Carolyn Bradfield

I was one of the first people who bought an Apple iPhone when they first came out.  I had been a committed Verizon user with my Motorola Razor phone and absolutely resisted the change to a new phone and different service.  Despite equipment issues, network failings, dropped calls and a steep learning curve, I finally made the emotional commitment that I was indeed cool enough to use an iPhone….and I liked it.  The apps are fun, I can find my way with the GPS, and I like reading my email on the fly.  The phone service leaves something to be desired, but I’ve been willing to adjust.

Fortunately my husband drove the decision to move to iPhone users, so he also accepted the responsibility of engaging with AT&T for billing and service.  Things seemed to go well, so I thought I would try and get a change made to my account to accommodate my daughter’s desire to move her T-Mobile account to our family plan under AT&T in order to save some money.

For those of you who may not remember, if you have any type of phone service, you have control over your phone number and can move it to another vendor.  We had no contract with T-Mobile, and room for 5 phone numbers in our family plan.  It would seem logical that AT&T would want the additional mobile minutes from the T-Mobile number, right?

Well, you have to start with customer service to make the request.  They have to transfer you to the “port” department to move the T-Mobile number.  Another department has to look at your account and make sure that you are following your contract.  It just so happened that we had one inactive phone number that was about to expire in a month, so we didn’t meet the “guidelines,” so there was an immediate obstacle in retiring the inactive number so we had room to move the T-Mobile number.

I thought, maybe if I go to an AT&T store, this would be easier.  After all, I had been on the line with three different service departments for hours and couldn’t move the process forward.  Maybe I would be more effective in communicating my goals in person.  I met with a nice AT&T representative who assured me that this would be “no problem.”  However, the process took a long time and time ran short, so I had to come back to complete the transaction.  The paperwork went into the computer and our request WAS REJECTED.  My patience was up and I started to express my thoughts on the logic of this process.

A young manager came over with the attitude, “we’re AT&T and you need to live with it.”  Fortunately there were a number of people in the store; it was easy to hear my distress, and ultimately I got my transaction done without paying any penalty fees.  This only took multiple phone calls to three service departments and two trips to the AT&T store.

Although I was frustrated and about to slit my wrists, it reminded me of why companies like Copper Conferencing exist in the marketplace.  We’re small, but we’re responsive.  We don’t let bureaucracy, procedures and a lack of empathy for the customer make us hard to do business with.  We don’t require complex contracts with a lot of illogical legal-ease in them.  We recognize that you can’t hold customers to you with a piece of paper – that the tie comes with great service and being easy to do business with.

Let me share with you that the minute the iPhone is available on another carrier, I’m moving.  I’m going to test their customer service first and find someone who appreciates my business.  I’m even willing to pay a little more for the privilege.

There are plenty of examples in the conferencing industry where the big guy cares more about their paperwork and processes rather than the customer.  This is why companies like Copper Conferencing exist and thrive.  Take a lesson AT&T, you’re just not worth it!

To learn why Copper is worth it and how audio conferencing and web conferencing services can help you improve your business and cut costs, contact a Conference Coach today.

What you should know is that an increasing number of companies recognized this solution and have survived this sour economy by using such tools as audio, web, and video conferencing. These collaborate tools have been helpful in managing clients outside of geographical boundaries and managing employees within the company. The question is, what has Copper Conferencing done to differentiate itself from the other conferencing companies to prove it is an even better solution for those companies in search of cost saving maneuvers?

The answer is, Copper Conferencing has the most user-friendly conferencing services. Copper’s collaboration tools include:

• On-Demand reservationless audio conferencing
• An online customer portal Connect To Copper that lets the customer control his/her conferencing
• A learning center with one-minute skill builders
• Free assistance from an excellent customer service team
• A range of webcast and web meeting options
• And these services come with no contract and no usage fees

It’s no wonder why companies have made the switch to Copper during the weak economy.  You can try Copper for free to see for yourself.

Jon Burnham is a marketing assistant for Copper Conferencing.  Jon works and plays in and around Atlanta, Georgia.

Copper Conferencing

As a conferencing company focusing on the small to mid-sized business market, the Inside Sales team at Copper Conferencing is primarily staffed with recent college grads, eager for experience.  Although claiming to be willing to be developed and tutored, the introduction into the world of sales can often be a bit of an adjustment, if not downright uncomfortable.  That first sales job means confronting new expectations, quotas and revenue demands, and making your own living that is entirely dependent upon your efforts.  It can be a greater jolt than expected, with a steeper learning curve than anticipated.

