by Karen Allen

Everyone knows that sales people, service technicians, and receptionists must provide good customer service if the company wants to stay in business. But to create true customer loyalty, you must provide excellent customer service from every role in the company. Even collections.

I interface with customers on an almost daily basis in regard to accounts receivable, invoices, and collections. Our customers are not always glad to hear from me. In fact, you’d be amazed at some of the excuses I hear when someone doesn’t want to pay their bill: “My boss broke his glasses and can’t see to sign the check,” “It’s too early in the morning for me to mess with check numbers!”

How your people handle these situations, as well as the mundane tasks of preparing and sending invoices, will set good customer service apart from great customer service. Do these four things to convert invoicing and painful collections calls into loyal customers:

• Get invoices right, every single time. Invoicing errors look bad, cause hassles for the customer, and lead to losses in customer confidence. Check and double check numbers, spell check, and be clear and unambiguous. Develop systems to ensure the job is done right, consistently.
• When speaking with customers who are past due, be honest, respectful, and courteous. Remember that your company does not exist without its customers. Be firm without being rude.
• Be persistent, and talk to the right people. Write down names and numbers, and keep a clear record of interactions. 
• Put yourself in the customer’s place. Things get done at the people level, not the technical level, so keep track of people and treat them as individuals. 

At South Sales, we have the best customers you could ask for. To keep them, we work hard to let them know we value them. Even when we’re collecting payment.

Karen Allen handles billing, collections, and A/P for South Sales Communications. She joined the company in 2002 after working in the legal field for 17 years.

Plus: When To Head to the Repair Shop Immediately.

by Robert Smith

Most high-end radios like the Motorolas and Kenwoods offered by South Sales are pretty rough and tumble. They can take a lot, and if they're a modern digital model they probably don't even need regular maintenance. But if yours is showing warning signs, it's time to bring it in:

• Any changes in functionality such as deteriorating reception or range. Even if the change doesn't have a major impact on your use of the radio, changes in function can indicate growing problems that will be easier to address early.
• Visible damage. The radio may appear to work just fine for a while, but there could be internal damage that should be addressed before it causes further problems. 

When to drop everything and deliver your radio to a repair shop? Any time it comes into contact with water--even if it appears to work just fine.

Why? Because the greatest danger from water isn't just being wet--it's the corrosion that can set in hours or even days later. And simply opening it up and setting it under a fan won't resolve the problem--in fact, it can make it worse by driving the water deeper into the electronics where it can cause even more corrosion.

When you  bring it into the shop, we'll immediately open it up and treat it with chemicals that prevent corrosion before it can begin. Bring it in quickly enough, and we can usually save your expensive investment from permanent damage.

Robert Smith has been repairing two-way radios since he was a boy. His earliest memories include sitting in front of a box of broken radio pieces and saudering them together while his father sat nearby working on other pieces. Robert has been repairing radios professionally since 1989. He is lead bench technician for South Sales Communications.

Fleet GPS systems can cut costs in a wide variety of ways, and being innovative and proactive with the data can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your business in surprising ways. For instance, in addition to measuring quantity of fuel use, creative metrics can effectively measure the quality of fuel use, and allow you to make strategic decisions about fleet routes and priorities.

To accomplish this, begin by measuring each of your customers (or each segment of your customer base) by profitability. Then use data available through your GPS fleet tracking system to determine how many fleet miles are required to service that customer, plus how much time your vehicles sit idle per visit.

By dividing your profitability per customer or segment by the total fleet cost devoted to servicing that customer, you can determine the overall quality of each customer stop. The results, which are often surprising, can be used to make more intelligent decisions about fleet use:

• Eliminate customers whose cost to service is higher than their profitability
• Streamline service to customers whose quality is low but acceptable
• Focus sales and development efforts on high quality customers

Contact an experienced GPS fleet tracking expert to learn more and find out which GPS fleet options are best for your company.

Your radio is only as reliable as the battery that powers it. Motorola batteries are designed to work with Motorola radios. Testing shows Motorola batteries perform better than the competition when knocked, dropped, shaken, or shocked.