Run Your Call Center and Customer Service Department Like a Pro

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When a customer picks up the phone, they typically don’t know what specific questions to ask to ensure the most value. Instead, they are just calling around to see who can fix their problems the fastest and the cheapest so they can resume their regular lives.

Brigham Dickinson knows this and has worked for years on refining his methods to create the perfect customer experience. This week on Cracking the Code, Brigham shares how you can build a culture of practice for CSRs in your business fueled by attention and mentorship. The result? An elevated customer experience that yields better conversions and repeat customers.

Audio Transcription (in beta)

Awesome, we are here with Mr. Brigham Dickinson from Power Selling Pros. How are you today, Brigham? I’m awesome. Weldon, how are you? I’m doing great. You know, you and me, we’re just like, just the Rockies is the only thing between us, because you’re over at me. That’s right. I’m just south of Denver, and I could almost reach out and touch you if I could just reach across those Rockies, and I could rub that perfectly, shave your head.

You got a good looking head there, my friend. Yeah, as do you. You’d have to reach to the tunnel on I-70.
Right. Well, listen. Such a beautiful drive there. Yeah, absolutely. I-70 is pretty crazy sometimes. Yeah, I wanna talk to you about call center and customer service. That is an area where you have a great deal of expertise and experience. Power Selling Pros, that’s what you do for a living. And so what I wanted to do is to ask you a few questions about how important it is to have a good call center, follow up, happy calls, maybe rehash, anything that you guys do or teach about in your call center.

But I think first, maybe, let’s just get a little idea of your background so people understand why they should pay attention to you on this topic. Yeah, so I was first taught by none other than Kevin Comerford on how to answer the phones. That was a very long time ago.

I was working at a company called Arctic Air, in Chico, California. And Kevin was the district manager at the time before he started his own business. And he called me up and he said, hey, Brigham, I wanna talk to you.
And I was like, wow, it’s gotta be about my marketing ideas because I also did marketing at Arctic Air. I just finished my marketing degree. And I thought for sure he’s gonna promote me.

Who knew? Who knows, right? And so he comes and he sits down with me and I had all these marketing ideas that I had on the table. And he’s like, this is great. In fact, he listened to me for about five minutes.
And then after that, he said, okay, this is fantastic. This is wonderful. And it kind of moved the marketing stuff aside.
Now show me how you answer the phones. And it kind of caught me off guard. I was like, well, okay, this is Brigham with Arctic Air.
How can I help? And he’s like, that’s it? I said, well, what are you looking for, Kevin? Next thing you know, he drills me on how to answer the phones for two hours. Wow. It was amazing.
So at the end of that conversation, in fact, he’s walking out the door and he said, hey, I’m gonna call you every two weeks. Even if you recognize my voice because he acted like a different type of customer every time we role-played. He said, it doesn’t matter if you recognize my voice or not.

You’ve got to finish the role play, finish the call and then we can talk afterwards. All right, sounds good. And sure enough, he called me every other week and sometimes it was a cowboy voice and other times it was a old lady voice.
And I always acted surprised when he said at the end, it’s me, Kevin, right? Oh my gosh, I can’t believe it. And he’d give me some pointers and he probably did it for about six months. It was amazing.
I could just see Kevin with those piercing blue eyes looking across the conference table at you. He’s a small man in stature, but he could be a very intimidating man. I know. Yeah. Yeah, he’s a wonderful guy. Wonderful guy.

Incredible guy. Yeah, so in fact, I talked to one of his managers just this morning, coincidentally, up there. But anyway.
Small world. Talk to us then. So then you did that and at some point you really got into the training side, teaching other companies how to properly do this.

Talk to us about some of the most important things that folks should keep in mind when they’re answering the phone. You know, what should that process look and sound like? Yeah, so when a customer gets on the phone, they don’t know what to ask. So they’re gonna say things like, hey, what do you charge to come out? I just wanna talk to a technician.
They’re trying to speed up the process, right? They wanna get their problem solved and they think by asking those types of questions that they can get it done more quickly. They can just kind of speed through the process, especially after they’ve called a company or two. They’re like, okay, what do you charge, right? They’re trying to beat the system or what have you.
Now, our goal isn’t necessarily to outwit them per se. Our goal is to be very, very sincere and just say, hey, tell me more about your situation, what’s going on? Well, I’ve got this air conditioner that’s blowing hot air. My gosh, that’s terrible.
How long has it been doing that? Oh, last couple of days. Well, look, we can totally help you with that. Why don’t you like us to come out? So now it’s very sincere, right? We’re on the same page.

