"Thank you for calling Well House. If you are calling to book a course, press 1. If you are calling to book a hotel room, press 2. If you're calling to check whether a course is suitable for you, it's 3, and you should press 4 if you're trying to sell us something. To reach Graham to talk about the Chamber of Commerce or the railways press 5 or 6, and if you're trying to reach Melksham Oak school you've got the wrong number, press 7 and our receptionist will be very polite to you as she gives you the right number. If you're making a nuisance call, please press 8 and we'll transfer you to our nasty whining fax machine while we trace the number you're calling from, and if you want to talk to us about something else please press 9, or hold for an operator"

Nah - apart from the opening "Thank you for calling Well House", I don't like that. We answer the phone in a professional manner, and we have a target that all common questions / requests should be answerable by the first person you speak too.

I've been going through the common scenarios for phone calls with one of the newcomers to our team today, and I've documented the types of phone calls and some notes on our shared resource system [here].

I've also gone through common scenarios for people walking in to the hotel, and I've documented those too - that's [here].

Most of us are customer facing - be it on the phone, in person, or both - and it's vital that we all show a professional, cheerful and uniform approach that's in line with the company's objectives. Grand words - "doing the right thing for everyone" is a more down to earth way of putting it. And these brief bullet points should help.

Other pages of reference material include ...

[link to] Public Course Schedule

[link to] Diary for private courses

[link to] Hotel FAQ and availability chart

[link to] Contact Information

[link to] Travel to Melksham - how long is my drive and what's the weather

[link to] Map showing hotel and training centre

[link to] Terms and conditions for hotel guests

[link to] Terms and conditions for courses

[link to] Staff's "Command Central" or "happens" page
(written 2010-09-19, updated 2010-09-21)

 M300 - Well House Manor - Behind the scenes
  [203] Holes in on line information - (2005-02-05)
  [677] Sympathetic development - (2006-04-09)
  [742] A visit from the solicitor - (2006-06-03)
  [769] King Edward VII - days of empire - (2006-06-20)
  [813] Monday Morning at Well House Consultants Melksham - (2006-07-24)
  [868] Smoking, or no - (2006-09-16)
  [897] Too much for the National Trust - (2006-10-18)
  [927] Hotel door furniture - (2006-11-15)
  [931] Before and After - Well House Manor - (2006-11-18)
  [939] Swipe cards for hotel rooms - Security issues - (2006-11-23)
  [951] What happened at Geekmas - (2006-11-28)
  [1000] One Thousand Posts and still going strong - (2006-12-18)
  [1083] Behind the scenes - (2007-02-17)
  [1105] A week is a long time in the life of a conference centre - (2007-03-10)
  [1159] It can take more that one plus one to get two. - (2007-04-22)
  [1179] Sizing sheets and other domestic issues - (2007-05-07)
  [1189] Meet, greet and welcome - (2007-05-16)
  [1285] In the army, or in civvie street? - (2007-07-31)
  [1311] What do people look for on a hotel web site? - (2007-08-20)
  [1319] Customer feedback - lifeblood of a business - (2007-08-25)
  [1369] One business, four different angles! - (2007-09-28)
  [1371] Hotel in Melksham at Christmas - (2007-09-29)
  [1441] On cancellations, rebooking, and pricing schemes - (2007-11-22)
  [1490] Software to record day to day events and keep an action list - (2007-12-31)
  [1515] Keeping staff up to date on hotel room status - (2008-01-22)
  [1520] Terms and Conditions - Hotel, England - plain English - (2008-01-26)
  [1571] Await guests in the early hours - (2008-03-12)
  [1637] Providing exceptional service - and carrying on doing so. - (2008-05-09)
  [1854] Three Seasonal Pictures - (2008-10-25)
  [1900] Table Topics - (2008-11-22)
  [1904] Ruby, Perl, Linux, MySQL - some training notes - (2008-11-23)
  [1948] Blame Culture - (2008-12-17)
  [1957] Why are cooks bad tempered? - (2008-12-22)
  [1973] Required Request - (2009-01-03)
  [1991] Rules for a King - (2009-01-13)
  [2125] We have lost a regular business guest - (2009-04-10)
  [2247] A day in the life of a hotelier - (2009-06-18)
  [2396] Easing off in our 50s? - (2009-09-06)
  [2910] Robust - testing the system - (2010-08-09)
  [2916] Testing the robustness of our hotel and training systems - holiday and sickness times - (2010-08-11)
  [2960] The Well House team - September 2010 - (2010-09-19)
  [3093] How many toilet rolls - hotel inventory and useage - (2010-12-18)
  [3743] Sunday - no longer a day of rest - (2012-05-28)
  [3844] Rooms ready for guests - each time, every time, thanks to good system design - (2012-08-20)
  [3961] Well House Staff Party - (2012-12-22)
  [4302] Sunday is never quiet at Well House Manor - (2014-09-21)
  [4365] The changing face of Christmas - (2014-12-26)

