Have a receptionist. Now what do I do with her?

[nibblesandbits]

So my girlfriend decided she wanted to be part of my business. We have had our ups and downs (I'm very easily irritated when something doesn't go right with my business) but I think things are leveled out now and we are on the same page.

The problem is, she is still referring people to me when they have questions on the phone. I DO NOT want to talk to customers on the phone, PERIOD. The whole reason I have her to answer phones is to get out of doing that mundane task and free up more time to actually get things done.

Do any of you all have a good inbound call transcript or something I could learn from or give her? I want her to eventually do all my communications and scan receipts and keep invoicing manageable. I will do all the technical work, if I can just delegate all the administrative work to her.

How do I get customers to STOP asking for me? Most of the time I think they just want free advice anyway.

 

[Vicenarian]

Maybe require that all customer 'questions' be emailed so you can look at them when you have time? Or have a separate voicemail mailbox just for calls like these? Some sort of call routing system perhaps;

 

[pctutor]

I DO NOT want to talk to customers on the phone, PERIOD.

So neither you nor your girlfriend want to talk with the customers. The major computer companies have the same attitude, so they outsource that task to people that can barely speak English. Not too many computer users appreciate or enjoy that process.

Your clients dial your number because they need help and want to talk to someone that knows what they are talking about. Your girlfriend may not be the best person for that job.

Frankly, if I call a company and I'm talking to someone that obviously does not want to talk to me, I find a different company.

Just my two cents!

 

['putertutor]

I think the first issue you have is one of expectations. For whatever amount of time you have been in business, your customers have been in direct contact with you and only you. To ask them to simply accept that you no longer want to talk to them is unreasonable. You will have to go through a weening period, and that could take months. Some of your customer's might not ever feel comfortable with your gatekeeper. It will take time, but if you are patient and handle it properly, you should be able to have her handle most of the calls. I don't think you will ever be able to avoid ALL calls until you hire another tech at least.

Right now, what I would focus on is training. Sit down with her and go over what you expectations are. How should she handle a customer who wants to kick the tires, or get free advice, or just has a question she does not know the answer to. Remember, she will be the 'face' of your company, so she needs to be able to speak confidently, even when she doesn't know the answers. Giver her the training to be able to do so. This will also take time.

Not to get into your business, but I personally feel that hiring a girlfriend, because she wants to be part of your business was a mistake. Business is business and personal is personal. If you want a receptionist, hire the most qualified you can afford and are comfortable with. I personally do not want to feel attached to my employees beyond the employee-employer relationship. Friendship may come after that, but to go at it in reverse order can be trouble.

 

['putertutor]

so neither you nor your girlfriend want to talk with the customers. The major computer companies have the same attitude, so they outsource that task to people that can barely speak english. Not too many computer users appreciate or enjoy that process.

Your clients dial your number because they need help and want to talk to someone that knows what they are talking about. Your girlfriend may not be the best person for that job.

Frankly, if i call a company and i'm talking to someone that obviously does not want to talk to me, i find a different company.

Just my two cents!

^^^^^^^100% correct^^^^^^^^

 

[PCX]

This is the advice I give to every couple married or not:

In most cases mixing marriage and most close personal relationships with business is a mistake and should be avoided. That said, there are exceptions, which leads
me into my next point. Unless that other person has a good understanding of your industry and how to run a business and can compliment you in your business where you fail or lack, then they should have nothing to do with the business. Period. This is usually more of a problem with woman (in my experience and my wife would agree) than men. Explaining to a Wife or a girlfriend that they need to butt out and let you run the business is a lot harder than explaining that to a man whose wife or girlfriend owns their own business.

Anyways, aside from all that, as receptionists goes, we have 3 of them and each of them are trained as technicians first, before they are trained as receptionists. They must understand what we do and why we do it before they can answer customer questions appropriately and accurately. They must be able to translate our techno-babble into easy to understand dummy talk, which is very hard to do if your receptionists does not have a good understanding of how to do your job or why you do it the way you do.