Bringing fresh-out-of-college salespeople up to par involves both personal and professional skill development:

• What defines a workday?  What are reasonable work hours if you are to succeed?
• What is appropriate office attire? What is appropriate office language? What is appropriate office interaction between co-workers?
• What is the correct protocol for business email?
• How do you sound on the phone?  Do you sound professional and friendly when you speak?

Of no less importance, the effective manager of such an organization must know the difference between intention and results.  New salespeople often erroneously see these as equal.

• Following training, sales managers of a young sales team must model every direction given to their team:  show them what you are asking them to do – how to research a lead, how to call/prospect, how to set a sales appointment, how to execute a sales appointment.  Let them model their behavior after yours.
• Setting clear expectations with frequent feedback is critical to the success of a young team. The manager is responsible to hold up a mirror so that the salesperson can see the connection between behavior and results – a key to this is doing so on a more frequent, rather than less frequent, basis.
• Micro-management of these hires is not only smart, it is absolutely necessary.  From experience, I know that allowing someone to veer off-track on results without immediate course correction establishes a habit that can be nearly impossible to break.

One great benefit of a young sales team is the energy and enthusiasm they bring to the job. If eager to learn, they willingly take on any challenge and work like crazy to be successful. Having no previous experience, old habits are non-existent, so training can be geared toward the focus of Copper Conferencing’s ideal customer.  We are confident that we are providing a great opportunity in an increasingly expanding market when we hire inexperienced salespeople, knowing that the sales experience they receive from Copper Conferencing will set a solid sales foundation for their future sales careers.

Have questions about Copper Conferencing or need to do an audio conference or web meeting?  Contact a Conference Coach today.

Copper Conferencing employs a refreshing strategy that is based on the following components: empowerment, accountability and flexibility. The right mixture of these three components yields the perfect recipe for challenging employees to rise to excellence.

First begin by creating an environment of empowerment. Create a team atmosphere where all team members are valued and important. Trust your team, after all you hired them, and assign individuals daily tasks that are crucial to the growth of the company. Then add a layer of open communication where your team members can present new ideas and be appreciated for their brilliance. Make sure to listen to their input. Allow their ideas to “rise” as you analyze them and carefully fold those new ideas into your environment if they apply. Repeat this process and your team members will rise to be analytical thinkers and leaders.

The second ingredient to the recipe is creating a sense of accountability. First gather your team members together and conduct monthly team strategy sessions where the team identifies ways in which processes can be improved, addresses any conflicts and sets their own monthly expectations as a team. Then conduct individual strategy sessions with each team member and ask them to prepare a personal accountability document before the meeting. Repeat this process every month and refer to the last month’s recipe as a baseline recipe.

The last step to the recipe is to pepper in flexibility. Do this by analyzing each team member’s work/life balance and encourage them to take time off of work. Encourage them to get involved in their communities. Join them in a few of those activities and watch their personal growth. At Copper Conferencing a few individuals from the Customer Care Team are attending college and Copper tries to be flexible with school schedules. The more flexible you are with them the more flexible and open they will be to new tasks, processes and acceptance to change within your business.

Once you have baked these principles into your company’s environment, challenge yourself with the same recipe. Mangers need to refresh and add new ingredients to their pantry. Encourage your managers, empower them, hold them accountable and be flexible. Finally, set the table and enjoy the feast that your company will yield from this fantastic recipe of success.

Have questions about Copper Conferencing or need to do an audio conference or web meeting?  Contact a Conference Coach today.

Not long ago I was having this issue with my roommate. All the little things grew to become big ones. The less we started talking the more the lava would start to boil till one day it all exploded. Since both of us are too head strong to talk to the one another, we got to experience a negative situation where all you could see was hatred. It showed me that communication is the key to any relationship. When you do not talk about the issue it will never get resolved.

At Copper Conferencing, Communication is our top priority. Our Customer Service must know how to relate and communicate with all sorts of people. When your customer calls in and lets you know that they aren’t happy with the services and they want to leave. You need to communicate with them first and see what the issue really is. There is always a resolution to every problem.

What was the learning experience through it all? Silence might be golden, but dead silence can be a real bummer. Communicating will always give you the chance to set boundaries, avoid misunderstanding and solve and issue or conflicts that step in the way.

Have questions about Copper Conferencing or need to do an audio conference or web meeting?  Contact a Conference Coach today.

