Press Kit

 

Wall Street Journal Articles Featuring Nancy Friedman
Wall Street Journal

ABOUT THE SPEAKER / BIO

NANCY FRIEDMAN - Telephone Doctor®

 
Nancy FriedmanPresident of Telephone Doctor Customer Service Training in St. Louis, MO, Nancy was born and raised in Chicago, IL.
 
Nancy is one of America's most ‘asked back' speakers to conferences
such as the Million Dollar Round Table; PCMA; National Association of Mortgage Brokers; International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub Association; Air Conditioning Contractors of America; SEMA; Tom Hopkins Sales Boot Camp, plus many others.
 
She has appeared on programs with General Colin Powell, Ken Blanchard, Bobby Knight, Lou Holtz and many others. Nancy’s program is a perfect fit for owners, managers and top-level executives. Her style is dynamic and laugh-out-loud funny. Her sales and service background allows Nancy to bring a successful program to audiences all over the world.
 
Nancy is a frequent guest on top TV and radio talk shows (OPRAH, TODAY SHOW, CBS THIS MORNING, GOOD MORNING AMERICA, CNN and FOX NEWS to name a few) and was named one of the 25 Most Successful Businesswomen in St. Louis.
 
She is the author of hundreds of articles in leading newspapers and magazines, including "Manager’s Journal" in the WALL STREET JOURNAL and also the author of 6 best selling books on customer service and communication skills.
Nancy’s programs are high-energy, high-content and high-results. Sit back, relax and enjoy. 
CORPORATE BACKGROUND
 
"More business is lost due to poor service
and poor treatment than poor product."
– Nancy Friedman, the Telephone Doctor – 
 
TELEPHONE DOCTOR HAS PRESCRIPTION
FOR SUCCESSFUL CUSTOMER SERVICE TECHNIQUES
 
"Your people stink!"
 
Years ago, with that succinct phrase, Nancy Friedman canceled her insurance policies, and "fired" the insurance company. "Mike," she told her insurance agent, "We treat our wrong numbers better than you treat your customers. You’re great, but you’re never there . . . and the people who handle me are rude, unfriendly, unhelpful, and just plain unwilling to help. I don’t have to be treated like that . . . I won’t be treated like that. Just cancel my policies."
 
To his credit, the insurance agent did not simply slink into the night. He asked Nancy to come in and tell his staff exactly what they were doing wrong. She agreed, and that first program marked the beginning of a highly successful new career. When a friend who managed a newspaper heard about what she had done, he asked her to train the entire staff of the Quad City Times. After that program, the editor of the paper came up to Nancy and said, "That was great . . . you sure have the cures . . . you’re the doctor . . . the Telephone Doctor." She remains to this day the world’s first, only, and registered Telephone Doctor.
 
Her expertise as a telephone and customer service skills guru was no accident. Nancy’s husband, Dick, heads his own successful St. Louis-based business, WEATHERLINE®, for which Nancy handled customer relations. Through her work, Nancy saw that businesses spent plenty of time educating employees as to their rights, basic duties and product knowledge, but everyone assumes handling the telephone properly was a given . . . one simply picks it up and says "Hello." She found that few companies considered the huge cost of having their clients handled rudely or unprofessionally. It took Nancy Friedman to realize there was a national "illness" a Telephone Doctor could cure.
 
What does the Telephone Doctor do? We help companies communicate better with their customers. "Customers," she says, "should be treated as a welcome guest when they call a company. Sometimes they’re treated as an interruption or an annoyance." Through Nancy’s blend of entertainment and training programs, tens of thousands of employees are learning how to deliver outstanding customer service on the telephone. The program empowers attendees, both upper management and front line staff, to make the contact a more powerful sales and marketing asset for their companies.
 
 After the first flush of success, Nancy and Dick saw another need waiting to be filled. Many companies felt they required follow up to a personal appearance from the Telephone Doctor. There were more requests for Nancy’s time than could realistically be covered. To fill that void, the Friedman’s began to develop training programs. 
 
Today, tens of thousands of employees are being trained with Telephone Doctor programs, both domestically and internationally. The United States does not have a monopoly on poor customer service. Telephone Doctor programs are available in 27 countries and in seven languages. 
 
The Telephone Doctor’s collection is America’s largest library on customer service and telephone skills. Topics cover a wide range: everything from listening skills to attitude, just to name a few. Telephone Doctor sales now exceed three million dollars a year.
SUGGESTED SUBJECT MATTER FOR
TELEPHONE DOCTOR INTERVIEWS
Nancy Friedman, the Telephone Doctor – Customer Service Expert
For both TELEPHONE and FACE-TO-FACE customer service.
 What the heck is Telephone Doctor?  What are the 6 touch points of communication?
 
What are 5 most frustrating voice mail phrases?
  
Voice mail – curse or cure?
 
What are the 6 cardinal rules of customer service?
  