One of the most important thing that the receptionist must do (beside put on a nice smile and make the customer happy) is instill confidence. If they are unable to do the above when checking in a customer, they will constantly have to come to the back and talk to a technician or they will have to ask a technician to come to the front with them. When on the phone, they will have to constantly put the customer on hold and in many cases hand the phone over. Even worse, in both cases, the customer will specifically ask to talk to a technician. This not only causes the customer to lose confidence in your business, but this obviously defeats the purpose of having a receptionists. Even now, I am probably going to have to fire one of my receptionists because she is unable to grasp the technical side of the business and thus unable to effectively communicate to our customers.

There are some other benefits training them as techs first, the main one being that they help around in the shop and keep things going when your either busy with another project or if you have to leave the shop. They can also run events for you and confidently answer questions that any potential customer may have. For us, we do a lot of local events that our receptionists will run for us and there are even events were only women are allowed to represent a business and our receptionists are great for this. Also, I have my receptionists order parts when needed, do inventory and one even likes working on phones. That said, you do want to try and keep their stress level down so that they are not short with customers as we can often times be. I would suggest keeping them on simple repairs that can be done on check lists. Train them on troubleshooting, but once they get the idea, keep them away from hard troubleshooting and limit them to simple troubleshooting tasks. Obviously this all varies from person to person and depends greatly on their level of competence and patience, but these are the typical guide lines that we follow.

Finally, the one thing to keep in mind is that you must never forget that your receptionists are just that, receptionists. While it is important to train them as technicians, you should understand their limitations and be gracious with them. As long as they understand enough to be efficient and profitable receptionists and they are also decent as technicians, that should be enough. In short, while their first objective should be to learn how to be a technician before becoming a receptionist, their first job when trained, should be the receptionist and not the technician.

 

[nibblesandbits]

Maybe require that all customer 'questions' be emailed so you can look at them when you have time? Or have a separate voicemail mailbox just for calls like these? Some sort of call routing system perhaps;

I think emails would be a great solution. I doubt most of my customers would do that, though. I think most of them would rather just call the neighbor boy to come over and fix it. Separate voicemail doesn't seem necessary. I'm not trying to avoid my customers. I just don't want to only get on the phone with them to say, "I don't know without seeing it." then booking an appointment. I do NOT need to do that as a business owner, do I? Why couldn't my receptionist say, "We can't diagnose things over the phone. We can either pick it up free of charge, if repaired, or you can drop it off for $5 off the bench fee we have."? I should be able to delegate that task to someone else without harming my image as some others have commented.

My problem is that I don't like to give away my service. I don't know where to draw the line. It seems most of my questions are very simple things, and if they aren't, I end up getting something in the office I can't fix (broken screen, major extortionware, tune up, or OS freeze ups that require an hour long "attempt" at fixing, then finally all the time in formatting, reinstalling, drivers, and installing any apps I lost them in the process) I understand that I could fix screens again, after having an issue getting a laptop back together and having to lose $700, I learned that I shouldn't be taking laptops apart. On top of that, manufacturers are now making things even harder to take a hard drive out. Probably doing that because it's the most profitable service you can offer with hard drive failures as bad as they are anymore.

I got into the field when almost any part of any computer you got your hands on could be changed, upgraded, or replaced if it failed. Nowadays we're into these little micro electronics, and the jobs suck immensely compared to what I'm used to! I can't justify working that hard on something that is so tiny and delicate and having the risk of getting sued breaking one when I couldn't even get a laptop back together one time.

So neither you nor your girlfriend want to talk with the customers. The major computer companies have the same attitude, so they outsource that task to people that can barely speak English. Not too many computer users appreciate or enjoy that process.

Your clients dial your number because they need help and want to talk to someone that knows what they are talking about. Your girlfriend may not be the best person for that job.

Frankly, if I call a company and I'm talking to someone that obviously does not want to talk to me, I find a different company.

Just my two cents!

Not true at all! Girlfriend loves to talk to customers. She always answers my personal cellphone when I pull the typical, "computer repairman that hates answering his phone" gig that I pull so often (I really need to get over the phone). She is GREAT with the phones. I just don't know how to tell her how to handle my customers once she has them on the line. I suppose they can either opt for a remote session right then and there (if I'm not tied up) and I can fix it with her on the line with them, OR they can schedule an appointment/pick-up. I don't see any other two ways about it.

When my customers pick up the phone and expect to speak with someone who knows what they are talking about, are they not obviously just begging for free information?

