If you answer the phone the quickest…

…that alone is the key to success.

I am not sure how this is a service myth for success. Everyone likes a prompt phone answer, but in this day and age that is not always practical. It can even be turned on its head.

A client had an issue with holds times. They simply were unable to answer the phones during peak times. Hold times of over an hour were common for their off-the-shelf enterprise product. The could not scale and needed a less expensive service experience. They decided to go with an online product. I won’t go into too much detail but the online service solution was as fraction of the cost of answering the phones on the scale of 10 cents to a dollar. Together we came up with a marketing program to drive enablement by inviting the callers on hold to try the online solution. After the invitation was played three times, callers dropped and used the online tool. Adoption soared. The ROI was tremendous.

All because they could not answer the phone the quickest.