Most small business owners face the challenge of deciding when to start letting go of certain tasks to enable their business to reach its potential. When the business is in its infancy you will be protective of your ‘baby’ and feel that you need to do everything for it. However, your business stands a greater chance of becoming a larger, more profitable enterprise by benefitting from the skills and experience of other people.
Letting go of answering your telephone calls can bring huge benefits to a growing business so it’s important that your customers recognise is at a positive change rather than a negative one. Remember that your customers may have got used to speaking with you in person, so what happens when, unexpectedly, there is a new voice on the phone asking them to spell their name?
Unsurprisingly, the customer can be put out by this. Thoughts like ‘why don’t you want to speak to me anymore?’ and ‘I don’t want to feel like just another customer – I want to feel valued’ could start to crop up. Negative moments of truth like this may lead to your valued customer feeling undervalued.
To overcome this there are a number of things you can do to help your customers appreciate why you are using a telephone answering service:
1 – Telling them beforehand – You may want to directly communicate to your customers the positive change you are making by outsourcing your calls. If they can see you are making improvements to your business through a desire to be more successful they should understand and share in the benefits the telephone answering service will bring.
2 – Telling them at the start of each call – Many of our customers choose to have their calls answered with their company name followed by “answering service” or “out-of-hours helpline” to let the caller know that they are not speaking directly with the business. This helps the caller to understand that, although they may not be able to speak directly with the person they require, their needs will still be addressed.
3 – Telling them during the call – Managing the expectations of the caller is something your telephone answering service can do on your behalf. If during a call something crops up that can’t be answered or resolved the call handler can advise the caller they are working on your behalf of your business.
If you use a different technique why not share it here?
By Steve West
Marketing & Business Development Manager
I have actually been wondering what is the best way to do this. Reading the Office Response blog, I find that the second idea – telling them at the start of each call – is great!
I’ve found that the caller always seems reassured by a solution like option 2. It’s a non-intrusive and subtle way of making the caller feel valued and reassured. The company has put an out of hours provision in place because their call is valued. It also manages the callers expectation because they are receiving the same service as they would within office hours but they realise that you’re not personally available 24/7. Definitely a good option!
In past roles I encountered this with our clients. Very common amongst nervous SME start ups that want to portray a ‘big front’, but personally I found it both time wasting and annoying – I knew each time I had to call them I’d go through the same “let me just see if he/she is available”……..”sorry, they’re not in – can I take a message”
And I’m ALL about personality coming through in my business so I’d have to say get rid of them and speak to your customers!
Karl, I am drawn to your notes as it looks like your clients haven’t considered the points highlighted in the blog leaving you frustrated at the ‘annoying’ way their calls were handled.
But is doesn’t have to be this way. If your clients used one of the techniques above, or considered a less ‘scripted’ approach to the way their calls were answered, would you be more understanding of what they were trying to achieve?
I notice that your business is in the creative sector where the relationship with your customers is usually very close and communicative. We successfully manage calls for a number of creative agencies and have learned that a more personal approach to call handling needs to be used. For them, it has meant the worry of missing calls (and managing the caller experience) has disappeared leaving them to focus on growing their business.
Ironically, I have just chosen a new web development company to work with us and spent some time last month contacting recommended businesses. Out of the 16 called I only managed to get through to 5 on the first phone call and 2 of these used an answering service. The rest relied on voicemail or the phone just rang off.
I agree that its best to speak to your customers in person – however, if you cant get to the phone is it a good idea to have a contingency?
Owner Managers most often build their business through their own personal contacts and relationships – and ‘people do buy from people’ in the end, even if ‘organisations nominally buy from organisations’.
However, Owner Mangers must delegate, or their business will never grow.
My suggestion? If you use a telephone answering service, manage it very tightly, choose and brief their people assiduously, and seek continuous feedback from your core contacts…
From my experience of handling such calls, if the call is answered as “you have come through to the answering service / messaging service for xxxx”, it does make the call easier to handle. The caller’s expectations of what you are able to do for them and what questions you are able to answer are set from the start of the call.
