A call answering service could help your business to grow and generate more income. The Financial Times released an article that discussed the role of human-led contact centres for businesses. The article has since been widely shared and discussed online, with many lamenting the loss of human contact and the increasing move towards removing phone numbers from websites so that customers have little or no way to contact the business.
LinkedIn News shared the article and started a poll amongst users asking how they would like to contact businesses, including options such as chatbots, human phone calls, emails and forms. The resounding preference was a phone call with a human, with over 75% of responses choosing this option. This may surprise you, considering the increasing use of chatbots and automated call responses, and it is true these options can be cheaper than call answering services. So, the question remains, is having a call answering service worth it?
Creating value from disgruntled customers
At Phoneta, we believe that human contact is important for businesses. But the key is getting that contact right and ensuring it supports a business-wide ethos of good customer service.
It is not uncommon in times of economic concern for businesses to cut costs by reducing their customer support, whether this means reducing in-house customer service staff or by changing their customer service centre practices. This is often because businesses see customer service centres as a business cost rather than a value generator. But if customer services are managed correctly, they can be a powerful value generator for businesses, particularly small–medium businesses.
If you contact a business because you have a questions or concerns about a purchase, the experience you receive can have a profound effect on your opinion of that business. Customers are also highly likely to share their experience with others, whether it is positive or negative. So having a customer service centre that leaves customers feeling good can be an ideal way to turn disgruntled customers into brand advocates.
Making things easier for your call answering team
If you make it hard for customers to contact you, it is unlikely customers will just give up. They are far more likely to get mad, and when they do figure out how to contact you, they are going to take it out on your call answering team. But if you make contacting the business easy, customers are less likely to be irate by the time they reach a real human and if there are proper processes in place there is a good chance the call answering team can turn that customer from grumpy to appreciative.
Dealing with irate customers is a skill in its own right, and relying on your operational employees to deal with these customers can lead to stress and upset on both sides. Employees who work in your business in operational roles may not have the skills required to effectively manage customer queries on the phone. This also takes them away from their normal tasks and if they have to stop in the middle of a task, they may not be in the best position to handle an upset customer.
By outsourcing your call answering to a dedicated team, you can take the pressure off your operational employees and improve customer services by having experienced teams answering calls and managing customers effectively. And let’s not forget the fielding of nuisance calls that can be filtered out by using our call answering service. All of this means your most valuable assets, your employees, are not being lumbered with distracting customer calls. Meanwhile, your customers benefit from an improved service and feeling of satisfaction.
How can using an outsourced call answering service gain you more customers
Using an outsourced call answering service also allows you to extend your opening hours for customer services queries. This is particularly useful if you are a B2C business whose customers may not be able to contact you during the working day or even in the working week. At Phoneta, we can work with you to design a call answering package that works for you, whether this means only covering out-of-hours calls, or covering calls 24/7, or something in between. Our industry experience allows us to recommend best practices and suggest the best solutions for your business and its customers.
One of the worst parts about calling a business can be waiting on hold or to be connected. You may have no idea how long you have to wait, and you may have to hang up before you can even speak to a person. But by using our dedicated call answering service, we can ensure your customers calls are always answered in a prompt fashion.
In a world where being able to contact a business via phone quickly is becoming increasingly rare, using a call answering service can be seen as a competitive advantage. Our team can help you leverage good customer service as a key selling point to help you stand out from your competition.