Every phone call has the potential to give you a sale or another ground-breaking moment in your company’s sales history. With each phone call, you veer closer to earning a recurring client, or a sale that catapults you to the top of your industry. But, what happens when you lag on your phone calls? Why do so many sales teams and call centres give delayed phone responses? Better yet, why is it important to have a telephone answering service? Read below to find out why.
Why Companies Lag Behind
Successful companies use logistics and coordination to achieve their goals. Call centres, sales companies and retail companies need a solid logistical framework to handle a heavy volume of calls. Companies often lag behind in their telephone answering services, and here is why.
Many companies sell retail products for a profit. They rely heavily on outgoing sales calls to market their products in the most compelling manner possible. With this said, it is important that your clients can reach you without delay. Consumers need the freedom to call you, and initiate a sale or inquire about a product.
So, why don’t all companies respond in a timely and punctual manner to consumer calls and inquiries?
Some companies find it difficult to accommodate the exponential growth of their business. When their company growth suddenly outweighs their capital resources, problems generally ensure. In many cases, their staff is too limited to handle these growing obligations.
As their sales volume increases, they become more inclined to missing calls. Every call a company misses equates to a lost opportunity. A lost sale may seem inconsequential. Yet, over time, these lost opportunities equate to thousands in losses over the course of a fiscal year.
Of course, companies struggle to answer consumer calls for a number of others. In some contexts, they have an ill-suited or poorly equipped staff. This, of course, can mean a number of different things. For instance, a workplace may be understaffed or fraught with anxious multitaskers forced to undertake too many duties at once. Some companies overwork their employees for budgetary purposes, expecting them to take calls and manage other tasks. It is unfeasible to make a call representative do too many things at once.
Otherwise, an employee may be poorly suited for a position because they require better software, hardware, and supplies. Do you have frequent technical malfunctions that interrupt potential sales? Many calling centres deal with these types of issues. You need the assurance that your equipment, software and hardware will function at all times, especially when you are in the process of receiving a call from a customer or potential customer.
Some companies are simply understaffed, which force some people to accommodate multiple calls at once, or to simply decline calls when there is no staff availability. If your company is understaffed, you decrease the probability to achieving sales and purchases over the phone. The larger your staff is, the more potential customers you can use to actuate your goals.
What about the opposite end of the spectrum? What if you have a high call volume during some times of the day, and low call volume other times of the day? No one wants to compensate receptionists and professional call centre operators unless the business is running smoothly.
What Happens When You Lag on Phone Calls?
What happens when a business lags on answering phone calls? Before you answer this question, ponder first how companies excel at the utmost capacity. They do so by allocating effort to each designated task within an allotted and favourable time frame. If you approach your tasks gradually and efficiently, you will never get behind.
On the opposite end of this spectrum, what happens if you don’t answer your calls on time?
Obviously, this can interrupt your operational flow. If your understaffed workplace is busy catching up on customer calls, you will miss out on other valuable duties, and this will affect the overall productivity of the environment.
Not to mention, the quality of your services will drastically decrease without the proper implementation of planning, attention and detail. When you are behind in calls, you are more eager to complete sales, rather than focus on quality.
Finally, when your calls lack patience and quality assurance, this affects your yearly revenue in one of a few ways. It strains your relationships with customers and recurring clients. It decreases the likelihood of achieving a sale and establishing a positive relationship with a consumer.
The Benefits of a Telephone Answering Service
Humans live in the age of digital technology, and many people opt for online communication. However, many people appreciate the cordiality of a simple phone call. Considering the number of online threats in this day and age, some people prefer to confirm sales over the phone. Hence, a telephone answering service assures your customers that there is a safer and more secure option than the internet available to them.
Investing in a telephone answering service alleviates many of the difficulties discussed above. It helps you regulate high call volumes, no matter what time a day it is. If you have normal business hours, you can lose out on potential sales once your business is closed. Have you ever wondered how many sales you could make during your closed business hours? With a professional call handling service, you can accrue profits, even after your formal business hours.
With this type of service, you can handle incoming calls during the peak sales hours. Furthermore, you only have to pay for the calls that you receive. This is far more cost-effective than investing in full-time call centre employees.
If you delegate your telephone duties to seasoned professional, you will radically boost your customer interactions and sales outcomes. You will also improve your productivity by, investing more time and focus on improving your business, rather than handling calls.
Usually, these types of services can be personalised to your company. Hence, you can continue to promote your company vision and goals. In conclusion, these are the benefits of a telephone answering service highlighted by Netcall Solutions .