop with government contact center managers about using social media. As a workshop exercise, we wrote today’s blog post as a group. You can see my group of brand new bloggers in the photo above.

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