Do you know how many calls go unanswered to your business each day?
Can you check your phone logs to see how many calls are of short duration or have a no answer status on them?
For any business looking for ways to access all of their potential and work out all of the kinks in their operation, to achieve peak performance, then call logs are the starting point. If you do not get such call logs then it is probably time to investigate a new phone service. [Adepteo Voip]
So now you have your call logs and you can see what is happening.
You can put in place a routine for staff to monitor for such calls and to arrange for a call back to be made. It creates a really good impression if you do this.
However solving the root cause of the problem is what will make your business most efficient.
Here are a few simple solutions to combat the 5 ways in which you could be holding your business back.
With a wider range of business hours being used these days, as well as more business being conducted on a global scale, it can only help you to be clear about what your business hours are.
If you receive calls when you are closed, the first thing to consider is whether they can wait till the following business day?
If they can, then pass the caller to a voicemail system with a recorded message explaining your business hours and asking for a phone number and suitable times to call them back.
If the call is more urgent then you could forward it to an outside answering service or you could use an automated forwarding system. This can be done using a simple menu system which would allow the caller to decide and choose the appropriate option.
This is one of the worst ways to miss a call. It gives the impression that you don’t care about callers.
A way to avoid unanswered calls could include routing calls efficiently; having a second tier of staff to handle calls at busy times or implementing a queueing system in the worst of cases.
If you only have one phone line and that line is in use then any body calling you will get an engaged tone. Sure, they may call you back, if you are lucky. The situation becomes worse if you use that line to make outgoing calls, then you are increasing the likely hood of the line being busy. If this is your situation, then you really need a solution that offers spare line capacity.
Think about it, when calling to enquire about something, if all you heard was a busy tone, how likely would you be to call back?
For busy companies it is worth implementing a call queueing system. [Adepteo VoIP Queues]
Even then it is common to get a message saying that there are very long wait times and a caller may just give up choosing to hang up rather than wait forever in a queue. You can review call logs to look for such events and put in place a process to contact those people who have not managed to get through to you.
But what if they did try calling back and have been answered? How would you know? If you just called every missed call back, this could leave you chasing callers who have already been dealt with and lead to confusion internally and a bad impression of your business externally. Not to mention being a waste of your time.
So what you are really looking for here, is a list of genuinely unanswered calls. A wall board system could be your solution, showing you all of this information on a large screen.
Wall boards can also encouraging staff performance or if preferred you could receive the information on your mobile phone so you can keep track of whether your teams are meeting their objectives.
A regular review of your requirements is always worth completing.
The ultimate black hole of despair, a voicemail that never gets checked. The caller is expecting a call back but never gets it. What kind of impression do you think this customer has of your company now? To avoid this you need to check that calls are being routed correctly; if someone leaves the company; if someone is away on vacation; their calls need to be handled in another way.
In summary - Make sure your customers are being answered!