I TRY to operate at a profit. If, while I'm giving them hints and tips over the phone all day for free, I'm missing CRITICAL time to be working on a paying customer's computer, that's not good. I understand customer service is important, but you have to pay me ONCE, in my mind, to be deserving of "free" service and "hints." That's like going into Wal Mart, taking a tube of toothpaste, and walking out saying that's what they OWED you because they have the toothpaste on their shelf and you don't. As a business, and a STRUGGLING entrepreneur, I just can't do that like Wal Mart could, if they didn't mind losing the same profits. I have to lose completely because to compete, I have to keep up. (IF MY LOGIC IS FLAWED HERE, PLEASE DO TELL ME HOW. THEN, I CAN CORRECT IT AND GET ON WITH MY LIFE!)

I think the first issue you have is one of expectations. For whatever amount of time you have been in business, your customers have been in direct contact with you and only you. To ask them to simply accept that you no longer want to talk to them is unreasonable. You will have to go through a weening period, and that could take months. Some of your customer's might not ever feel comfortable with your gatekeeper. It will take time, but if you are patient and handle it properly, you should be able to have her handle most of the calls. I don't think you will ever be able to avoid ALL calls until you hire another tech at least.

Right now, what I would focus on is training. Sit down with her and go over what you expectations are. How should she handle a customer who wants to kick the tires, or get free advice, or just has a question she does not know the answer to. Remember, she will be the 'face' of your company, so she needs to be able to speak confidently, even when she doesn't know the answers. Giver her the training to be able to do so. This will also take time.

Not to get into your business, but I personally feel that hiring a girlfriend, because she wants to be part of your business was a mistake. Business is business and personal is personal. If you want a receptionist, hire the most qualified you can afford and are comfortable with. I personally do not want to feel attached to my employees beyond the employee-employer relationship. Friendship may come after that, but to go at it in reverse order can be trouble.

This is the kind of reply I needed. Thank you for the good advice. I was planning on training her the rest of this week. We are just now getting her Outlook accounts set up. She's running TWO of my businesses and even planning events for my DJ business! She's got the entrepreneur in her, I just need to keep letting her do her thing, I think. She's getting the hang of it and I'm getting a lot of valuable help out of it. She's not "hired" she's "help." lol

 

['putertutor]

Anyways, aside from all that, as receptionists goes, we have 3 of them and each of them are trained as technicians first, before they are trained as receptionists. They must understand what we do and why we do it before they can answer customer questions appropriately and accurately. They must be able to translate our techno-babble into easy to understand dummy talk, which is very hard to do if your receptionists does not have a good understanding of how to do your job or why you do it the way you do.

This is an excellent point. It is difficult for someone unfamiliar with any industry to speak with confidence about that industry. Clearly a receptionist does not need to be able to do a full tear down and rebuild or dc jack repair, but at least knowing what it takes is crucial to their ability to speak for you with confidence. Years ago I ran a technical training company and the receptionist I hired was required to attend at least two of my training sessions for just this reason. Honestly she did not need to know about telecom wiring or methodology, but knowing the process, from prep to completion helped her do her job and in turn helped my business grow.

This is usually more of a problem with woman (in my experience and my wife would agree) than men. Explaining to a Wife or a girlfriend that they need to butt out and let you run the business is a lot harder than explaining that to a man whose wife or girlfriend owns their own business.

This is exactly why my wife and I are not partnered in anyway in my business. Although I will stop short of making the same remark about 'most' women, I do know that she and I have this particular issue. (Please note the cowardly way in which I both agreed with and hid behind PCX here ladies. Don't hurt me! )

 

[brandonkick]

Sounds to me like your girlfriend is not trained correctly.

You have to figure out what her "job" is. A true receptionist knows nothing about the trade itself and often people are irritated by that.

They want to be able to ring in and ask a generalized question and expect some sort of assistance, probably even for free.

Her job, in my opinion, is simply to book the customer. Get that sale, and get that money coming in. Have her explain that your going to need to set up an appointment to have the problem taken care of. All she can do is note exactly what the customer is experiencing and set up the service call.

She can learn to ask better questions as well. Their should be a fairly standardized line of questioning for several different scenarios.

