The Office Response Telephone Answering Blog

Telephone Answering Tips

 The telephone is still an important point of contact with customers and the way you answer your company’s phone will form your customer’s first impression of your business. These telephone answering tips will ensure that callers know they’re dealing with a winning business – of course, if you dont want to do it yourself Office Response can handle all your calls for you:

 1) Answer all incoming phone calls as quickly as possible – this shows whoever is calling you that you value their call.

2) When you answer the phone be warm and enthusiastic. Your voice at the end of the telephone line is sometimes the only impression of your company a caller will get.

3) When answering the phone,welcome callers courteously and identify yourself and your organization. Say, for instance, “Good morning. ABC Construction’, Andrew speaking, How may I help you?” No one should ever have to ask if they’ve reached such and such a business.

4) Talk clearly, keep your voice volume moderate, and speak slowly and clearly when answering the phone, so your caller can understand you easily.

5) Control your language. Don’t use slang or jargon. Instead of saying, “OK”, or “No problem”, for instance, say “Certainly”, “Very well”, or “All right”. If you’re a person who uses fillers (known as vias) when you speak, such as “uh huh”, “um”, or phrases such as “like” or “you know”, train yourself carefully not to use these when you speak on the phone.

 6) Train your voice and vocabulary to be positive when phone answering, even on a “down” day. For example, rather than saying, “I don’t know”, say, “Let me find out about that for you.”

7) Take telephone messages completely and accurately. If there’s something you don’t understand or can’t spell, such as a person’s surname, ask the caller to repeat it or spell it for you. Then make sure the message gets to the intended recipient.

 8) Always ask the caller if it’s all right to put her on hold when answering the phone and don’t leave people on hold. Provide callers on hold with progress reports as the call progresses. Offer them choices if possible, such as “That line is still busy. Will you continue to hold or should I have ________ call you back?”

9) Train everyone else who answers the phone to answer the same way, including other family members if you’re running a home-based business. Check on how your business’s phone is being answered by calling in and seeing if the phone is being answered in a professional manner. If they don’t pass the test, go over this telephone answering tips list with them.

How to handle Call Centre Overflow calls.

Introduction

Whilst our marketing team spend many hours hunting for organisations that are struggling to handle their calls the most effective way to deal with inbound call traffic peaks can often be to treat the causes and not just the symptoms. 

Here’s some solutions that may help you to take the “axe out of your head” and there’s also some ideas to dull the pain whilst the wound heals.

Why are people calling you?

When you map the reason that most people are calling you certain patterns appear. Callers always either ask to speak to somebody or they ask about “something”. What are the “somethings”? Can you group them as predictable “call types”?

Now you know why they’re calling can you help without talking to them?

If the caller can’t get an answer to their issue they’ll keep calling. And calling. And calling…….

Can you reduce the number of repeat callers by assisting them in ways other than a “one to one” telephone conversation?

 Interactive Voice Response (IVR)

If you know the most common “call types” can you use Interactive Voice Response (IVR) before the call is presented to an agent to deal with the callers reason for calling? My bank, HSBC, do this very well. Call their customer service number and a number of options are offered to reduce the calls going to their call centres, press 1 to obtain your balance etc.

IVR can also be used to give callers updates about ongoing and known issues. A broken lift in a residential apartment block can be reported many times whilst an up to date announcement on an IVR about the incident’s status can be a sensible option.

Can you do anything to reduce the call volumes?

Look at ways to reduce the variability and unpredictability of the demands made on you to answer calls. Some of the solutions to this are not just  to be found within the contact centre management team but will involve other departments.

Simple solutions like controlling how you do promotions and marketing for example. We helped a passenger transport authority to handle a tidal wave of calls that they created by sending out 2 million letters in one go about renewing bus passes. If only the letters has gone out in stages. 

Mail order companies who’s customer service departments are being swamped with calls tend to look at customer self help options to reduce call volumes. Putting information inside orders about returns policies and how to deal with faulty products reduces calls? Another mail order client of ours reduced calls by spending money on upgrading the packaging the used. Less damaged products equaled less calls. And happier customers too.

