Tagged with: fostering happiness

The Happiness Advantage: How a Journal Made Ruby Happier and Improved Accuracy by 60%

By | 08.15.2012 |

Who doesn’t want to be happier? Who doesn’t want to improve their business? Why should the two be mutually exclusive?

We recently saw an article by Harvard researcher and The Happiness Advantage author Shawn Achor recommending a few simple strategies to boost happiness, and our ears perked up. Our Core Values of Foster Happiness and Innovate leading the way, we took Achor’s advice and crafted a “Happiness Journal” for our staff. By the end of the program, our people were happier, and fascinatingly, even our numbers were happier.

Before the journaling campaign, we had 1 reported error for every 1,000 calls – an impressive percentage for a traditional answering service, but not good enough for Ruby. Within six weeks of the journaling program, errors dropped down to 1 per 2,500 calls, a dramatic 60% decrease.

The daily journal entries took minutes and asked participants to:

• List three new things you’re grateful for that day.

• Write about a positive gratitude action for the day.

• Write about a positive experience from the past 24 hours.

 
For an extra happy pick-me-up, employees could meditate for two minutes or exercise for ten. Simple stuff, but it had a big impact!

Ruby Receptionists Founder and CEO Jill Nelson came up with a bonus incentive to get Rubys excited about the program, and truly WOW them. Those who successfully completed the thirty-day journal became eligible to win an expenses-paid trip to Hawaii for two!

Tasia, a virtual receptionist at Ruby for over four years, told me, “The first few days were kind of a struggle to fill out. But then I noticed a change. My daily bike rides to work turned into scavenger hunts where I would notice every beautiful flower and blooming tree. Overall, the experience left me with a tendency to look for the bright side in life. Finding out I won the trip to Hawaii just gave me one more thing to be happy about!” The trip to Hawaii couldn’t have gone to a better person; Tasia got engaged recently and is planning on using the trip as her honeymoon!

Overall, the “Happiness Journal” was a great success; so much so that we’ve started including the program with our initial training from now on. Each new Ruby receives a Welcome Book and is invited to keep a Happiness Journal of their own!

Fostering happiness is worth it. We’ve seen the effects first-hand!

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Create a Happier Business by Inspiring Happy Employees

By | 07.05.2012 |

Random Acts of Happiness incentive campaignHappiness is great for business: it lowers mistakes, increases sales, motivates employees, and makes clients happy — but how can you make your employees happy? Holiday celebrations are a great start, but what can you do year-round to increase happiness at your company? 

Incentive campaigns are one of our favorite tools to help inspire our staff and achieve our goals while having a little fun in the process! Sometimes we have individual prizes; other times employees earn points toward a big group goal, like a catered breakfast. And sometimes we focus on tangible things like accuracy and big picture metrics, but other times we look for more abstract results the lead to the greater good, such as happiness.

I’ve written in the past about our annual Random Acts of Happiness campaign (or “RAH”) where our team hands out scratch tickets to their coworkers for a job well done or to recognize a peer for doing something special – holding a door for someone, a thumbs up through the glass partition of your cubicle, anything that makes your day brighter can be an opportunity for a RAH ticket. There are instant wins sprinkled throughout, and a few grand prizes for those who collect a word or phrase.

But there’s more going on than just physical rewards. An instant win can definitely give an immediate boost in mood – and the next customer they talk to after their lucky streak will certainly feel the effects of that happiness. The simple act of giving a RAH ticket and expressing gratitude to a coworker can foster happiness, too. And many times during the campaign, Rubys will stick around to see what their coworker has won and take an extra few minutes to chat and make a connection, yet another mood booster. After a few weeks of practicing gratitude, it’s hard to stop! After the campaign itself is over, Rubys often recognize their peers with a personal note or public shoutout on our Intranet!

People who feel appreciated and those who take time to express their thanks are happier people. And that in turn can help your business by fostering trust between team members and creating a habit of looking for opportunities to be thankful. Gratitude is a powerful tool to help foster happiness, and holding an incentive campaign is a fantastic way to inspire and empower employees to share!

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What Does Happiness Have to Do with Customer Service?