Main questions should be something like:

Make/model of PC
Operating system
Any existing physical damage to computer
Is the probably constant or intermittent
Length of time the system has shown symptoms of a problem
Do they have the recovery cd's (if the computer came with disks)

Other then that, there should be no reason she needs to be coming to get you for a call. She is the receptionist and you cant personally take calls as your workload is too high. In order for you to keep cranking out the machines, you need to be working on them and not answering the phone.


As far as laptop screens go, it's a good source of income. I understand you got burned but if your careful and avoid problematic models then you shouldn't have much an issue. I've done a sony viao that took all of fifteen min to change out, and I made good money doing it.

 

[pctutor]

When my customers pick up the phone and expect to speak with someone who knows what they are talking about, are they not obviously just begging for free information?

Absolutely not. A few are, of course, but I think most people are reasonable enough to understand that they can't call a computer place and get free instructions on how to fix a problem themselves. In fact, most of the people that call me don't even want to TRY to fix it themselves. Or they have already tried to fix it, and made it worse, so they know they need to call an expert.

My standard line is, "Could be <x> or it could be <y>. We also cannot rule out <z>. But I can't really diagnose the problem without seeing it. Are you able to bring it to me?" Or if it can be handled remotely, I offer that.

The "freeloaders" that I usually get are the ones that send questions by email. Like "Whenever I try to create a document in Word, the formatting doesn't look right. What am I doing wrong?" My standard response is that this is something I handle through my Remote Support service - here's the link to set that up. Once you have that set up, I will get a notification and then we can connect and we'll get that taken care of."

In some cases, I could just respond by email and tell them how to fix their problem in a few sentences. And in reality, I do that for some of my clients - the clients that regularly hire me and pay me for my services. For the others, either they buy the remote support service or I don't hear back from them. Either way is okay with me.

 

[PCX]

Sounds to me like your girlfriend is not trained correctly.

You have to figure out what her "job" is. A true receptionist knows nothing about the trade itself and often people are irritated by that.

They want to be able to ring in and ask a generalized question and expect some sort of assistance, probably even for free.

Her job, in my opinion, is simply to book the customer. Get that sale, and get that money coming in. Have her explain that your going to need to set up an appointment to have the problem taken care of. All she can do is note exactly what the customer is experiencing and set up the service call.

She can learn to ask better questions as well. Their should be a fairly standardized line of questioning for several different scenarios.

Main questions should be something like:

Make/model of PC
Operating system
Any existing physical damage to computer
Is the probably constant or intermittent
Length of time the system has shown symptoms of a problem
Do they have the recovery cd's (if the computer came with disks)

Other then that, there should be no reason she needs to be coming to get you for a call. She is the receptionist and you cant personally take calls as your workload is too high. In order for you to keep cranking out the machines, you need to be working on them and not answering the phone.

I can see this working out ok if all the receptionist did was book onsite visits, but if the OP has a shop and or does break-fix and needs someone to check in/out customers and answer phones, then this will likely not work since she will be doing all of the explaining and answering questions rather than the tech who would be doing this while onsite. It has been my experience that the receptionist would have to be knowledgeable on the tech side in order to be efficient as a receptionist working at a computer shop. And when you say that people are irritated when receptionists do not understand the trade, you are absolutely right and this is exactly why they should be knowledgeable. My customers appreciate being able to talk to someone who actually knows what they are talking about or in the least can sound like they do. Also, how is she going to get the sale if she does not understand the trade? Unless she is a very good BSer, I do not see this happening. This is especially true for us since our over the counter sales is the first line attack when it comes to up-sales. Usually at least one up-sale will be done at the counter, while the rest is done over the phone and some of those phone up-sells will actually be done by the receptionist themselves. So if you are expecting the receptionist to make any sales, they need to know what they are talking about.

 

[Mindfulness]

You could have her handle the basics. Anything technical where they want you, have her take a message and call all of your messages back in one chunk. This will stop you from getting interrupted.

Edit added later //

We service people first, computers second. I personally think we would go out of business if us techs did not take calls and hustle in them in the door and properly follow up with them. If it was me I would spend my money on a tech/receptionist

 

[BuRaK]

This is the advice I give to every couple married or not:

In most cases mixing marriage and most close personal relationships with business is a mistake and should be avoided. That said, there are exceptions, which leads
me into my next point. Unless that other person has a good understanding of your industry and how to run a business and can compliment you in your business where you fail or lack, then they should have nothing to do with the business. Period. This is usually more of a problem with woman (in my experience and my wife would agree) than men. Explaining to a Wife or a girlfriend that they need to butt out and let you run the business is a lot harder than explaining that to a man whose wife or girlfriend owns their own business.

