Episode Overview
A primary service offered by owner Chelle Allen’s iconnectu team is called the “happy call.”
What is it?
“A happy call is a customer experience follow-up phone call that should be done 24 to 48 hours after a service is performed,” Allen says. “The core of the call is to say, ‘Thank you.’”
Allen says her team collects all the wonderful and the not-so-wonderful details from clients about the service calls.
“Very commonly when we start making calls for someone we discover that there's a miss [from] a technician, but oftentimes in either customer service or management,” she says.
Happy calls can identify minor issues in technician behavior, as well as create opportunities for additional sales and strengthen customer loyalty.
Allen’s team is not out to “catch” people. Rather, she gathers information so that improvements can be made wherever they’re needed.
Perhaps the most important outcome of the happy calls, however, is leaving a smile on the face of a customer–who hopefully becomes a repeat customer.
To achieve this outcome, Allen instills into her employees that they have to physically smile when they’re on the phone.
“When I hire someone, I actually tell them they need to put a mirror up in their office,” she says. “And I will be listening for that smile.”
Allen says she’s listened to at least a hundred thousand phone calls as part of her job. And she’s serious about the smiles. She’s let people go from her team for not smiling on the phone.
Chelle Allen recently joined ServiceTitan’s Jackie Aubel on the “Toolbox for the Trades” podcast, which included Allen’s thoughts on:
[3:33] The importance of following up on the little things
[10:50] Following miscommunication crumbs
[19:17] Eliminating in-house bias by outsourcing calls
[29:21] Using “happy calls” for cross-promotional sales
[35:52 How to work with very busy contractors
To hear more stories from the trades, subscribe to “Toolbox for the Trades” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, or anywhere you get podcasts.
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