Carolyn Bradfield

Sometimes in our business, companies will engage in an RFP process.  For those of you who don’t know what this is, it stands for “Request for Proposal.”  This usually is a fairly painful process where you are asked a million questions, have to write a term paper and usually have to compete with the “big guys” who can kill you on the price per minute.   Copper Conferencing participated in an RFP process in the spring, but lost out, primarily on price.  We were bummed, especially since this was a valued customer.  But we understand the desire to gain some cost advantages.  Times are tight.

Despite our loss and licking our wounds, our customer care department kept up the high level of service and care even in the face of a certain departure by this customer.  We responded to requests quickly, continued to offer training and support, created and delivered custom reports.  This is an area where nobody can beat us.

Well, it seemed that the “big guys” weren’t nearly as responsive.  They were hard to do business with, were slow to respond to requests and didn’t seem to value the customer nearly as much as we did.  Despite not winning on price, were just told that they’re staying with Copper.  It goes to show you that customer care does matter and if your needs aren’t being met, you have a choice.

Congratulations to our customer service representatives, our billing department, our technical group and to all those Copper employees that do a superior job everyday.  Kathleen Thompson quarterbacks this team and is one of our customer-service heroes.  Good job Copper!  This is a real win for the little guy!

Have questions about Copper Conferencing or need to do an audio conference or web meeting?  Contact a Conference Coach today.

Carolyn Bradfield

One of the most profound decisions an entrepreneur or business leader can make during the course of running a business is the decision to have partners.  Partnerships can have a downside that comes with the complications of having to collaborate and compromise.  They can lead to power struggles and a lack of understanding about how to share responsibilities.  In the extreme, they can destroy relationships and friendships.

However, from my perspective, despite the downsides, it’s never as much fun or as rewarding to go it alone as it is to have partners.  Early in the company’s history, Copper Conferencing made the decision to find business partners that could extend its reach to companies where we had no relationships.  The business partners not only brought conferencing to their customer relationships but a range of related telecommunications and data services that added value to the company.   Maintaining a great partnership starts with trust.

The conferencing marketplace is vast with most companies using some form of audio and web conferencing.  If and when Copper and one of its partners pursue the same company for conferencing, we always recognize that the partner’s relationship with that customer usually supersedes our own.  Conflicting over an individual account is just not worth damaging that trust we have worked hard to build.

Partners must also trust that Copper will be there for support and advice.  We’re experts in what we sell and our partners are generalists in many, many products and services.  We don’t expect partners to know everything about conferencing and are always available to answer questions, jump on sales calls, or act as a consultant in this area.

Our partners have to trust that we will maintain a high level of customer service and support in managing the accounts that they have entrusted to us.  We rarely represent the most significant revenue that this partner has with the customer and we’re always cognizant that we must represent ourselves well so that the decision to use Copper reflects well on the partner.

I often wonder how the larger industry players such as InterCall who dominate the conferencing market maintain the same trust level with their partners.  They field a behemoth direct sales force that seem to act like a plague of locusts in the market, calling on whatever accounts they find seemingly without regard to those that are best pursued by partners.   Locusts just simply live to eat whatever is in their path.  They move from one meal to the next one and rarely worry about what they have already captured and killed.

We believe in partners and that requires communication, collaboration and building trust.  Getting business at any cost, undercutting a partner, and living to eat vs. eating to live seems bad for the industry.  After all, once the plague has moved on, often the landscape is never the same.

Fun facts about locusts: Visit National Geographic – Locusts or watch these videos:

Plague of Locusts – BBC

Locusts in the Congo

Willow, CA – Locusts

Copper Conferencing is a company that will work with companies to the fullest in both its products and its customer service.  Our services range from audio conferencing to web conferencing.  With all that is going on in the world today, companies need a conferencing services provider that will be with them through good and bad times.  Copper understands the challenges a company might face with the way the economy is today.

Copper knows that some of its customers are facing financial hardship and can’t seem to get ahead of the bills that keep coming in. They don’t need someone calling them day in and day out reminding them that they are behind on their account. We all know that those calls are nothing but aggravating, especially when many companies are just trying to keep their business running. In times like these, Copper tries to be a company that is willing to take that extra step in working out a reasonable way to help companies pay their invoices. Copper Conferencing is a company that will help you while you get your company back on track, we can set up payment plans to help you keep your account with us in good standing.  In time of financial hardship we want, our products to serve as an asset versus just another expense.  Our web and audio conferencing services can be useful tools in cutting back costs for a company with travel expenses.  And when you add up air fare, hotel stays, car rentals and time away from home, cutting costs looks very attractive.  Audio conferencing is obviously the way to go in cutting back on these costs.