Can you give more information via your website, via email or via text messages to mobile phones?

What days of the week are busiest?

 If you deal with the public and choose to close your call centre on weekends then is Monday a particularly busy day? Or Friday?

 Closing on Saturdays and Sundays can build up demand to deal with customer service issues leading to manic Mondays. Another shameless plug here but if you don’t have the call volumes to justify opening over the weekend an outsourcer could do it for you in a more cost effective way. You’d find that you’d get reduced call volumes during the work week which you may find easier to deal with.

 Call Back “systems” to even the workload over the day.

 Setting up  some sort of call back system to allow callers to leave a message and to be called back later rather than sit in a queue or repeatedly call back can help you to even out your workflow. If you are overrun with calls early in the morning but have quiet periods after lunch then you can get back to people then.

Their are a number of automated call back systems on the market or you could send these calls to an outsourcer. If your outsourcer cannot fully deal with the caller’s issue then at the very least they can gather information to allow you to prioritise the calls you want to deal with first. There’s efficiencies to be had in prioritisation.

This spreads out the demand and it gives you some control over it too – so is a pretty good solution.

What times of the days are you struggling with calls?

 We spend hours pouring over our call handling performance data looking at individual 15 minute slots. It’s very revealing and we’d advise anybody missing calls to do the same exercise.

 Call centre managers don’t need to be mathematical geniuses to know that larger teams of agents are more efficient at call handling. 10 agents will handle many more than twice as many calls in the same period as 5 agents. What this means is that you are more likely to be missing a greater % of calls during your quieter times, when you have less staff in the office, than you are during the busiest periods. The evenings and early mornings are especially vulnerable. This is where outsourcing can give you extra call handling capacity in a more cost effective way than scheduling extra people to man your own centre.

 Look at your call forecasts

 The science of figuring out just the right number and mix of agents to provide adequate service levels without incurring unnecessary personnel costs is crucial yet complicated. It takes sophisticated forecasting tools even to begin to manage such uncertainty, but computer science and new workforce management tools are up to the challenge. 

 We have call data going back to 1999 to call on and we use Q-Max workforce management tools to assist with call forecasting and staff planning.

 Can the calls be handled elsewhere?

 Moving the calls elsewhere – whether that is an automated or human service, whether it is in-house/outsourced/hosted can handle immediate peaks without losing the call.

 But you need to ask yourself some questions;

Does it actually deliver the service your require?

Does it result in the same level of first call resolution?

Does it essentially just postpone the problem? (by the caller calling back later..)

 If you are considering the outsourced option we would suggest that you work with your outsourcer prior to going live to script as many call  types as possible to offer first call resolution. The goal is to be more than a “talking answerphone” that will simply store up the problem for you to deal with later.

 Webchat

 Web Chat offers you the ability to handle 3 customer enquiries via human resources in the same time it takes to get through one call. This might be a magic solution to handle more customer interactions without increasing your resources.

 Can you change the way you work and answer more calls internally?

 Can you train non call handling staff with the skills needed to answer calls and to step in when “all hands are needed on deck”?

This is particularly useful if your peaks are concentrated into short time slots.

Can you reduce you average call lengths to answer more calls per hour?

 By introduced new skills to better engage the customer and control the call you could achieve reductions in handling time, faster response times and a reduction in repeat calls.

 This type of investment in people can have other benefits in employee engagement and staff retention and get the gains you need right across the day not just at the peak.

 CONCLUSION

 After working through all of my suggestions (and I dare say some of your own that I’ve not mentioned) and you still got overflow calls then unfortunately there is no magic formula – if you have X of calls being presented then you have to have X of resources to handle it.

by

Martin Blain

Sales Director

Small Business Owners – Should you tell your customers that you use a telephone answering service?

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

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Freephone numbers? Good or bad for business?