G501 - Well House Consultants - Customer Service
  [72] On Customer Service - (2004-10-03)
  [91] On line every 24 hours - (2004-10-17)
  [126] Feedback shows the tip of an iceberg - (2004-11-22)
  [150] Confession - (2004-12-13)
  [189] Tuesdays and Fridays - (2005-01-25)
  [195] Customer service - examples to warn us - (2005-01-30)
  [233] Giving customers best value - (2005-03-02)
  [265] Business practise, 2005 style - (2005-04-03)
  [327] How far should our support go - (2005-05-28)
  [350] Want to be one better - (2005-06-17)
  [393] Trainer answers phone - (2005-07-28)
  [440] Upgrade! - (2005-09-09)
  [482] Different ways of selling - (2005-11-01)
  [552] Keeping Customers Informed - (2006-01-02)
  [566] May all your screw-ups be big ones - (2006-01-16)
  [569] Instructions for bright people - (2006-01-19)
  [609] Been on a course, but still not got it? - (2006-02-16)
  [621] And the staff put the icing on the cake - (2006-02-23)
  [628] Active Learning - (2006-02-28)
  [650] A person of few words - (2006-03-18)
  [717] A customer service company - (2006-05-11)
  [725] Better communication - (2006-05-19)
  [841] Forum help - a push in the right direction - (2006-08-21)
  [852] Eventful evening - a lesson in looking after contacts - (2006-09-02)
  [944] Just ******* Google it - (2006-11-25)
  [961] Products that our customers want more of - (2006-12-03)
  [966] CSL, KISS and RTFM - (2006-12-05)
  [1007] Friends and family - (2006-12-25)
  [1046] Bounce, bounce, bounce - (2007-01-20)
  [1262] Keep in touch with PHP, Perl, Python and old friends too - (2007-07-09)
  [1434] Market survey - to learn, to prove a point, or to sell your product? - (2007-11-17)
  [1446] An answer to a student asking 'Help' - (2007-11-27)
  [1516] Pictures you can use - for free - from our library - (2008-01-23)
  [1606] Sheep Shearers, Marathon Runners and Ocean Sailors - (2008-04-09)
  [1835] 23:30 bookings and midnight checkins - (2008-10-12)
  [1985] Learning to program as a part of your job - (2009-01-10)
  [2015] Service Excellence Awards - (2009-01-30)
  [2049] Why Choose Well House Consultants for your course? - (2009-02-20)
  [2102] What do people think of our Apache httpd / Tomcat course? - (2009-03-24)
  [2124] Building down expectations - (2009-04-09)
  [2236] Alumni - revisiting and supporting the old University - (2009-06-13)
  [2258] Questions I have been asked on answering the phone - (2009-06-26)
  [2530] Taking a knock over Santa - (2009-12-08)
  [2650] Getting a phone line changed ... - (2010-02-25)
  [2880] Getting in touch - Please allow me to see you when you are online - (2010-07-21)
  [3073] Customer Service - the boundary - (2010-11-27)
  [3103] Thank you - and Happy Christmas - (2010-12-24)
  [3271] The importance of feedback - (2011-04-30)
  [3294] It's not just about the jam in the sandwich - (2011-05-19)
  [3378] New product - ensuring that supply matches demand - (2011-08-03)
  [3808] Can you put names to faces? - (2012-07-19)
  [3835] The Information age - not yet truly with us? - (2012-08-12)
  [4077] Palty or Parliamentary? - (2013-04-30)
  [4078] Train works for me! - (2013-05-02)
  [4232] Not wanted here - hotel guests who will not be happy - (2013-12-30)

Back to The Well House team - September 2010

Previous and next or Horse's mouth home

Forward to Well House Manor - the history of the hotel

Testimonials - Well House Consultants Open Source courses
An introduction to file handling in programs - buffering, standard in and out, and file handles
Removing the new line with chop or chomp in Perl - what is the difference?
Well House Manor - the history of the hotel
Initial handling of phone calls and walk in visitors
A Melksham news roundup
What do these road markings mean? Could Confusion Kill?
Welcome to Countrywides new Melksham store
On site course - travel and accommodation expenses