We don’t want to aggravate you with those collection calls each day like other companies tend to do.  We don’t feel it’s necessary to constantly call you day in and day out to remind you of the money you owe. We send out reminder letters of what is owed on a past due account, in turn that’s when payment arrangements can be useful If necessary.

So take the first step in securing your company in saving money with audio conferencing and a Company that cares, Copper Conferencing.

Have questions about Copper Conferencing or ready to cut travel costs?   To do an audio conference or web meeting, contact a Conference Coach today.

Working for Copper Conferencing has opened my eyes to just how easy, fun and valuable webinars can be. First, let’s define webinar. Simply put, a webinar is a “web-based seminar.” Webinars come in different shapes and sizes. Some are formal and some are informal. Some have 10 attendees and some have 200 attendees.

Whatever shape webinars take, they are a great way to market, care for customers or keep your company on the same page. Let’s look at how different business departments might use a web conferencing service.

Marketing
I work in the marketing department at Copper Conferencing. Hosting webinars is a weekly occurrence in our department. We can’t get enough of them. We LOVE them! For marketing, a webinar is a great lead generation tool. For example, we created the Business Webinar Series. We solicited the speakers, promoted the events and moderated the webinar. The speakers were able to reach more attendees by using web conferencing which resulted in many new leads. Participants were able to learn new business skills and ideas while never having to leave their office. And Copper Conferencing was able to showcase web conferencing services in a very real and practical setting.

You could use webinars to promote a product, sell a service or increase general awareness of your business.

Customer Service
Customer Service is all about maintaining the relationship. Hosting a webinar is a great way to reach many customers at one time or provide individualized interaction. Our customer service department uses web conferencing almost daily.

For example, a customer service department could host a monthly “Ask the Expert” webinar. This webinar could include new product releases, product updates or current technical issues and a question and answer session at the end. Showing customers you care about their concerns is important. Take it a step further and use webinars as your platform.

Human Resources
Web Conferencing is a tool that HR departments need to use. Human Resources could also use webinars for new-hire training, product knowledge seminars or company-wide safely and regulation meetings.

For example, the hiring process is perfect for webinars. We used web conferencing to hire our web designer who lived out of state. With video streaming technology, the interview process was just as good as meeting face-to-face.

Become a Webinar Guru Too!
Becoming a webinar guru is easy. If I did, you can too! You just need the right tools to do it. Check out Copper Conferencing web conferencing services at www.copperconferencing.com/services/web-conferencing.

We checked in at about 10:00 on Tuesday night and were so excited about our good fortune.  The room was modern, newly renovated and perfect, even with a view of the ocean.  That was until about 7:45 this morning when the jackhammers and air compressors roared to life.  Apparently the hotel is undergoing a transformation and you can hear that activity as if it were right in the room with you.  Had we known this in advance, we may have stayed in the “ghetto”.

I finally got in touch with Rick, the front desk manager, to explain just how inconvenient it is to try and work in a hotel room with a jack hammer in your ear.  He tried to make this all about the fact that it was my mistake –  that I was probably told in advance about the construction and I booked the hotel anyway.  When I let him know that nobody informed me and the room was only 50% useful to me because I couldn’t stay there during the day, his attitude was – “Oh, well”.

Now Rick failed what I call a customer service “moment of truth”.  He could have at least acknowledged why I might be frustrated, apologized to me, offered to move me or get me a new hotel, but he didn’t do any of those things.  What Rick doesn’t know is that I’m a really motivated consumer.  If I like something, I tell everybody.  If someone fails to meet my expectations, I tell everybody and all their relatives.  So, I’m telling everybody that unless you like jackhammers, don’t stay at the Lowes Hotel in Miami Beach for the rest of 2009!

If we fail our customers at Copper Conferencing for whatever reason, we apologize.  We acknowledge their frustration with us, and we do whatever it takes to make it right.  We don’t blame the customer.  We either failed to instruct, failed to perform or failed to satisfy.  Our customers rarely if ever try and take advantage of us and we want to keep them coming back.  They don’t have to prove they are right, just that we didn’t meet their expectations.  We want them to tell everybody how great our service is and if we don’t perform, how hard we work to make things right.

Rick, the front desk supervisor, of the Lowes Hotel in Miami Beach should take a lesson from Copper.  He had the chance to have a good customer service “moment of truth” and in that moment, he left an impression of his hotel that will last forever.