“Freephone numbers increase the response to adverts”

Right? Or Wrong?

It seems like the majority of the marketing departments of our great UK companies think that they do. When I look in my Yellow Pages, and turn to insurance or banking, there’s an avalanche of 0800 numbers. They are all over the place. But have all these so called ‘expert marketeers’ got it wrong? I think they might.

My daughter’s 21, bright as a button, wonderful personality (just like her Dad) and studying at Leeds University.  And I would imagine that she’s exactly the type of customer the giant insurers and bankers want to get hold of. If they take a long term view then all of these financial service companies can make a fortune out of her with all of their fancy mortgages and must have insurance policies.

Now she’s not got a landline, in fact I can imagine in her lifetime she’ll never get one, even my 78 year old father is questioning why he’s got one.

So how much does it cost her to call one of these “freephone” numbers? 20p a minute that’s how much. Not free but two quid for 10 minutes.

She can feed herself for a day for about the same money as it costs her to have a 15 minute chat with one of your sales staff.

According to Ofcom, 2010 could be the year that more calls are made on mobiles than from landlines. So if you want my daughter to call you and not your competitors advertise both the freephone number (after all, if the caller’s using a landline the call’s free and that’s got to be good for business) and a geographic number because these are cheaper to call from a mobile than 08 numbers.

We’ll be going through the Office Response website to make sure that we’re not penalising mobile users but if you need to call a freephone with your mobile this service claims to save you money http://bit.ly/TtDwK

by Martin Blain

Sales Director

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A Telemarketer’s View of Gatekeepers…

Martin Blain, Sales Director of Office Response, recently posted a great blog item here and invited me to respond from a telemarketer’s perspective to give a view from “both sides of the fence”.

In our business, it’s fair to say that one of the biggest challenges is reaching the senior decision makers we need to engage with for our clients. They are usually jealously protected by “gatekeepers” who understandably won’t put through calls that they think might be a waste of time. We carefully choose who we call to make sure that our client’s solutions are being pitched to contacts who are really going to benefit, but there is a real skill in persuading receptionists, PA’s and switchboard operators that you’re worth connecting to a busy senior manger or director.

Unscrupulous and unethical telemarketers will try all kinds of “dirty tricks” to get through, causing real damage to the brand they are calling for. The worst example I’ve personally experienced was a call that was put through to me by someone claiming to be “from the police”, only for me to discover it was a telemarketing call once they got through. Given my profession, I’m especially inclined to take telemarketing calls, but his approach was little short of disgraceful and the feedback I gave him was pretty “direct”.

It goes without saying that we wouldn’t dream of doing anything underhand like this, or our hard won reputation would quickly be in tatters, but we surveyed some of our agents to get their perspective….

What is the best way to persuade a gatekeeper to put you through to a senior decision maker?

“Always be polite and stay calm”

“Using the correct name and job title for the decision maker is really important”

“Be friendly, open and co-operative and try to build a relationship without being smarmy, this usually means you’ll be put through on a second or third call”

“Be direct and up front with a clear purpose, giving enough information up front to give the decision maker a fair idea of what the call is going to be about”

“Be professional and polite – ask for the named contact and try to speak to them conversationally, it’s easy to sound “scripted” when you are calling all day, even though we’re not…”

What are PA’s, receptionists and other gatekeepers usually like?

“Very helpful if you mind your p’s and q’s”

“Some are very helpful indeed, especially high level PA’s”

“It’s 50/50 – about half are really willing and happy to help, provide names and check diary availability”

“Most are actually OK, but it’s the really awkward ones we remember. Some are actually very apologetic about not being able to put you through”

What are the toughest gatekeepers like?

“Difficult – the toughest won’t give you any time at all to explain what the call is about.”

“Stern, short in their responses and sometimes impolite; they will always pick up on the weakest point in your explanation and positioning”

“Horrible….”

How do Gatekeepers typically respond when they understand that you are making a telemarketing call?

