I know – there are all kinds of clichés that promote positive thinking. Lemons being made into lemonade. Looking at the glass half full. Etc. But, when things go wrong, it really does not pay to get upset or overly stressed out about the situation. Remaining calm and thinking things through to figure out what CAN be done is a much better route than complaining and making things worse.
Case in point. Today we had a MAJOR problem with our phone system. Our Customer Service area, which normally boasts 8 phone agents, was reduced to only 4 of those phones being able to accept incoming calls. And, on top of that, our local phone line routed to this group, resulting in 30% more calls coming in to less than 50% of our agents. Ouch.
Rather then getting upset, our CSRs banded together to rotate in and out of the four workstations with phone connections to cover for each other and reduce some of the burden and stress on each other. Those on the phones helped customers while those with no phones worked with fax and e-mail orders, ran messages throughout the company, etc. This fast paced day was actually fun – and helped build a better sense of teamwork in the department.
While I don’t want to go through this again any time soon, I look at the crisis and am proud of how everyone pulled together to make our situation invisible to our customers. Just one more way that Nelson-Jameson customer service goes the extra mile to serve our customers.
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