We have an understanding where I’m showing them, look, I totally understand where you’re coming from. I care about your situation. And guess what? I can help, okay? And what we’re doing there in the first 30 seconds of the phone call is we’re taking care of their emotional need.

Customer has an emotional need on every phone call. They wanna feel understood. They wanna feel cared about and they wanna feel reassured.

If you follow that process in the phone call, you’re gonna book that call. You’re gonna wow that customer. And most importantly, you’re gonna be the only one that comes out.

Now we’ve got a thousand contractors that we work with on a regular basis with our CSRs. And more times than not, a CSR just needs a little bit of attention, okay? Technicians, boy, they get all the training, all the support. Even the distributors, when they come around showing off new products, they get first dibs on donuts and bagels.
And then the CSRs come in afterwards with the sloppy seconds, right? If we just give them a little bit of attention, boy, those CSRs are going to be performing at an extremely high level for the contractor. And it’s worth it. I mean, gosh, when your calls come in and side note, I found out from Service Titan the other day, according to Service Titan, Service Titan consumer contractors in general only book 42% of their phone calls.

Wow. 42%. That’s outrageous. That’s insane. Yeah. Now let’s assume for a moment that EJ contractors are a whole lot better than that. Let’s say that they’re booking 60% of their phone calls. Well, if that’s true, then let’s say you get an average of 30 calls a day. If you have a 60% closing ratio, that means you’re booking 18 of those 30 calls, day in and day out.
So let’s say that your average ticket’s 500 bucks. I know that on a replacement call, it’s going to be a whole lot more than 500 bucks, but on a service call, it could be less than that, right? So let’s just say $500 for the sake of simple math. Well, that’s $9,000 a day and about $2.2 million a year, okay? Now, if we can increase it to 85%, just a 50% increase in call conversion, so now you’re booking 25.5 calls out of 30 and you’re making a whole lot more day.

It’s like $12,000 a day and guess what? 3.3 million a year. So an extra million dollars just by increasing your call conversion by 15%. That’s huge.
It’s massive. It’s massive. So the goal is to give your CSRs just a little bit of attention.
If we can arm them with a way to connect with the customer, help them feel understood, cared about, reassured, they’re gonna book that call and wow that customer. Yeah. Hi, I’m Daryl Yashinsky.

Hey, I’m Bob Larkin. Many of our contractors meet with us monthly and you chances are have met with us monthly. We found that members have deeper and greater needs.
So we came up with next level coaching, which is we meet a lot more often and there is accountability to deal with some of the issues of money, growth, finding employees, having an exit strategy to get off this roller coaster. These are the issues that contractors want answers to and we can provide those answers as next level coaching. When you join next level coaching, you’re going to find solutions that are easy to implement and logical.

Most importantly, we hold you accountable to specifics. We’re gonna meet twice a month and have specific to-dos and with those specific to-dos, we’re going to discuss and dive into your financials in a very granular way. You’re gonna have a clear budget.

We’ll be able to establish pricing. We’re going to help you create leadership programs that build your people. We’re going to help you find people.

You may think of differing ways to engage employees that will keep them more involved by joining next level coaching. So if you’re interested in making more money, growing your company, finding good employees and developing an exit strategy, give
Daryl and I a call. We’ll be happy to talk to you about next level coaching.

And we’re gonna see you on the next level. No, that’s awesome. And I started a company out here in Colorado four years ago.

And when I started, we start with a replacement mindset. So we’re doing tons of marketing and looking for replacement leads.
But of course, the call center and the service department is really the foundation of any successful company.

So our plan was to build that over time. Well, as it turned out, we were able to buy a small company that had a strong call center and a strong service department. Integrated that with our install and sales team.

It’s been absolutely amazing. There was a month we had last year, last November, we did about a million dollars in install. And I went back and looked at the call center numbers.

And on that same month, we had about 300 maintenance calls. And we sold $300,000 in new systems on the leads that came from those maintenance calls, another 50 or 60,000 in repair and service maintenance revenue. But $300,000, that worked out to a little bit over $1,000 per maintenance call on average.

And so that is so important what you’re talking about to get those calls booked. And what a small difference, like you say, just a little bit of improvement from 18 calls to 25 calls can be literally millions of dollars over the course of the year. So let me ask him some specifics.

I know people are wondering. So generally speaking, do you try to avoid giving any prices, especially maybe like diagnostic fees? Or if you do disclose that, how do you go about having that conversation with folks? Okay, so if a customer gets on the phone, they say, hey, what do you charge to come out? First thing I’m gonna do is say, tell me more. What’s going on with your situation? Well, I’ve got an air conditioner and it’s blowing hot air.