“Most are positive – generally a good introduction earns a good response”

“Some will block the call outright and will ask for email to be sent first, either to themselves or the contact directly – when we do so this often opens things up on successive calls”

“It depends, some are fine and some will put an absolute block on the call – it’s generally not worthwhile trying to persuade them to put you through if this is the case”

By Niall Habba

Managing Director

The Telemarketing Company

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A Gatekeeper’s view of Telesales Calls

Ask a salesperson what’s tough about telesales and you’ll likely be told “dealing with gatekeepers”. At Office Response we like salespeople and we have set procedures to help them. We know anybody who calls us could one day become a customer so we like to make a good impression. We’re not obstructive to sales callers and do our best to help them but some could do a little more to help themselves. Our gatekeepers are Kat and Michaela and they know a lot about answering the phone so I asked them a few questions.

What % of calls on our reception number are sales calls?

Approx 60%, which is 40-60 sales calls a day.

What manner do callers adopt that lets you know they are selling?

It’s easy to recognise sales callers as they are either ‘over friendly’ or just rude.

The rude ones will say ““Iain please” without using any introduction and it’s not said in a polite way.

The creepy ones say things like, “Hi how are you? How is the weather? Looking forward to the weekend?” They think it will make us want to help them. Actually we hate it.

Do they ever tell lies?

Yes. Often they say that they’ve spoken to the relevant person before, even though they haven’t. They sometimes advise that the call is expected and the relevant person will know the nature of the call. They will try any way to get through to the relevant person – even if it involves bending the truth.

What else winds you up about sales calls?

We really don’t like it when we get called Love, Darling, Sweetheart etc.

Sometimes the callers try and bully us when they won’t take no for an answer.

Repetitiveness – some people will call a number of times a day even though they get the same answer every time.

What do the good ones do?

Listen. We have a clear set of instructions of how to assist sales callers and the good ones let us help them. It’s also good when the caller doesn’t appear scripted, and has a personality without being over confident or too friendly.

What are their most common opening lines?

‘’Hi it’s …. calling from…..can I speak to the person that deals with …?”

“Can I speak to the Managing Director?”

“Hi, can I speak to …, he/she’ll know what it’s regarding / he/she is expecting my call / it’s just a follow up call”

What advice would you give a telesales caller?

Don’t be over friendly – it’s annoying. Don’t lie – it’s also annoying. Be polite and clear why you are calling and treat us with respect.

Thanks to Kat and Michaela for their thoughts. For all of you sales callers we’d like to think seeing sales calls from the “gatekeeper’s” point of view is useful.

Niall Habba, MD of The Telemarketing Company www.ttmc.co.uk will be giving the view from the other side of the fence in the next few days.

Martin Blain

Sales Director

Jobcentre Plus Awards

Following our recent success at the South West Contact Centre Awards, Office Response have again been recognised for our work with young people by Jobcentre Plus. The Jobcentre Plus Awards showcase the achievements of companies, partnerships and individuals who’ve worked with Jobcentre Plus over the past year. At the South West region awards yesterday we picked up the Skills Development Award and came runners-up in the Youth Employment Award. Seeing as RBS, Royal Mail, Wilkinsons, Waitrose and Comet were also shortlisted we’re quite chuffed at this achievement.

Our Head of Contact Centre, Heather Dawes, and Recruitment Manager, Alan Bell, (the picture above shows him basking in glory) attended the awards and were encouraged to see lots of well known companies supporting people back into work.

Alan and Heather commented, “The contact centre industry thrives on young people. We have created an apprenticeship  scheme to give 16-18 year olds the important skills needed to work in the contact centre environment. It’s good to share this success with the members of staff that have benefited most and we plan to continue developing our relationship with Jobcentre Plus in the future. ”

By Steve West

Marketing & Business Development Manager

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How fast is the world changing?

I’ve got my eldest daughter to thank for showing me this one.

Who 5 years ago would have understood this?

“Google before you Tweet is the new Think before you speak”

Martin Blain

How should you prioritise your incoming telephone calls?

