Recently, Phoneta was headline sponsor at a Cornwall Connector event at the Penventon Park Hotel.

As part of our talk, we wanted to do something a little different.

We spend a lot of time talking to businesses about missed calls, but rather than stand up for 15 minutes and tell a room full of people why answering the phone matters, we thought we’d put it to the test.

So, ahead of the event, we called businesses on the attendee list.

There was no sales pitch and we weren’t trying to catch anyone out. We simply wanted to experience what a customer would experience when they called.

So, how did Cornwall’s businesses do?

We assessed 77 businesses in total.

33.8% answered professionally, 24.7% went through to voicemail and 19.5% didn’t answer. A further 5.2% didn’t have a telephone number available.

And 7.8% were already Phoneta customers, so naturally we’re claiming those as a win. 😉

Overall, more than 44% of the businesses we called didn’t connect us with a real person.

Now, that doesn’t mean 44% of those businesses are doing anything wrong.

People have meetings. They’re out visiting customers. They’re driving. They’re on another call. Small business owners in particular are often doing five jobs at once.

That’s actually the point.

What happens to the phone while you’re busy growing the business?

The timing of our little experiment felt particularly relevant at a networking event.

There we all were, taking time away from our businesses to meet people, build relationships and hopefully create new opportunities.

But while you’re in that room having a great conversation with a potential new customer, your business hasn’t stopped.

Someone else could be trying to contact you.

And they don’t know you’re networking at Penventon Park. They just know whether somebody answers the phone.

Of course, a missed call doesn’t automatically mean a lost customer. Plenty of people leave messages or wait for a callback.

But some won’t.

If they’re looking for a service and have three businesses to call, there’s always a chance they’ll simply try the next number.

The difficult thing is that you’ll probably never know.

That’s exactly why Phoneta exists

We’re not here because we think business owners should be answering their phones every second of the day.

Quite the opposite.

You should be able to sit in a meeting without watching your phone.

Go to a networking event without disappearing into the corridor every ten minutes.

Take a holiday.

Concentrate on the customer standing in front of you.

Or just eat your lunch while it’s still vaguely warm.

When you can’t answer, our team can.

Phoneta’s call agents answer in your business name and become an extension of your team. We can take messages, deal with enquiries, manage appointments and provide overflow or out-of-hours support depending on what your business needs.

You get to carry on with what you’re doing, while your caller gets a real person at the end of the phone.

Try calling your own business

One useful thing came out of doing this exercise that any business can try.

Call yourself.

Not from your desk phone or the mobile number everyone recognises. Use another number and see what happens.

What does the greeting sound like? How long does it ring? What happens if nobody is available? Does the voicemail still have someone’s Christmas opening hours on it in August?

It’s a very simple way of experiencing your business from a customer’s point of view.

We kept all of the individual results from our Cornwall Connector experiment anonymous. The purpose wasn’t to name and shame anyone.

It was simply a reminder that we put an enormous amount of effort into getting customers to contact our businesses.

It’s worth making sure someone is there when they do.