Anyways, aside from all that, as receptionists goes, we have 3 of them and each of them are trained as technicians first, before they are trained as receptionists. They must understand what we do and why we do it before they can answer customer questions appropriately and accurately. They must be able to translate our techno-babble into easy to understand dummy talk, which is very hard to do if your receptionists does not have a good understanding of how to do your job or why you do it the way you do.

One of the most important thing that the receptionist must do (beside put on a nice smile and make the customer happy) is instill confidence. If they are unable to do the above when checking in a customer, they will constantly have to come to the back and talk to a technician or they will have to ask a technician to come to the front with them. When on the phone, they will have to constantly put the customer on hold and in many cases hand the phone over. Even worse, in both cases, the customer will specifically ask to talk to a technician. This not only causes the customer to lose confidence in your business, but this obviously defeats the purpose of having a receptionists. Even now, I am probably going to have to fire one of my receptionists because she is unable to grasp the technical side of the business and thus unable to effectively communicate to our customers.

There are some other benefits training them as techs first, the main one being that they help around in the shop and keep things going when your either busy with another project or if you have to leave the shop. They can also run events for you and confidently answer questions that any potential customer may have. For us, we do a lot of local events that our receptionists will run for us and there are even events were only women are allowed to represent a business and our receptionists are great for this. Also, I have my receptionists order parts when needed, do inventory and one even likes working on phones. That said, you do want to try and keep their stress level down so that they are not short with customers as we can often times be. I would suggest keeping them on simple repairs that can be done on check lists. Train them on troubleshooting, but once they get the idea, keep them away from hard troubleshooting and limit them to simple troubleshooting tasks. Obviously this all varies from person to person and depends greatly on their level of competence and patience, but these are the typical guide lines that we follow.

Finally, the one thing to keep in mind is that you must never forget that your receptionists are just that, receptionists. While it is important to train them as technicians, you should understand their limitations and be gracious with them. As long as they understand enough to be efficient and profitable receptionists and they are also decent as technicians, that should be enough. In short, while their first objective should be to learn how to be a technician before becoming a receptionist, their first job when trained, should be the receptionist and not the technician.

WoW. Thank you for writing this!

 

[Knightsman]

Just like any other secretary.

Have her say, I'm not sure how to fix that, but can we setup an appointment for one of our techs (or you) to come out or remote in to fix it.

That's what she needs to tell people. I don't think its about you not wanting to talk, its about not wasting your time on the phone for little to no pay. If they are willing to pay, they will make an appointment, if not, good your time isn't wasted.

I would indeed find someone else, my wife could easily do a secretary job, a girlfriend....nahh, to much risk if you have a bad break up. Then your not only out of some booty, but also a secretary.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

The job/tasks/roles usually come before the person is hired.

Early on when we were growing...we defined the needs for the about to be created position of "office manager" before we advertised the job, started accepting applications, interviews, and eventual hire.

We knew what we wanted that person to do. During the interview..we told them the roles they'd be doing.

Define the job before hiring the person!

Since you have the person...now you have to make her busy. It's hard for us to answer...since we don't know exactly what you do, the types of calls you get, the volume of your shop, your amount of existing clients, yada yada yada.

Things we have ours do...there's quite a bit more but here's a short list to get started:
*Maintain schedule of all of us, and our locations...on a greaseboard in the office for all to see.
*Handle the invoicing of tickets we close and send to her (via mHelpdesk and Quickbooks)
*Handle ordering of products
*Handle receiving and processing of AR, deposits
*Handle AP
*Handle payroll (Quickbooks)
*All other Quickbooks related stuff, taxes
*First to answer the phone in the office
*Does monthly mailing blasts....using Constant Contact
*Organize game plan for our monthly meetings
*Research things we ask her to

It's not her job to have technical knowledge, we don't expect that of her, nor want that of her. It's her job to line us techs up with our clients.

 

[Simmy]

I remember reading a post on reddit where someone asked "why does everyone in IT appear to hate their job", when someone replied;

Because people in IT thought they would take care of computers, and they realized when they started to work that they have to take care of people.

