I once sacked a girl (well she was actually a 40 year old woman) for refusing to answer the phone properly. Her view was that calling people Sir or Madam was demeaning to her as she was their equal, that filling out the message pads we used (days before e-mail) was pedantic (they were bright orange so they could be seen whereas she used anything she had including backs of envelopes) and that I was stuck in the dark ages when it came to manners because the world had moved on.

Well I’m sorry … I still expect my team to adopt best phone practice and woe betide anyone that cocks up on sending through a message, deals with a customer (which is what you all are) in a shabby manner or leaves e-mail enquiries too long.  We may be equal in many ways but if you’re spending money with my company, and so effectively paying our wage bill, as far as I’m concerned you’re the King and Queen.

Which is why I’d like to ask everyone out there in florist land to think how they deal with incoming calls.  Because sadly there are far too many who treat their callers like serfs.  I know because we phone at least 150 shops a month.  And far too often we receive a shoddy response.  The ‘hang on I’ll get a pen’ tops the list … dear Lor why isn’t it by the phone! The ‘nah I don’t know where he/she is, nah don’t know when he/she will be back’ type response takes a close 2^nd while the number of times we have to repeat the message details makes us wonder if the person is hard of hearing or just can’t be bothered to pay attention.

Maybe the attitude changes if the caller immediately says ‘I’d like to order some flowers’.  Maybe the spectre of cash galvanises the person answering into a more positive attitude.  However not all callers do immediately want to spend dosh.  They may be sussing you out, they may have a genuine enquiry that will lead to revenue, and they may have something that could help your business.

Thing is any more than you can assume/guess what a punter is going to do/spend when they walk into your shop so you can’t assume/guess what a phone caller is going to want.  The big difference is that if you blow the first few seconds of a phone call by sounding less than good they can just hang up and never call again.