How You Handle Calls and Treat People on the Phone Shows Shows How Much An Answering Service Cares
Over the years businesses have done some foolish things with their telephone. Pursuing a false sense of economy to save money, they’ve made some grave errors. Having a high-quality answering service might be your solution.
One is simply letting phone calls go unanswered when callers phone at an inconvenient time. Another is to subject them to a clunky answering machine that may or may not record a message. A third mistake is voicemail jail with its long list of options, endless loops, and messages that they may not return. A final error is forcing them into automated solutions that don’t really help and only serves to drive them away.
Instead, show your callers respect.
Have a real person answer the phone, take messages, and help customers around-the-clock. This makes sense because most all calls fall into one of two categories: future customers looking for a reason to become your customer and existing customers who want to stay your customer. How you answer their phone call makes all the difference, either drawing them in or pushing them away.
But how can you afford staff to answer your phone 24/7?
You can’t, but you can afford an answering service, which costs a small fraction of having a receptionist on your payroll. Here’s the benefits you can expect when you use a telephone answering service to show respect to your callers.
Answer Calls:
You’ve likely called businesses and the phone just rang and rang. No one answered, not even a machine. What do you do? After grumbling about the company, you hang up and call their competitor.
At the most basic level, an answering service answers your calls, which stops people from complaining about your lack of interest and keeps them from phoning your competitor. Your answering service is your first line of defense to protect against these two problems.
Provide a Personal Touch:
Now, with your call answered, the next issue is how it’s answered. Is it by a real person, a recording, or a machine? No one is happy to hear a recording when they call a company, and few people want to interact with a machine. After all, they can talk to a machine, but the machine can’t answer—at least not in an intelligent way.
That’s why a person is so important when it comes to phone calls. And your answering service can provide that personal touch to your callers 24/7.
Take Accurate Messages:
How many times has someone handed you a handwritten phone message that you can’t read? Or maybe the phone number only has six digits. Perhaps they forgot the name of the caller. That makes it hard to call someone back.
Answering service staff are trained to take complete and accurate messages. It’s what they do. And to help make sure they don’t miss a thing, their computer prompts them to get the precise information that you want them to get. In addition, they enter your messages into a database, so the days of sloppy handwriting are over.
Give Useful Information:
When you call a business looking for information, you don’t want to leave a message and wait for someone to call back. You want help right away. That’s why you picked up the phone in the first place. And if they can’t help you, you’ll call someone who can.
Though answering services are known for taking messages, they can also give out information. Think of this as a verbal FAQ on steroids. Let your answering service know answers to questions people often ask when they call. Also provide your answering service with a resource to look up answers to more complex issues. They’ll handle these information request calls for you and save you the trouble from calling someone back.
Conclusion:
Businesses show respect to their customers by how they answer their phone calls. If you answer haphazardly, force callers into solutions they don’t want, or fail to follow through, you’ll anger prospects and customers, driving them to your competition.
However, answer calls with a personal touch, take accurate messages, and provide useful information to endear customers to you and provide them with the respect they deserve. And hiring an answering service is the best way to make this happen.
With offices across the United States and decades of experience, outsource answering service from Endicott Communications can help enhance your communication with your customers and callers. Click here to learn more.