The next best sound, besides that of enthralling music, is the sound of your sales and marketing phone ringing. Every business depends on sales for growth. If the phones in your sales department are not ringing, chances are that very few people are interested in your products or service.
However, growing businesses depend largely on an effective sales team. This team is a company’s direct link with potential clients. How they handle telephone inquiries determines whether a sale will be closed or not. Rather than leave such an important task to the frailties of your over-tasked staff, you might want to consider outsourcing the answering service to people with top-notch skills in customer care. Besides, hiring an answering service removes the pressure off your staff and leaves them to concentrate on other core tasks.
If your business is experiencing any of the following symptoms, you need an answering service, fast.
1. Declining Productivity
If all your team does is to answer calls every day, they are shirking on other core tasks. It is almost impossible to focus on major projects that require maximum concentration with the phone ringing off the hook. Your staff’s productivity is therefore severely affected. An answering service can prevent this from happening since it frees them from having to answer calls and allows them to focus on the most crucial tasks.
2. Lost Time
Lost time means lost productivity. An independent answering service ensures that all inquiries are responded to on time. It also frees up your staff to concentrate on other important tasks. An answering service results in efficient delivery of services, which frees up your time, and that of your staff, to concentrate on key tasks.
3. Customer Complaints
The customer is always right, even when they are wrong. However, when a customer complains about your product or service, there is a high likelihood that someone is dropping the ball along the communication chain. If customers complain about poor handling by your staff or if they are not satisfied with how their inquiries are being handled, this is the time to look for an answering service. A poor call answering service is an indication of a poorly run business. Most potential clients will avoid such a business.
4. Callers Using Voicemail Rather Than Calling a Live Person
The purpose of having a voicemail service is to capture inquiries whenever the phone is unmanned. However, customers using voicemail are unsure if or when their calls will be returned, especially if their inquiry is urgent. Having an answering service with a live courteous operator on the other end ensures that your customers’ inquiries are courteously and expeditiously attended to.
5. Too Many Urgent Calls Requiring Your On-Call Staff’s Attention
Most of the urgent calls that your on-call staff attend to are not urgent. If you assign a team to answer after-hours calls, you do not want them to lose their sleep over calls that are not urgent. To address this situation, consider having an answering call service that reroutes important calls to relevant departments for urgent action while assigning other not-so-urgent calls to the next day.
If you are spending inordinate amounts of time answering calls, your business is most likely hurting. At the same time, if your call volume is such that your staff spends most of their time separating the important from the unimportant, your business’s productivity will suffer. Having an answering service ensures that no important calls slip through unnoticed while at the same time freeing up your staff to concentrate on other crucial tasks.
Proper calls handling is key to the success of your business. Having a professional call centre to handle this key aspect of your operations is perhaps the most important decision you can make.