How long has it been doing that? Oh, last couple of days. Well, look, we can totally help you with that. When would you like us to come out? Now, more times than not, if the customer likes you, they’re gonna be less concerned about the price.
Why? Because they like you. Funny thing about people who like you, they’re more amiable, they’re more flexible, they’re easier to deal with. Yeah.

Right, this is, I mean, not to go on a tangent, but this is one of the concerns with the advent of AI coming out, right? The thing about AI, especially when it’s the master, whether it’s over the phone, whether it’s some sort of interaction that you’re doing online, once it’s programmed to do what it does, you pretty much expect it to do that. Okay, great. You have an expectation, it meets the expectation, you get what you want.

Now, the problem with that is just that people get used to it. And when people get used to it, well, then they don’t value it as much as they used to. And the price kind of goes down.
So I guess what I’m getting at is that we want to create a wow experience for the customer. How do you do that if they’re expecting it? The way that you create a wow experience for the customer is to do the unexpected. Right.

Okay, this is what’s great about Chick-fil-A. Chick-fil-A provides this amazing experience over and over and over again, and they justify the price they charge. They make more money per unit than McDonald’s.
So because people like them, because they’ve built that buying environment, they can charge a higher price. Now, the same thing is true over the phone. If a customer gets on the phone and they say, hey, what do you charge to come out? What they’re saying is, I don’t know the difference between you and this guy aside from your price, aside from your dispatch fee.

Right. Okay, what do we need to do? We need to show them that we’re amazing, that our technicians are well-trained, and that we’ve been around for a very long time, and that we guarantee everything that we do. Once they realize that, it’s not about price at all.
It’s about the value that we bring to the table. So long answer to your short question, Weldon, is that we don’t avoid it. We don’t avoid it.

We help them see that we’re the right company to work with. Yeah. Independent of price.
I feel like you’re just deprioritizing the price by almost kind of redirecting the conversation, much like we would in a sales call, right? If we walked in the door and somebody said, how much is the new system? We’d say, well, I’ve got a lot to figure out first. And that’s kind of what you’re doing. And it’s funny, I was just reading an article about the impact of making people laugh or smile.

When we laugh or when we smile, it releases endorphins, and we attribute the good feelings of that towards the person that made us laugh or smile. And so I always tell folks, whether they’re on a sales call, service call, or answering the telephone, try to make them smile, right? Try to make them laugh if you can, you know? Humor’s gotta be pretty, gotta be careful with that because it can backfire on you. But just having a creative way to answer the phone, that type of thing, and really try to turn it more about the service and the relationship than about the price.

Now, if somebody comes back and keeps asking about the diagnostic fee, obviously you’re gonna have to disclose it at some point, but it’s a great point that you make. At least give it an effort to just kind of sidestep it for a minute and say, well, what’s going on? Oh, we can help with that, that’s awful. Show some empathy, offer a solution.
And if they come back to it, you gotta deal with it. But you’re right, if they feel the sincerity, if they feel like you’re helping them, then they may not wanna ask a second time, right? It’s almost like now they’re embarrassed to ask a second time. So I think that’s really, really great advice.

What are some other things you can think of if you are hiring a new CSR and they were working in one of your companies or one of your clients’ companies? Like what would be the first one or two important things, pieces of advice that you might give to them? Like what would be- Okay, that’s a great question. So the first would be to practice early and often with them. Most of the time when a company hires us, they hire us after something goes wrong inside their call center.
And so when a call center, when they find out that we’re coming, right, that we’re providing training, they feel like they did a bad job. So what are we? We’re a punishment. Oh, we must’ve done a bad job.
And the only way that we can stop this punishment is if we begin to do a good job. And so they try to get out of the training as quickly as possible. Did I do a good job? Great.

And they’re in for like two months. They’re saying, hey, we’re good now, right? We’re good, we’re fixed. No, that’s not how it works. So you wanna create a culture of practice. In fact, when you’re in the interviewing process, say, hey, let’s just practice a call right now and get them used to the fact that this is what we’re doing even before you hire them. Now, the reason why this is important, this is let’s see what they say first of all.
I mean, it’s probably gonna not be the greatest. So you might have a customer, you might do a practice session with that CSR and they get comfortable with it, right? They go, okay, cool, this is what we do. This is part of our culture.

And you can provide feedback even before you hire them. Let’s see how they receive feedback. And then now you’re building into your culture practice.
So if we come on or not, you’re constantly practicing. Even after they’re hired, I would sit down with them on a regular basis and just practice. Have them listen to their own phone calls and practice better customer service skills.
If you do that, whether power selling process is involved or not, boy, you’re gonna have a team that’s used to practicing, used to role-playing on a regular basis. That’d be number one. Number two, we wanna incentivize them to book calls.
Even calls, let’s say for example, say a customer gets on the phone and they’re talking about plumbing. Let’s say you also provide heating and cooling. If you also book a replacement call or a heating and cooling call, you should be paid for that.