By | 04.17.2012 |

Happy mug

These days, exceptional customer service is one of the best ways businesses can differentiate themselves from competitors. According to a survey by ClickFox, 64% of consumers say that a company’s reputation for customer service heavily influences their decision to do business with them, and it’s more important than price in keeping them as a customer. So how can you create WOW-worthy customer service to grow your business? Make your employees happy! Here are three ways a joyful staff can make a big splash:

Happiness breeds happiness. Our virtual receptionist team has seen first-hand the value of a smile, even if a caller is thousands of miles away. When the person helping you is cheerful and friendly, you’re much more likely to have a great impression of the business itself.

Happy employees do better work. It’s been proven that happiness raises productivity by 31% and accuracy on tasks by 19%. A high turnover rate means more mistakes as new folks adjust. If you find meaning in your work and are happy in your job, you’re more likely to stay with that company for longer, all the while getting better at what you do. Plus, if you love what you do, you’ll be more attentive and put more energy into your work.

Happy employees are more likely to go above and beyond. Feeling empowered is a key part of happiness on the job. Fear of punishment for making small mistakes can be draining and takes away motivation to think of new solutions for customers’ pain points. Management consultant from the Centre of Applied Positive Psychology Nicky Garcea observes that even among leaders in “high risk” environments such as defense, engineering, or medicine, ”there is a view that suggests that employees who are prepared to push the boundaries and sometimes make a mistake are more creative than those that do not.” Happy employees are more likely to go that extra mile and truly WOW customers (who will, in turn, tell their friends all about it!).

Happy employees, happy customers, happy business.

To learn more about how to implement knock-your-socks-off customer service at your company, check out Ruby CEO Jill Nelson’s ongoing series on the Ruby Service Pyramid!

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Going Green with Ruby’s Alternative Transportation Program

By | 02.28.2012 |
Virtual receptionists Ellie, Tasia, and Kristin

Ellie (with the Ruby cruiser), Tasia, and Kristin

Our Core Values drive everything we do at Ruby Receptionists, including our benefits. With Creating Community in mind, we launched our Alternative Transportation Incentive to promote a healthier environment for our local community. The program encourages employees at our green virtual receptionist service to take public transportation, bicycle, carpool, or walk to work, and was one of the first benefits at Ruby!

We asked a couple of virtual receptionists about what they do to be eco-conscious and what alternative transportation method they use. Here’s what they had to say!

What’s your regular means of transportation to work and what do you enjoy most about using it?

Tasia: I always bike unless there is more than 2 inches of snow, in which case I’ll walk to Ruby (it’s really hard to break and steer in the snow). I like biking because it’s fast, I can sing and or talk to myself, and I get a guaranteed workout twice a day which means I get to have more tasty snacks!

Kristin: My main form of transportation is my bicycle. It’s great because it wakes me up for my 6:00am shift at Ruby. I think that I get through the day with less coffee because of it. I also enjoy the exercise; it’s just over 6 miles round-trip.

The Alternative Transportation Program encourages Rubys to be more eco-conscious; do you do anything else to go green?

Tasia: I compost, buy local organic produce, I’m vegetarian, bring my own containers to stores and restaurants, buy used whenever possible, up-cycle, recycle, and encourage others to do the same!

Kristin: I try to be as eco-conscious as I can, having been an Environmental Studies major at the University of Oregon. Mainly I recycle and compost, and my roommates and I are in the mist of planning our vegetable garden for the spring!

Living in Portland, it’s common to see bicyclists or a large amount of people waiting for the max or a bus to arrive. What do you think is the most effective alternative method of transportation in the big city and why?

Tasia: Biking and walking – pretty much everything I want is within a 5 mile radius, and this way I get where I’m going while getting plenty of exercise.

Kristin: I prefer my bike because I find that it’s usually the fastest. Although, I did use to take the Max [Lightrail] to commute to a job I had in Happy Valley (a city south of Portland), and I found it to be very efficient; it’s nice because you can just read the whole time.

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Smile! It’ll Do You and Your Callers Good!

By | 02.23.2012 |
Virtual receptionist Jenny B

Jenny B.

