Nancy J. Friedman (known in her business persona as the "Telephone Doctor") is an

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

customer service Customer service is the assistance and advice provided by a company to those people who buy or use its products or services. Each industry requires different levels of customer service, but in the end, the idea of a well-performed service is that ...

and

telephone A telephone is a telecommunications device that permits two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most efficiently the human voice, into e ...

skills

consultant A consultant (from la, consultare "to deliberate") is a professional (also known as ''expert'', ''specialist'', see variations of meaning below) who provides advice and other purposeful activities in an area of specialization. Consulting servic ...

. Nancy Friedman is founder and president of Telephone Doctor, a customer-service training company based in

St. Louis, Missouri St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi River, Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the Greater St. Louis, ...

. In She also appears as spokesperson in the company's video training programs. Friedman controls the registered trademark and dotcom domain for "Telephone Doctor".

Biography

Friedman and her husband, Dick Friedman, were originally from

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

. Friedman has one year of college from the

University of Miami The University of Miami (UM, UMiami, Miami, U of M, and The U) is a private research university in Coral Gables, Florida. , the university enrolled 19,096 students in 12 colleges and schools across nearly 350 academic majors and programs, incl ...

. Friedman worked as an actress in

San Diego San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the List of United States cities by population, eigh ...

in the 1960s. In 1964, she and her husband bought a radio station and then in 1967, they bought another radio station in

. In 1967, she and her husband moved to St. Louis. In St. Louis, she did promotions for a weather-forecast service, Weatherline, which she started up with her husband in 1968. She also continued to act, doing several shows a year and winning the Golden Globe Atlas Award for "best comedy actress."

Career

In 1982, after being treated rudely in a routine call to her insurance agent, Friedman both canceled her policies and started the "desk drawer" one-woman business Telephone Doctor to train employees in telephone etiquette. The insurer company asked "how it should be done" and invited Friedman to demonstrate polite customer service to its representatives, leading to Friedman providing customer-service seminars to other corporations and associations. Friedman's first seminar earned 38 cents in profit. "Telephone Doctor" was named by Friedman's second client, a

Davenport, Iowa Davenport is a city in and the county seat of Scott County, Iowa, United States. Located along the Mississippi River on the eastern border of the state, it is the largest of the Quad Cities, a metropolitan area with a population of 384,324 and a ...

newspaper editor. The company, Telephone Doctor, was founded by Friedman in 1983. By 1986, her business, co-owned with her husband, Dick Friedman and her son, David, was a

subsidiary A subsidiary, subsidiary company or daughter company is a company owned or controlled by another company, which is called the parent company or holding company. Two or more subsidiaries that either belong to the same parent company or having a s ...

of Weatherline and Sportsline. By 1987, she was doing three to four seminars a week. She and her husband began creating training videos because she didn't have enough time to do all the seminars people were asking for. By 1994, Telephone Doctor employed 23 staff members and had annual worldwide sales of $2 million. The company moved to a new building with a theater that same year. Also in 1994, the company acquired World Telecom Associates. The company also did surveys to find out what phrases frustrated callers the most. Friedman tried going on television to increase her business's exposure, but later found that creating close relationships with clients worked better for her type of business. In 2007, the company made $3 million. Friedman's desire to teach businesses how to make better use of the telephone rather than to take it for granted has been called a "crusade" and a "quest to stamp out phone rudeness". In She explains that bad customer service translates into lower sales and lost business of hundreds of millions of dollars. Friedman is a speaker at corporate seminars in the U.S, She has been a keynote speaker at

Fortune 500 The ''Fortune'' 500 is an annual list compiled and published by ''Fortune'' magazine that ranks 500 of the largest United States corporations by total revenue for their respective fiscal years. The list includes publicly held companies, along ...

and other corporate and association meetings. Her practices were recommended by

Bear Stearns The Bear Stearns Companies, Inc. was a New York-based global investment bank, securities trading and brokerage firm that failed in 2008 as part of the global financial crisis and recession, and was subsequently sold to JPMorgan Chase. The compa ...

chairman

Alan C. Greenberg Alan Courtney "Ace" Greenberg (September 3, 1927 – July 25, 2014) was a chairman of the executive committee of Bear Stearns, The Bear Stearns Companies, Inc. Early life and education Greenberg was born in Wichita, Kansas but raised in Oklahom ...

for implementation by all employees.

Books

*''Customer Service Nightmares: 100 Tales of the Worst Experiences Possible, and how They Could Have Been Fixed'' (1998) *''Telephone Skills from A to Z: The Telephone Doctor Phone Book'' (2000) * *''Excuses, Excuses, Excuses ...'' (2001) * * *

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Friedman, Nancy Living people American women chief executives Businesspeople from Chicago Actresses from Chicago Businesspeople from St. Louis Actresses from St. Louis Actresses from San Diego Year of birth missing (living people) 21st-century American women