How can we GET good customer service?
 
Civility and tone of voice is critical.
  
What about the dreaded HOLD?
 
What is the number one customer service frustration of the American public?
  
Cell phones – common sense guidelines to remember…that we forget.
 
 
What is business friendly customer service?
  
How much business is lost due to poor service & poor treatment?
 
How to deliver bad news.
  
How to avoid the dreaded hold.
& MUCH MORE
 
What Doctor Ruth Does
for the Bedroom, the
Telephone Doctor
Does for the Phone!
 Nancy Friedman
 
HELPING COMPANIES COMMUNICATE BETTER WITH THEIR CUSTOMERS!
 
Everyone has a pet peeve or horror story about how they’ve been treated on the telephone. Nancy, the Telephone Doctor, has the cure for these ailments. Whatever the medium, Nancy keeps her audience entertained, informed, and ready for more. She’s lively, humorous, and always asked back!
 
HERE'S WHERE NANCY'S BEEN IN THE MEDIA:
OPRAH KOA, Denver
The Today Show KTAR,Phoenix
Fox News KGO, San Francisco
Good Morning America KMOX, St. Louis
CBS This Morning WCCO, Minneapolis
CNN Headline News Wall Street Journal
CNBC-TV USA Today
WGN, Chicago WOR, New York
WJR, Detroit And Hundreds More
radio, TV and print
outlets...
TV-AM Good Morning Britain
KCMO, Kansas City
TOPICS INCLUDE:
 
Voice Mail, Music on Hold, Obscene Calls, Telemarketing Tips, Irate Callers, Customer Service, Email, Kids on the Phone and dozens more.
 Always Invited back
To Book: Call 314.291.1012
  
Logo St louis Business Journal
Focus: Most Influential Business Women
From the St. Louis Business Journal
Nancy Friedman
Owner, The Telephone Doctor
Carla Dodd

Nancy Friedman -- a.k.a. the Telephone Doctor--influenced Lloyd Tucker before they actually met.

Tucker, senior director of education and maintenance for Alexandria, Va.-based Document Management Industries Association, first heard of Friedman from an acquaintance. After research and a sample tape, Friedman's company, the Telephone Doctor, was booked for the trade association's regional and national conventions. She will appear at In Form Service 2000, a national trade show and conference for business printing manufacturers, this fall in Chicago.

Friedman impressed Tucker with her speaking style and professionalism.

"She's a delight to work with," Tucker said. "She's extremely professional, has a great sense of humor and is a low-maintenance speaker. When you have 50 seminars to deal with, you don't want high maintenance. Nancy was 'Here I am, where do I go, thank you.'"

She also has a great presence, Tucker said. Audiences love her delivery, humor and the content of her presentations. "She always says something you can take home with you and use in your business," Tucker said.

"I would hope that my influence on people is just that they treat people better in person and on the phone," Friedman said. "I am a very simple person. I hope that I influence my kids to make the right choices. I hope I influence my employees."

Telephone Doctor Customer Service Training, started by Friedman and her husband, Richard, in 1983, started out providing customer service communications skills to businesses. The concept has grown into an international operation, with revenue of $4 million in 1999.

Friedman's influence has expanded along with the boom in technology. The growth and recognition of customer service call centers, the importance of employee training, the advent of training videotapes, CD-ROM and online training all have been areas where Telephone Doctor has gotten deeply involved. A video training library of 16 tapes, ranging from "On Incoming Calls" to "Five Forbidden Phrases," deal with customer service and caller issues. The training is available in Spanish, French, Portuguese, Hebrew, Cantonese, Dutch -- and English.

Employee orientation videos called "Discussion Catalysts" offer wrong-way vignettes and opportunities to discuss technique instead of traditional lectures. An animated Friedman brings the message to online users at www.learnbywire.com. New clients come 100 percent from referrals.

"I can pick up the phone every day and hear 'I saw her 10 years ago, and she changed my life ... she gave me skills, real skills that I use in my business every day,'" said Jeannie Krull, the national program director, who books Friedman's speaking engagements.

"She has an aura about her," said her son, David, who is vice president of the company. "At the trade shows, she has that celebrity appeal; because she is an expert. That's a big advantage for us, because other companies doing customer service training have a paid actor, which I would do -- if I didn't have Nancy.

"She has a certain spark and energy for this business. She's totally driven because of a passion for what she does, and everything follows from that."

It follows within her office, too. Friedman has an open-door policy with employees, both personally and professionally. Krull walked through that door as Friedman's assistant and became both national program director and senior account executive (video and media) with her boss's help.

"The longer I did the job, the more I realized it was much more than just clerical, and I said I'd like to help, sit in on meetings and understand the process," Krull said.

Friedman would like to see Telephone Doctor become as recognizable as "Kleenex and Band Aid, "Right now, we're the leader, and we're getting our name out there."

Carla Dodd is a St. Louis free-lance writer.