Beegamax Creative Art Plus Blog - Marketing Communication Jakarta, Creative Communication Jakarta, Web Design Jakarta, Advertising, Graphic Design, Corporate Identity, Branding, Internet Marketing

One of the personnel who has important role in business is the front office staff. Front office staff is the first person your customers, prospects or visitors will see and talk to. It includes Receptionist or clerk, Customer Service and Phone Operator. Why would I say it is important? Because it is the first person who meet customers, prospects, buyers ot even guests.

Let’s say there’s a prospects who call your company asking for a product he might want to buy. The purpose of this call is generally asking about product information, specifications and price. What would it be if your front officer don’t know how to answer their questions, not really sure about the specifications? I can guarantee that the prospects will definitely not going to buy your products.

Here is another example, one of your customers have a problem with the product (let’s say mobile phone) they purchased a while ago. The mobile phone has totally die after 1 week of purchase and he needs an assistance on the problem. So he called the customer service and tell her about it. What if your customer service answer something like this, “uh oh, I’m not really sure about it, I’ll get you to someone else”. Then she passed it to another girl which also answer almost exactly the same. Then she passed your phone (which is being hold for 5 minutes) to “technical support”. And after that, the technical guy would just recommend you to come to their support centre. What do you think about it. In the end your customer might get a solution to his problem, but I’m sure he has had a bad image on your customer service already.

Another example (this is the last one I promise and it is what I’ve been some times :P), A guy is trying to reach your company and the call is being answered by one of your receptions. He is trying to offer a beneficial partnership proposal. So, he is calling to get the person in charge (let’s say marketing department) on this matter. But before reaching the marketing department, your reception who answer the phone has turn down this proposal by saying, “we don’t have any marketing department in this company”. What do you think about it? The company has lose a beneficial partnership proposal in the first place just in the hand of your receptionist before having the right person to review it. What if it’s really a good offer?

This third case was what we’ve had few days ago. Our marketing guy was trying to call a company offering our services. This company is basically has 2 offices in Jakarta. So she called the first one and being turned down by the reception by saying they don’t have marketing department. But our marketing guy wasn’t give up, she called the second office and get better respond by passing the call directly to the marketing department. The result is his boss was actually excited in the services we offer.

Can you see the comparison? Do you think your company would hire the first reception we called? Well, I wouldn’t. However, we don’t know whether it is a good or bad offer, but the front officer shouldn’t turn every call down.

So, by reading those 3 cases above, we can come out with 3 suggestions before really hiring a good front office staff to handle call:

• Your front office staffs should have a very good knowledge about your products or services offered
• He/she should assist the customer with problems to get to the right person
• He/she should pass any offer/proposal to the right department or person in charge

I’m no expert to human resource anyway, I’m just trying to figure out better suggestions on what we’ve experience.