Who Is Answering Your Phone? Don't Lose Potential Customers To Voicemail Article Source

I have this opinion that communicating with your customers is paramount to a successful business. We are taught from an early age that customer service is important. So, is customer service a cost of business or a cost of sales?The accountants would have us believe that it is a fixed cost to a business on the Profit and Loss Statement. The same can be said of the cost of a receptionist. All this of course is related to how many calls this individual handles in the run of a day. In many businesses the reception person is also a person Friday. Filing, stuffing envelopes and perhaps some book-keeping duties. All these functions are a cost of business.

Let's look at this from another angle for a moment. The receptionist is the first point of contact when a potential or existing customer calls your business. Now we are approaching the question. Is this person a cost of sales? My answer is you bet. Can this person help you convert a new phone call to a new customer. You bet.

What any good business needs to do is figure out what is costs to get a new customer. This is the amount you pay for advertising and marketing. Also add in salaries for outside and inside sales staff along the expenses such as travel related to those people. This starts to become a pretty big number. The next exercise to go through is how many prospects or potential customers do you or your staff need to communicate with to close a sale. You now have the cost per contact or interview of a potential customer. I expect this cost is in the hundreds of dollars per customer. I ask again. Why do so many businesses continue to use voicemail or an automated phone attendant knowing that 80 % of first time callers to their business hang up and move on to call your competitor.

There are several options depending on the size and the make up of your business. If your business is big enough to have a full time reception person go for it. Train that individual on how best to handle product inquires prior to patching the call to the appropriate individual. If your company is not big enough for a full time person there are a number of ways to go that may surprise you how cost effective they are. My suggestion if you are going to keep it internal is have the order desk or customer service department become your reception. If you're a small and growing business I expect that many of your calls are going to voicemail. You have no idea how many hang-ups you are getting. More than you would want to know. But should know.

The following is a suggestion that is extremely cost-effective and puts a human voice and face to the phone call. Yes, consider employing a call centre to do your phone reception. The buzz words are Remote Reception or Virtual Office Reception. The caller never knows. A point of caution is many call centers have different levels of technology when it comes to call handling. The level of detail stored on the server regarding your company is critical. The other important part when hiring a remote reception company is do they have enough phone horse power to handle multiple calls inbound and outbound. Keep in mind the call centre now becomes the phone switch. The operator may have hung up when the call was put through but the call is still running through the call centers phone system. Remote Reception is a fantastic idea for regional companies that may have three or four employees in each of multiple locations. Remote Reception can be the receptionist for all offices. Very Slick.

Essentially how remote reception works is that your main office line is forwarded to the remote reception centre. The telephone line is routed through a server which identifies who the call is for and that information pops on the operator/agents screen. The phone is answered as if they are sitting inside your front door. Beautiful. Now if your call centre supplier has provided you with good communication planning on your company details they should have the names telephone numbers(with local) and the department of all your employees in the system. The call centre reception agent just puts the call through once the person or department can be identified. No need to take messages as the individual will answer the phone or go to their voicemail. Now it should be said that people will leave a voice message if they know the individual they are calling as there is an expectation the call will be returned. The time to patch a call is between 16 and 20 seconds. That fast. Depending on the level of call screening a good call centre can also filter the call to be delivered to a correct department. Keep in mind call centers are about communicating with your customers. Not from over seas where an accent can be detected but home grown right here in the US or Canada.

So the benefits to employing a Call/Remote Reception Centre are numerous.

1. Calls are always answered by a human
2. All the calls are voice recorded in the event of a misunderstanding.
3. The call centre never calls in sick.
4. You do not have to pay benefits to the call centre.
5. You only have to pay the call centre when they actually do work for you.(now there is an idea)
6. You receive a call activity report of all inbound calls( identify where the calls are going)
7. Your front end staff gets to be productive in what they were hired to do instead of playing reception.
8. You will have the ability to handle increased call volume during busy periods.

If you have done the math and know the costs associated with capturing a new customer you will be surprised at the new business that comes your way once a human starts to answer the phone. The silver lining is that your existing customers will also be treated to a human on the line. You can also expect existing customers sales volume is likely to grow as well. We North Americans are so programmed to do the job as cheap as possible that we miss the fact our customers want to talk to a human. The benefits of such turns to increase revenues. How good is that.