Today’s guest blog post is by virtual receptionist Jenny B.! We asked her what she recommends for folks who answer phones as part of their job.

My best advice for a receptionist, or even someone answering their own calls? Smile!

It sounds silly, but callers can absolutely hear that smile. It changes your whole tone of voice. Try it!

Even better? There’s plenty of evidence that suggests that smiling (even if you don’t really feel like it) increases your actual feelings of happiness. Charles Darwin wrote in 1872 that “[t]he free expression by outward signs of an emotion intensifies it.” If you feel good, and show it, you will feel even better.

My Southern deb of a grandmother always instructed me to grin until it hurt while preparing to go out for the evening. She swore that doing so would make me feel all the more excited about my plans, and the smile would stick. She was right, and it’s the best beauty advice I’ve ever received. Ruby’s got such a fantastic reputation for customer service, and I think that has a lot to do with the fact that our receptionists don’t just sound cheerful, they’re actually happy. Our smiles are genuine to begin with, and perpetuate the smiles of others, and nothing makes us happier. It’s a big cycle of grins. What could be better?

I’ve found that I have the ability to set the tone for a call. If you approach a caller with confidence and a great attitude, your callers respond exactly in kind. You can hear them smiling too. Who doesn’t want to talk to more happy people? A big grin makes for great customer service in person, of course. But smiling on the phone matters, and makes the whole day way more fun. I promise.

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3 Tips for Responding to a Frustrated Message

By | 02.21.2012 |

Ever return to your desk after a meeting or lunch break to find a message from someone who is not in a good mood? Responding to a frustrated associate is something most of us dread, but at Ruby®, we see it as an opportunity to make a fantastic impression. For all of our telephone answering, the Ruby crew rarely encounters a frustrated caller, and when we do, our virtual receptionist team snaps into WOWing mode, doing our darndest to turn a tricky situation around. Applying the Ruby spirit when responding to a message is easy — whether you’re a receptionist or CEO, we suggest trying these tips when a colleague, customer, or co-worker is frustrated:

Talk it out. Regardless of whether your associate emailed you or left a voicemail, call or talk face-to-face when emotions are running high — don’t email your associate unless it’s your only option. Conveying a positive tone in email is a lot harder than doing so with your voice. Talking to your associate gives you a better opportunity to exude calmness and kindness, and defuse a touchy situation.

Prepare. Before you talk it out, take a few minutes to consider the key points you’d like to address, and anticipate additional questions or concerns that might arise. Prepare for curveballs, too, and be ready to confidently offer help even when you don’t have the answer. Here’s a solid comeback to an unexpected question: “Great question! Let me look into that and follow up with you.”

Visualize. You can probably imagine a million ways a conversation with a frustrated colleague could go awry. But don’t — negative thinking won’t make your follow-up any easier. Instead, envision your conversation going well, and your colleague’s concerns being assuaged. Who better than you to turn a frown upside down? Go get ‘em, Tiger!

How do you respond when an associate is upset? We’d love to learn from you!

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Ruby Launches a Paid Sabbatical Program for Our Virtual Receptionists!

By | 02.01.2012 |
Ruby Receptionists at the 2011 "Best Companies to Work For" event

Ruby at the 2011 "Best Companies to Work For" event

To further support our unique Core Values, we are incredibly excited to launch a new sabbatical program at Ruby Receptionists: the “Five at Five!”

In this paid sabbatical program, for every five years at Ruby, our virtual receptionists and supporting staff members will receive five weeks paid time off! During their Five at Five, Rubys are encouraged to explore our Core Values — “Foster Happiness,” “Create Community,” “Innovate,” and “Practice WOWism” – and apply them to a dream that they might not otherwise have had the opportunity to realize.

We really want our employees to succeed, so Ruby will also provide grants and coaching so that they may thrive in their Five at Five. Ruby will fund a $1,000 grant to help each employee accomplish their goal, whether that means traveling around Europe, taking a class, volunteering with a nonprofit, or anything else that would make them deeply happy. Each employee will also meet with positive psychology experts Dr. Robert Biswas-Diener and Positive Acorn in an individual coaching session to discuss his or her aspirations and strategies for making them a reality through the Five at Five program.

