There are some companies that I have worked with, especially in the retail sector, that I have went round and round with concerning one specific issue: what takes precedence, a live customer standing right in front of you, or someone that is calling on the phone?
I have only one answer to that: to me it is always the customer in front of you. I have seen a lot of business lost as employees are dragged all over a store by a phone customer, while several customers in the store will walk out disgustedly over the long wait.
That is the main problem with phones to me. Anywhere I have managed, I've made answering the phone the lower of the two priorities, and I've never seen business go down because of it.
One thing to consider in this is that a great majority of people are simply price-shopping and have a list of things that they will want you to look up.
When you combine that with the trend in retail settings to hire more part-time help and cut back the number of employees, it is really setting up your workers for failure. I have been at some of the big box stores that are all adapting this as their strategy. The result is that they insist with the cutbacks and less workers that nothing should be changed as far as serving the customers.
I usually won't admit that there is not an answer to something, but in some of the situations I've seen, the employee is left in a situation that cannot be resolved. One or the other has to give. My advice is to always let the phone be the lower priority.
The only time I change this is when there is a customer that is ordering and paying on the phone. That is the same as having a paying customer in front of you in the store.
Have you had to deal with these issues in your workplace? How did you handle it?
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