Paul is the Director of Sales and Marketing for a Canadian Call Centre Based in Halifax Nova Scotia. Answer365 answers phones for customers throughout the United States and Canada. Answer365 is an award winning company earned by review of an independent panel. The criteria is based on their level of call accuracy and customer wow factor. You can learn more about Paul and Answer365 at their website http://www.answer365.ca

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Success Related to Money Income Goals, Are Your Projections Realistic?

So you have been writing down goals and trying to come to grip with what your income will be. What path do I take toward my future success. Like most I expect you want it to make more money than you are currently making. So how do we get there? What is a reasonable growth projection? If you are a salaried employee one looks for part time work or running a home based business on the side. These types of activity have the greatest bottom line impact as most of your current expenses are fixed. If you are in commission sales you likely have money goals that usually breaks down into the number of units or programs you sell. If you are a business owner the task becomes more complicated. You have to pay your expenses before you pay yourself. Forget the notion that is a business expense and it is tax deductible. You can only pay your bills with money that you have in the bank. Cash is king. Deductible or otherwise.

The success master in my opinion is Jack Canfield. In his book the "Success Principals" he spends a great amount of time discussing your relationship to money. "Develop A Positive Money Consciousness". In this book he devotes several chapters to money and there is a recipe to obtaining wealth. Like all things in life, it will take some time. What you do have, is control of the rate of that growth. Know where you are now. Know where you want to be next year and know what it will take to live your dream life. Once you know the income that is required to be where you want to be next year you can set out with your plan. It's key not to do a pie in the sky approach for next week. Save the pie in the sky for later. That's not to say don't write it down. Just understand there will be fair bit of space between now and then. Success is more likely and far more enjoyable when you are having fun.

You have to start with measurable numbers that work. For example if you are selling 8 cars a month you will need to know what the average commission per vehicle is. Then you calculate how many additional units you need to sell to get to your target income. In my opinion there are really only three main ways to do this. The first being by picking up the phone and start doing warm and cold calls inviting folks to come to see you for their next vehicle purchase. You generate more opportunities rather than waiting for potential customers to come in the door. You need to measure the success of these calls as this will help you determine what is required to gain one additional sale. Secondly is to enhance your sales skills so you can have a better closing ratio. The third way is to do both. Imagine a 25 percent increase in income. Well it's taking 8 units a month to 10 units a month. Bingo. You now have your number. Success is in knowing the activity you need to obtain success. Make sure its measurable.

If you're in business you will need to come up with some sales projections. Your bank and shareholders will want to know your plan. This is once again going to be difficult to measure. For example in retail you are subject to picking the right products and most importantly retaining your existing customers so your base does not erode. These choices become a balancing act. Remember this. It's easier to keep an existing customer happy than it is to get a new one. You have to ensure that the promotions you are offering to attract new customers is not a better deal than your existing customers are currently paying. So how do you do this. One area to grow your business through what is called organic growth. Increasing the average sales to your existing customers makes good economic sense. It is also the most cost effective way to grow our business. This increase in sales can be found through introducing new product offerings and obtaining more of your existing customers business they may be purchasing from your competitors. This type of growth is the most controllable and affordable way to grow your business. In your plan for new customers you need to figure out what it costs to obtain a new customer. What are you paying your outside sales staff. Advertising and promotional costs. You need to know if you have the available funds to start such a campaign. In a nut shell you need to put a number on the average increase in sales to your existing customers and how many new customers will you realistically bring in. You now have your number. The key to your success will be how you implement and carry out this plan. It's not easy to be an entrepreneur because there are so many variables. Go forward with a good plan and be ready to adjust the plan as you move along. You need that goal or target to focus on. Just make sure the number is well thought out.

Fast and rapid growth can be followed by equally fast decline as these types of sales growth are usually found at the leading edge of a new technology or sales created from new fad products. These periods of fast sales growth also attracts competitors and makes you the hunted. Growing your business based on sound values and solid projections will add balance to your life and balance to your bottom line.