Who Is Answering Your Phone? Don’t Lose Potential Customers To Voicemail

I have this opinion that communicating with your customers is paramount to a successful business. We are taught from an early age that customer service is important. So, is customer service a cost of business or a cost of sales? The accountants would have us believe that it is a fixed cost to a business on the Profit and Loss Statement. The same can be said of the cost of a receptionist. All this of course is related to how many calls this individual handles in the run of a day. In many businesses the reception person is also a person Friday. Filing, stuffing envelopes and perhaps some book-keeping duties. All these functions are a cost of business.

Let’s look at this from another angle for a moment. The receptionist is the first point of contact when a potential or existing customer calls your business. Now we are approaching the question. Is this person a cost of sales? My answer is you bet. Can this person help you convert a new phone call to a new customer. You bet.

What any good business needs to do is figure out what is costs to get a new customer. This is the amount you pay for advertising and marketing. Also add in salaries for outside and inside sales staff along the expenses such as travel related to those people. This starts to become a pretty big number. The next exercise to go through is how many prospects or potential customers do you or your staff need to communicate with to close a sale. You now have the cost per contact or interview of a potential customer. I expect this cost is in the hundreds of dollars per customer. I ask again. Why do so many businesses continue to use voicemail or an automated phone attendant knowing that 80 % of first time callers to their business hang up and move on to call your competitor.

There are several options depending on the size and the make up of your business. If your business is big enough to have a full time reception person go for it. Train that individual on how best to handle product inquires prior to patching the call to the appropriate individual. If your company is not big enough for a full time person there are a number of ways to go that may surprise you how cost effective they are. My suggestion if you are going to keep it internal is have the order desk or customer service department become your reception. If you’re a small and growing business I expect that many of your calls are going to voicemail. I also expect you have no idea how many hang-ups you are getting. It is very important you know these numbers.

The following is a suggestion that is extremely cost-effective and puts a human voice to the phone call. Yes, consider employing a call centre to do your phone reception. The buzz words are Remote Reception or Virtual Office Reception. The caller never knows. A point of caution is many call centers have different levels of technology when it comes to call handling. The level of detail stored on the server regarding your company is critical. The other important part when hiring a remote reception company is do they have enough phone horse power to handle multiple calls inbound and
outbound. Keep in mind the call centre now becomes the phone switch. The operator may have hung up when the call was put through but the call is still running through the call centers phone system. Remote Reception is a fantastic idea for regional companies that may have three or four employees in each of multiple locations. Remote Reception can be the receptionist for all offices. Very Slick.

Essentially how remote reception works is that your main office line is forwarded to the remote reception centre. The telephone line is routed through a server which identifies who the call is for and that information pops on the operator/agents screen. The phone is answered as if they are sitting inside your front door. Beautiful. Now if your call centre supplier has provided you with good communication planning on your company details they should have the names telephone numbers(with local) and the department of all your employees in the system. The call centre reception agent just puts the call through once the person or department can be identified. No need to take messages as the individual will answer the phone or go to their voicemail. Now it should be said that people will leave a voice
message if they know the individual they are calling as there is an expectation the call will be returned. The time to patch a call is between 16 and 20 seconds. Depending on the level of call screening a good call centre can also filter the call to be delivered to a correct department. Keep in mind call centers are about communicating with your customers.

The benefits to employing a Call/Remote Reception Centre are numerous.

1. Calls are always answered by a human

2. All the calls are voice recorded in the event of a misunderstanding.