It might seem a bit harsh, but the importance of a telephone call is often greater to the person making the call than to the organisation taking the call. Answering calls costs money so you should consider what return you are going to make from different types of calls and then target your resources accordingly.

You can prioritise different types of calls in a number of different ways:

• Consider using some sort of a IVR call platform before calls are answered e.g. press 1 for sales, press 2 for customer services etc.

• Use unique telephone numbers for different types of calls e.g. for sales, customer service and reception.

• If your telephone system allows it, set up ringing groups for each call type to present certain calls ahead of others.

• You could also use the routing facilities of “intelligent” telephone numbers to ensure your most important calls get picked up quickest.

But how should you rank your call types? Let’s look at some examples:

New Business Enquiries – Spending money on advertising and marketing without answering your calls is like trying to fill a bath up with water but forgetting to put the plug in. The leads will go down the plug hole – quite literally ‘money down the drain’. You can recognise companies that maybe haven’t considered this if you pick up a Sunday newspaper and telephone some of the advertisements. Those that don’t answer have forgotten to put the plug in the bath! It makes sense to answer new enquiry calls but ignore existing customers at your peril.

Customer Service Calls – Deciding what impact your handling of customer service calls will make on your business profitability is another complicated issue. How unique is your product or service? If you are the TV licensing authority then you can get away with answering 50% of your calls confident that people will call back but for most commercial organisations this level of poor service would be suicidal. Commercial realities play a part in deciding how much you should invest in telephone customer support. If you are in a very price sensitive market you may not be able to invest in post-sale support and even if you did would it encourage buyers to pay you 20% more when they are next in the market? It’s not for no reason that many PC manufacturers base telephone customer support offshore to reduce costs. The point to remember here is ‘how are my existing customers going to react if I don’t meet their customer service expectations?’

By Steve West

Marketing & Business Development Manager

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88% of people WILL leave a message on voicemail!

Here are the results from an online survey that asked people about how we use voicemail and answering machines in the UK.

Rather than make unfounded and sweeping generalisations like “80% of callers won’t leave a message on voicemail” we decided to survey a wide range of telephone users on their voicemail habits. And guess what? Nearly 90% will leave a message if they know the person they are calling. But most of people said they won’t leave a message if they’re looking to order products, responding to an advert or calling about customer service.

It supports what we have always thought – Voicemail is a valuable tool (indeed how did we ever survive without it?) for your close contacts but it is less suited to handling advertising response, supporting product ordering and in customer service situations if you want to build customer loyalty. We asked about the reason for the call, who they were trying to contact and what their relationship was with the person or organisation they were calling. We now hope that the survey will help organisations to decide when and where voicemail works best.

Over 500, both business people and members of the public, completed the  10 questions between April and June 2010.

The survey results are:

• When calling a business during office hours in response to an advert more than half of people will not leave a message on voicemail

• 83% of people are comfortable leaving voicemail messages on mobile phones

• Nearly two thirds of people will not leave a message on voicemail if they are calling to make a complaint

• The majority of people expect to be called back the same day if they leave a voicemail message

• 88% of people will leave a message on voicemail if they personally know the individual they are calling

• More than half of people leave less than 5 voicemail messages per week

• 79% of people will not leave a message on voicemail if they are calling to place an order for a product or service

• More than three quarters of people think that voicemail has a place in today’s fast moving business world

There’s no doubt voicemail is useful. But. Think long and hard before you rely on people to leave messages in response to adverts or if you are not giving your customers personal service. When they ring you they want to talk to you.

 We will think a little deeper about what the results mean and we’ll use the blog to discuss our points. Because we answer telephone calls for lots of other organisations you may think, correctly as it happens, that we have a vested interest in encouraging people to rely on the telephone. So feel free to give us your comments to put a brake on our enthusiasm.

The full survey results can be obtained by contacting us at marketing@office-response.co.uk

By Steve West

Marketing and Business Development Manager

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