Imagine a well-intentioned phone call that gets really ugly in 20 seconds?
This happened to me recently. Why? The answer is simple…I let my professional guard down. I initiated the call in a casual manner, while I multi-tasked in the background. Twenty seconds into the call I ran into a POW!!! Why? I made two mistakes that I have been avoiding since 1985. For a large part of my career, I paid the bills by making 40-50 phone calls per day. Now, as a former trainer, phone specialist, and experience consultant, I fell victim to being out of phone practice. It was me who led that call to go awry! Today, we reacquaint ourselves with a trio of guardrails designed to keep our calls healthy and productive in customer-pleasing ways.
Alright , Mr . Simple Biz Sky . Let's fight to show.
Speaker 2:
Well, hello everybody, and thank you for tuning into this episode of the Simple Biz 360 Podcast. My name's Jeff Mason, I'm your host for the next five minutes, and we can be found on Instagram, tv, YouTube and Rumble tv, along with 28 listening platforms. And , uh, our URL Home is simple biz three sixty.com . You can get our book on Amazon or through the website, our book's on Kindle, audible and paperback. Simple Biz 360 Timeless Business Tools. So today we're gonna be expanding on last week's episode, which was entitled, you know , uh, how , why we Should Go Back to the Telephone Gym, right? Because our, our telephone skills are eroding. So today we're gonna be talking about how to protect against telephone mistakes. And I've gotta use , uh, as a centerpiece for this show, a story of my own that happened not too long ago. So 35 years in business, I write a book, I do a weekly podcast, you know, I'm throwing out third party advice, things I've learned , uh, from other people, things I've learned on my own, right? And, you know, talking on the telephone's, probably pretty essential for most businesses. Well, here I am 2023, about , uh, 10 minutes before noon and I decide to punch out a critical conversation or a critical phone call with a customer to kind of go over some, some issues that, that , that are happening with the customer's orders. And , you know, it's costing them money. It's , uh, you know, and it's costing us a lot of work on rn , but the bottom line is , uh, all my intentions are good. I want this customer to not waste money. I want this customer to get serviced in a rapid , um, fashion. And I , you know, I just wanna lay it out there. So I'm multitasking. I dial the phone, I'm punching things out, sorting this and typing that. They answer the phone. I ask for the person. I'm still kind of doing all this thinking, ah , I got this right. And then all of a sudden the customer comes on and I mean, within 30 seconds my car went off the highway. Forget the guardrails, protecting my business vehicle on this high mountain road we call business transactions. I was off the highway, I was tumbling down the cliff. It didn't take, you know, more than 30 seconds for this thing to go sideways. And it got ugly. I mean, I really , um, I , I really failed in this phone call. And I created a bad experience for the customer. And the customer lashed out at me three times. And, you know, when I hung up at two, two and a half minutes had transpired and I thought, what in the world did I just do? Did I lose a customer for good? I mean, I thought I might have. It turns out I didn't, thankfully, but, you know, I deserved to. And, and so I really had to dissect this. I had a couple sleepless nights and I had to look at this. And so the ultimate landing that I , uh, agreed on in my own mind was that I failed to execute the courtesy and purpose portions of the three letter acronym you see hanging behind me. For those of you who are listening, there's a little graphic there with an acronym, CPA and it stands for Courtesy Purpose Action. I had failed at, at setting up and tee up the right form of courtesy. And I had failed at stating the purpose on the backside of that courteousness. I just kinda launched into this situation, kind of , uh, you know, I , I , I more or less hit my customer from the side. They weren't expecting this. And it just was like, whoa, what is this guy doing? Uh , how, how did this phone call come about? And I'm feeling really bad and, you know, in this world of experience economy, right? I created a bad experience. The customer was flustered customer, you know, definitely , um, expressed , uh, angst and disdain for the way I was conducting myself. And they lashed out three times in bingo. Here we are, two and a half minutes later. So I thought I'd do a show in this because it's something that we're all, I'm sure guilty of here or there. We're just not getting prepared for these critical conversations. And we aren't putting those guardrails up and the guardrails in this situation, it's just, it's courtesy, purpose, action. We were taught it , uh, in 1985 when I worked in , uh, Manhattan or district manager taught it to us and said, this will take the angst out of writing business letters to executives and having difficult phone conversations. And it has, I've used it for, I've used it since 1985 and never had an anxious moment. Um, this was a moment I got laxed, I put my guard down and I, I, I wasn't prepared. I didn't take the deep breath, get all my faculties together, be single-minded, be focused on this critical conversation because I took my eye off the customer. So we just kind of throw this out there to rere remind you if you're if to , to avoid this because we're not going to the gym that much when it comes to the phone. We're not using the phone that much. So sometimes we've gotta shake the dust off, you know, rub the hands together, take a deep breath, get ready for this baby. And when you make that call, make sure that you're single-minded, you're focused, and you use those guardrails of courtesy, purpose, action. And I assure you, your car will not tumble off the highway because your guardrails will be set up. So today we're gonna go back to the Fillmore concerts, right? 350 of 'em , about 114 of these. Were on the West Coast in San Francisco, and we're gonna dip into Al Cooper and Mike Bloomfield. Now at 68 they got together. Al Cooper, you might know famously, he was kind of a session musician, but he worked, produced the first three Leonard Skynyrd albums. Pretty , pretty nice production job, I'd have to say, right? And then , uh, you know, Mike Bloomfield was with the Paul Butterfield Band, phenomenal sly guitarist. These two guys graced the stage for two nights. We're gonna dip back into one of their concerts , uh, 1968 September, and they did a version of green onions. You're gonna love it. Enjoy. We will see you in 168.