Sure. Right? Chances are comfort advisors aren’t calling out after a replacement opportunity. You should definitely be working with these customers, calling them back and saying, hey, you were with our comfort advisor last week.
How did he do? How could he do better? Right? Make it a happy call. Yeah. And see if we can’t set it up again.
Most of the time, in fact, we’ve got recordings of this, where we have CSRs that call out and they go, oh, I’ve been meaning to call you. Funny thing, how customers have been meaning to call us. And she sold $20,000 on that job.

Okay, why? Because the customer had been meaning to call them. So if it’s me, after they’ve learned all these amazing customer service skills, give them a way to make their own money. Yeah.
That’s awesome. There’s two really important things. Two of my favorite things in business that you just talked about, culture and compensation.

Right? The culture of training. You know, Zig Ziglar used to say, training and coaching is like bathing and eating. You got to do it every day. And I get to, you know, I do a lot of training in the industry, not on the call center side, but on the sales and service deck side. And it’s amazed me how people get it. They don’t need to, you know, but it’s an ongoing process, right? I joke with people.

I’ve got sales guys that have worked for me for years. Top performers. Yes, but we’re having the same conversations every week. We’re having three or four years ago. Cause it just, it needs that constant repetition. And I think it’s such a great point that you’re making there about the compensation.
All too often, you know, people are motivated by self-interest. It’s just human nature. And the reality is that someone can have the expectation.

We want you to book those HVAC calls, those electrical calls or whatever, you know, whatever other trades you offer or the services you offer, but my people are just going to do it. And even if they’re well-intentioned, they’ll forget if there’s no compensation attached to it, right? But if they get extra 10 bucks for booking a plumbing call, an extra 10 bucks, they’re probably going to remember, they’ll put a note, a sticky pad on their computers to make sure they don’t forget, you know? So that’s awesome. So, so tell us real quick, a little bit about Power Selling Pros, the services that you guys offer, how you go about delivering those services and that type of thing.

So we train CSRs one-on-one twice a month using their own phone calls. So we hold them accountable to perform at extremely high level. We have four levels of certification.
It takes about a year and a half to complete, it’s kind of like a university. But by the time we’re done, they’re booking the call, they’re wowing the customer. Most importantly, you’re the only one that’s going out to the customer’s home.

Booking the call should be a given. In fact, even better than booking the call, closing the call, okay? So if they’re treating their job, not as a job, but as a career, right? Where they have control of their own income, where they’re taking a plumbing call and turning it into a heating and cooling call, where they’re taking a service call and turning it into a replacement call. We’re incentivizing technicians to do it.

Why don’t we have the CSRs do it? If we’re putting that program in place, oh my gosh. You’ve essentially taken your CSR center and you’ve turned it into a profit center. And it could be the most lucrative department in your company.
So bottom line, we train one-on-one twice a month using our own phone calls. We take them through that process. And by the time they’re done, you’re the only one going out, which is the most important thing.

You know, I think you’re so on point there. Having 20 years and working with contracting companies and doing training and speaking and that kind of stuff. Like, I feel like the call center is the most undervalued part of their business.
I’ll ask, you know, because whenever we’re teaching sales, for example, we don’t just do sales training. We’re like, well, you know, what’s the lead coordination conversation sound like? What’s the tech turn conversation sound like? Then we get to the sales conversation. And I’m amazed by how many people I’ll say, so who books the calls? Oh, it’s my aunt Susie over here.

Well, what kind of training has she been through? Well, no, she’s just really nice. And it’s just so important that culture of training and ongoing training. And as you said, even if they use power selling pros for a bit and they start doing it internally, at least they’re executing on the culture of making sure that people, you know, understand what to do.
And like you said, the practice is so important and it makes me think I need to get off this call and call my call center and say, how much role playing are we doing? Are we practicing? I mean, great job, but you know, we can always get better.

Brigham, tell the folks out there how they can get in touch with you if they’d like to have more information from you about the work that you guys do. Go to powersellingpros.com. That’s P-O-W-E-R-S-E-L-L-I-N-G-P-R-O-S.com. There’s a button right at the top there. Click on a demo and have a demo with us. Love to go through and show you how we do it. That’s awesome, Brigham.

Well, listen, we appreciate you joining us here on Cracking the Code. It’s always good to see you. Brigham and I go back many, many years in this industry crossing paths at a hundred different events and different things.
So it’s always great to see you and I hope we’ll get to see you again soon. I’m sure we’ll cross paths at an event before too long.