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Are Your CSRs Doing Their Best Job?
I've been in this industry for 30 years now, and I have lost track of how many major changes have occurred. Policies are put in place, modified, rescinded and reinstituted. Things have come full circle so many times I'm dizzy. And if you look at the big picture, you can always count on the government's expecting home medical equipment providers to do more while paying them less.
The newest policies coming down the road prove my point. Not only will reimbursement rates be lowered by competitive bidding but the new capped rental policies will shorten your residual income stream. Filling the front end of the revenue pipeline with new orders and incremental revenue will be more essential than ever if you want to survive.
This environment will cause two things to become paramount to your success: The first is the need to capture every possible order that comes your way. The second is the need to maximize the revenue potential of every order you process.
The pressure for both falls completely on your customer service representatives, because every mistake on incoming phone calls could cost you revenue. Remember that all your marketing efforts are for naught if 20 percent of our incoming orders are lost or mishandled. Reducing the errors and getting your CSRs to generate incremental revenues from the business opportunities already coming your way is imperative. How much better would your bottom line look if every new order had an additional $100 of accessory sales?
I've been conducting “secret shopper” surveys since 1990 as a way to verify the effectiveness of customer service training and diagnose where remedial training is needed. Even after all of the errors have been corrected, the residual effect on staffers that each phone call they answer could be a test helps assure they are on their best performance and don't slip back into bad habits.
Over the years, I've seen some common mistakes that can easily be corrected with training. If you haven't listened to your CSRs lately, it's time. Here are the five most important areas to examine.
- Not asking for the order
No one wakes up one morning and says, “I have nothing better to do, so I think I will call around and price wheelchairs.” If someone calls your office and asks about wheelchairs, you can bet they need one, and anything short of providing them with one is a failure. Yet all too often, employees hand out tons of information, then fail to ask the caller if they'd like to place the order.