Traditionally, sabbaticals have been reserved for global organizations and academic institutions, and as a small business, we are thrilled to be able to offer them to our staff. In fact, when CEO Jill Nelson announced her sabbatical brainchild at our January staff meeting, many Rubys were so surprised that she had to repeat the idea. Once it sunk in, everyone got very excited and a few got a little misty. Virtual receptionist Eve T. explained, “The way Ruby genuinely cares about us and our happiness never ceases to amaze me and warm my heart. This program only furthers my love for working here, and I am already looking forward to sharing my story when I hit my fifth year!” Star Service and Receptionist Cultivator Janel Hodge will be celebrating her five year anniversary with Ruby in November, and she expressed how much this means to her, saying, “A burst of ideas came to mind immediately, and I got especially emotional when Jill announced the coaching session. I love working for Ruby, so I wouldn’t want to leave to accomplish one of my other lifelong dreams — and now I won’t have to!”

The Five at Five joins other beneficial programs at Ruby, such as our paid maternity/paternity leave, employer-matched 401k, and Alternative Transportation program. This year alone, 15% of Ruby employees will be eligible to take advantage of this new, unique paid sabbatical.

Fostering happiness is a big part of our business: when our virtual receptionists are happy, callers are happy, and our clients are happy! And when we invest in our staff’s happiness, they stay with us longer and are in turn invested in making Ruby successful; in fact, the average receptionist has been with us almost a year and a half (exceptional in a field where high turnover is the norm), and all but five of our 70 employees started out as virtual receptionists.

We are committed to living our Core Values, and we can’t wait to see what each bright, talented Ruby will do with their Five at Five!

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Ask a Virtual Receptionist! Topic: Making Someone’s Day

By | 01.20.2012 |
Virtual receptionist Ellie B.

Ellie B.

We talk a lot about Fostering Happiness at Ruby® (it is one of our Core Values after all!), and we give our virtual receptionist team strategies to make our clients’ and callers’ days brighter. However, each Ruby is unique and each has their favorite way to make connections. In today’s feature, I asked virtual receptionist Ellie B. how she spreads cheer over the phone:

What’s your favorite way to make someone’s day?

My favorite way to make someone’s day is very simple: I like to wish them a good day at the end of our call. Our clients are very busy people – that’s why we’re here! By wishing them a good day, I usually get a thank you and they wish me a good day as well, and that puts a smile on my face, too. I feel like it ensures our clients that we do care about their day, and it reminds them that we are here to help make it a good one, too!

One small gesture can be a real mood booster! Sincerity shines – even through miles of telephone wire — and wishing someone well or genuinely asking how they are may make their day and yours, too!

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Customer (DIS)Service: What’s Lacking and How to Get It Back

By | 01.17.2012 |

CNBC recently aired a special entitled “Customer (DIS)Service: A Maddening Look at the State of Customer Service” where they shined a spotlight on the customer service provided by outsourced call centers, waiters, retailers, recorded menu options, and a host of other industries. Not surprisingly, most of what they found left much to be desired. Man-on-the-street interviews showed an overwhelming frustration with regards to customer service, or as CNBC puts it, “customer disservice.” For all the advancements in technology — computers, databases chock-full of information, sophisticated phone systems — it seems that customer service has actually declined over the years. But why? And why is customer service so important for businesses, anyway?

To answer the first question, we think interviewee Shaun Belding, author and CEO of The Belding Group, put it best: “All the technology was designed to connect us to each other. And that’s what we did. But we lost the beauty of connecting with each other.” Since our interactions these days are often over the phone, it’s easy to become disassociated – they’re just a name and a disembodied voice, right? However, missing that opportunity to connect is missing an opportunity to make a person’s day better, maybe even your own, and certainly make a good impression for your business. You never know who that voice may be attached to: the next evangelist for your company, someone who’s having a rough day that you could cheer up, your neighbor?