It's probably true for many lines of work, not just IT. But it seems to be part and parcel of IT and especially running your own IT company. You might just need to get used to it, unless you hire someone with the technical knowledge to speak to clients about their problems.

I would make use of her time with:

* Answering the phone
* Arranging appointments and updating clients if you're running late
* Possibly cold calling to promote new products or services
* Following up jobs to get testimonials
* Updating accounts/invoicing/chasing payments/paying in money
* Mail shots/leaflet drops

 

[nibblesandbits]

Absolutely not. A few are, of course, but I think most people are reasonable enough to understand that they can't call a computer place and get free instructions on how to fix a problem themselves. In fact, most of the people that call me don't even want to TRY to fix it themselves. Or they have already tried to fix it, and made it worse, so they know they need to call an expert.

My standard line is, "Could be <x> or it could be <y>. We also cannot rule out <z>. But I can't really diagnose the problem without seeing it. Are you able to bring it to me?" Or if it can be handled remotely, I offer that.

The "freeloaders" that I usually get are the ones that send questions by email. Like "Whenever I try to create a document in Word, the formatting doesn't look right. What am I doing wrong?" My standard response is that this is something I handle through my Remote Support service - here's the link to set that up. Once you have that set up, I will get a notification and then we can connect and we'll get that taken care of."

In some cases, I could just respond by email and tell them how to fix their problem in a few sentences. And in reality, I do that for some of my clients - the clients that regularly hire me and pay me for my services. For the others, either they buy the remote support service or I don't hear back from them. Either way is okay with me.

Love the way you handle these things! I will try to implement the same in my business TODAY!

 

[nibblesandbits]

The job/tasks/roles usually come before the person is hired.

Early on when we were growing...we defined the needs for the about to be created position of "office manager" before we advertised the job, started accepting applications, interviews, and eventual hire.

We knew what we wanted that person to do. During the interview..we told them the roles they'd be doing.

Define the job before hiring the person!

Since you have the person...now you have to make her busy. It's hard for us to answer...since we don't know exactly what you do, the types of calls you get, the volume of your shop, your amount of existing clients, yada yada yada.

Things we have ours do...there's quite a bit more but here's a short list to get started:
*Maintain schedule of all of us, and our locations...on a greaseboard in the office for all to see.
*Handle the invoicing of tickets we close and send to her (via mHelpdesk and Quickbooks)
*Handle ordering of products
*Handle receiving and processing of AR, deposits
*Handle AP
*Handle payroll (Quickbooks)
*All other Quickbooks related stuff, taxes
*First to answer the phone in the office
*Does monthly mailing blasts....using Constant Contact
*Organize game plan for our monthly meetings
*Research things we ask her to

It's not her job to have technical knowledge, we don't expect that of her, nor want that of her. It's her job to line us techs up with our clients.

EXACTLY the kind of info I needed. I'm going to paste these points into a Word document, and elaborate on them. Either that or I may just put them in a PowerPoint and go over them with her! Thanks!

I would make use of her time with:

* Answering the phone
* Arranging appointments and updating clients if you're running late
* Possibly cold calling to promote new products or services
* Following up jobs to get testimonials
* Updating accounts/invoicing/chasing payments/paying in money
* Mail shots/leaflet drops

Going to put this into my presentation as well! Thank you!

 

[rsarceno]

As far as answering the phone, try what I do.

Occasionally I let someone answer the phone because I'm mobile.

When they answer the phone, they make small chit-chat and then tell the potential client, that the tech are currently not available. Then, they will ask for basic or common sense questions without insulting the client. For hardware issue, we ask if the power is on, different outlet, any light indicator, noise etc. Nothing too technical.

They will also mention that average repair is $80 (example), if they want, they can drop off the computer and will try to fix it for $80 or less. If the cost is over $80, they are not obligated and they get a free diagnostic.

If they see anything on the screen, we ask the user to download the company apps on their cell phone and take a snapshot of the screen. Simple steps
1) Install and run
2) Click button on send photo (auto run camera)
3) take a picture
4) click send email button (email automatically populated)

Then the tech will follow up.

 

[hmig89]

lol!

oh dear it over before you knew it

Nope it was a very short lived experince im afraid lol! Im suprised no one else said that. There are so many answer to the OP's questions.