Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 8, 1995 TAG: 9510060038
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: F-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOHN LEVIN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
If we could just get somebody to answer the phone.
The statistics come from the International Telecommunications Union, a United Nations agency that last week ranked the United States far ahead of other nations - including industrialized Germany and Japan - in our ability to make multimedia services available to large numbers of citizens. We are prime targets for new waves of communications services and products, the report said.
But here's a chronic concern about how we use one of the most basic of those gadgets, the telephone and its high-tech spin-off, the press-zero-out-of-desperation voice-mail system.
"The people who have to answer the phone appreciate voice mail systems, but customers hate it - they want to know somebody cares about their problem," said Jacki Lucki, a marketing teacher at Cave Spring High School who also teaches adult education courses in telephone courtesy.
It is one of the Roanoke County School System's most popular classes, she said, because increasingly the job of answering workplace phones is being filled by people who have many other things to do.
"It may be 50 percent of their jobs for people who also are lab technicians as well as receptionists," she said. Lucki teaches them to be assertive about getting callers to the point rather than allowing them to ramble.
"A lot of people think courtesy is letting the customer talk on and on. But effective listening is getting to the issue and directing the call" to somebody else, she said. That's important, considering the average organization has four to six incoming phone lines and expects them to be answered by the third ring.
Downsizing in many organizations means "more people now have to answer their own phones because there isn't someone dedicated" for the job. "And because people have a negative perception of that, they answer rushed and stressed," said Christopher Neck, a management professor in Virginia Tech's Pamplin College of Business. "That stress is conveyed to the caller, which has an impact on the company's business."
In traditional organizations, the person who answers the phones is among the lowest-ranked and least-paid, so workers who now are expected to share that duty see it as a hindrance and distraction, he said.
Also, "the phone is a negative experience, often because the person answering it lacks the ability to deal with a negative incident, such as an irate customer," Neck said.
"The short-term, easiest way out is an automated system," said Neck, although a more productive approach is to train and empower employees.
Indeed, people who sell voice mail and voice response systems readily admit that many organizations misuse and underuse the equipment. Companies paying from $3 a month to rent a single voice mailbox to $1 million for their own answering and call routing systems often don't have a clue how best to use them, said Skip Sponsel, director of the information access group for Bell South Communication Systems Inc. in Roanoke.
Voice mail is best, he said, when used by people who already know each other and exchange information at their own convenience over the course of a day by leaving messages for each other.
"It is of value only to people who know exactly what they want to say. The problem is if voice mail is used as an exclusive alternative to the traditional human way of answering the phone," Sponsel said.
"I've seen 2,000-person organizations where all callers pressing zero go to a reception desk, where there are people who don't even know the names of people they're taking messages for," he said.
Joe Kephart, manager of Voice-Tel of Roanoke Corp., said automated answering services like his are best used after hours. "During business hours, we suggest that calls go to a live receptionist who asks for the caller's permission to refer it to a voice mailbox," he said.
"We target companies," he said, "where sales and service people are likely to be in and out of the office and prime targets for phone tag."
Maybe they should call Sharol Stoneburner, whose job is to answer five constantly ringing phone lines at Eye Care and Surgery in Roanoke.
Having an answering machine that would make appointments for patients and handle emergencies is tempting, she said. "But in our business, the call is always serious to the patient, and it calms them down to hear the human voice."
by CNB