In thinking about personal connections, it reminded me of a call I took when I first started at Ruby as a virtual receptionist. We take calls from businesses across North America, and this particular business happened to be on the East Coast. In the course of taking a message for the client, I learned that the caller was from my hometown of Huntington Beach, California, and not only that, he lived at the same intersection as my childhood home! What are the odds? We had a lovely chat about the area and the lively Main Street, and we both ended the call smiling. It could’ve been a very rudimentary call; I could’ve simply taken a message, and we could’ve gone our separate ways. But I wouldn’t have remembered it nearly three years later, and my caller wouldn’t have been nearly as happy.

When people make a personal connection or have an extraordinary experience with a business, they not only become loyal to that company, they’re going to want to talk about it. They’ll tell their friends, colleagues, and family about how someone went above and beyond for them or invested in them or just plain listened to them. Word of mouth – whether it’s positive or negative – can spread like wildfire.

Making meaningful connections with callers and clients isn’t something extra, a nicety; it’s something to cultivate, and it’s imperative to the success of our business. In fact, we put it at the very top of our Ruby Hierarchy of Service Pyramid. Making meaningful connections is at the crux of truly outstanding service, and as ING Direct CEO Peter Aceto said at the end of the CNBC special, “Customer service is the new marketing. It’s the only differentiator businesses have left.”

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Resolve to Make Your Clients Happier this New Year!

By | 01.05.2012 |
Happiness

Photo by Caleb Roenigk

2012: A new year, a fresh start for your business! Great customer service can be an incredible boost to your company; happy customers will stay with you longer and word-of-mouth buzz can grow your client base exponentially. But how can you make your customer service wow-worthy?

Here at Ruby, Fostering Happiness is one of our Core Values, and we aim to make our clients’ and their callers’ days brighter. Besides doing a crackerjack job at answering phones, we’ve developed quite a few ways to accomplish this. Here are five ways we make our clients smile – you may find that they’d be just what the doctor ordered for your customers, too!

1. Handwritten notecards. These days, most of the snail mail people get is junk mail and bills — who doesn’t like to receive a bit of personal mail in the bunch? Just about anything can be an occasion to write — delight your customers by dropping a surprise note in the mail!

2. Following up calls with an email. Like our virtual receptionists, our Client Services department is incredibly helpful and always looking for ways to make our clients’ lives easier. One way they do this is by following every call from a client with an email. It’s a great way to summarize or confirm the information you discussed, especially if it was complicated or may be useful to have on-hand in the future. If you don’t have much to relay, it’s also a great way to create a personal connection; a simple “It was wonderful talking to you” may make their day!

3. Be flexible. At Ruby, we empower our virtual receptionists and staff to make judgment calls on based on our Core Values. Rather than sticking to policy, we believe that not all situations are one-size-fits-all. For example, if one of our clients has instructions to take messages only, of course the majority of the time we’ll only take messages. However, if a family member calls with an emergency, we’ll try to put them in touch with them right away.

In fact, virtual receptionist Kristen C. has experienced exactly that scenario. An extended family member called one of our clients’ lines, and Kristen was able to connect him to the client’s cell phone.

4. Listen. This one’s pretty basic, but it bears repeating: listen to your customers. Sometimes all it takes to make your client happy is to make them feel heard. If a caller sounds emotional, rather than interrupting them, our receptionists will take a moment to listen and let them vent. Try also repeating what your client says back to them to reassure them that you’ve understood their concerns and reassure them that you’ll make things right. Being compassionate and responsive can make a big impact.

5. Check back in. Making a big change to a client’s account? Don’t stop there! When our Client Services department revamps one of our clients’ call handling instructions, they always check back in with them to make sure everything’s working out correctly. Our Sales department also follows up with potential clients after a few days just to see if they thought of anymore questions or they can do more to help. Just knowing that your company is thinking of them and values them enough to take that time will make for some happy campers!

In addition to making your customers happier, resolve to make yourself happier! Happiness is good for you, and it’s contagious. If you’re smiling, relaxed, and have more time to focus on your work and yourself, your clients will notice. And as always, the virtual receptionist team at Ruby would be delighted to help you become more productive and foster happiness with your callers.

We wish you and your business the very best in 2012! Happy New Year!

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