A good idea is to have a response if the caller asks why they haven’t gone through to the main office such as “overflow calls come to us if the lines are engaged but your message will be sent straight away”.
Small businesses advising customer they are using an answering service is a a positive move – I think it gives the impression that they are confident, growing, and would rather not miss their calls. As a caller, I would also prefer to speak to a person rather than an answer machine!!
An answering service will only be equipped with the information the customer provides. Call handlers are not going to know everything about the company they are representing so its important they have ways of dealing with awkward calls, particularly if the caller thinks they are speaking directly with your business.
If the caller understands they are through to the answering service for the business, and that their enquiry can be answered by way of a call back, they are usually more than happy to leave their details.
For those that want to ease their workload, and still want to speak directly with key customers, a separate number can be provided to call i.e personal mobile phone – this way everyone is happy.
Using an answering services is a sign that your business is focused on growing and the need for delegation has become paramount.
A very good article for anyone contemplating outsourcing their answering service. Most people will welcome being told of such a development and will offer congrats as they recognise what has to happen when you grow. The real key is to search for the service that truly represents you and who will uphold your values when dealing with your companies most precious assets….. clients and customers!!
This is actually a positive move in that, clients will know and understand that the company are busy and moving up to the next level which can only be a good thing.
Outsourcing is the best way to move forward on a limited company budget, in that only paying for a service as one needs it, is always going to be cheaper than having full time employees.
Two things:
1 Honesty is the best policy
2 Successful client relationships (in fact any relationships) are built on trust and expectation.
I’d be upfront and ask for feedback then your clients know what is happening and know their interests are your interests.
There are two schools of thought on this and it really depends on your service and clients. Either you would like your clients to believe that you have a full office support behind you, in which case you will ask your call handling service to ensure that they act in a manner that is part of your extended office. Or that you are quite happy for your clients to know that their calls are being handled by a third party knowing that the information they give will be sent directly to your phone for immediate response.
In either case you should check that the people handling the calls are experienced with clients and have a setup to follow multiple instructions and services.
I recently started using an outsourced answering service and I’m very glad I did. It is well known that callers are more likely to leave a message with a human being than leave it on voice mail. Anybody that already knows me, also knows I am a one-man-band, so it is obvious that there is an answering service. For the others, there is no expectation either way.
This seems to be a hot topic!
From my experience taking calls I have come to the conclusion that the best way to keep the customer happy when they’ve been put through to an answering service is to state this at the start of the call. Some callers actually find this impressive and a number of people have expressed their praise for the company for employing such a service.
I also agree that letting customers know that the call handling for the business is being outsourced is essential as I feel it is important to make customers aware of any changes to the business that are likely to affect them.
Karl has expressed a view that he is not alone in thinking; however there are others who actually prefer speaking to a professional answering service and dislike the kind of touchy feely small business vibe. Giving your customers a choice may be the way forward.
Great topic Steve – thank you.
This is such a dilemma when you move away from taking calls yourself. I used to feel guilty if it wasn’t me or my partner answering the phone because “No one can do it like us”
I was lucky because were using a VA company to do our Admin and they luckily had a telephone answering service system that we could then buy into, so our own VA normally answers our calls.
This has given the extra advantage of her being able to answer most queries and not just taking a message.
Hi Eva,
We often hear people say “Everybody wants to speak to me” or “You won’t have the expertise to handle my calls”.
Naturally businessses want to give the best service to callers and there are some calls that only you can deal with.
If you are struggling with your calls questions to ask before outsourcing calls might be;
Is a telephone answering service better than the answerphone callers will have to deal with if I am too busy?
Or the engaged tone?
Or nobody if the call is not picked up at all?
What information does my telephone answering service need to have to deal with routine enquieries?
In respect of dealing with the guilt you’re feeling because you’re not personally dealing with every caller you may get some comfort from the extra time that you are now getting having outsourced calls. Now you should be able to give even better attention to your valuable contacts because you no longer dealing with non urgent calls like telesales calls.