The Office Response Telephone Answering Blog

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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Businesses burn the midnight oil

When I started working  Tescos (yes, I’m not that old, there were Tescos even then) would slam the door in your face at 5.30pm, they had a half day on Wednesday, begrudgingly opened Saturday and would have been committing an offence if they opened on a Sunday. Today we expect to be able to ring our bank 24/7 and shop 7 days a week.

Are we heading the same way in the business to business (B2B) world?

Maybe.

Simon Milner, one of our new business guys, forwarded me an article about website data from One Business Insurance revealing that the peak time for online enquiries is between 9pm -2am on a weekday closely followed by between 5-7pm on a Sunday.

In one month alone 62 per cent of those enquiring about business insurance did so outside normal working hours.

“These figures really do highlight the fact that those running small businesses are never off duty,’’ said One Business Insurance Solutions operations director Darren Box.

He said enquiries ranged from shop owners looking at dedicated retail insurance through to those wanting to know more about van insurance, public liability and business interruption insurance.

Research highlights:
•62 per cent of online requests for insurance were made outside normal working hours
•46 per cent of these out of hours requests were at weekends
•The peak time for out of hours requests was between 9pm and 2am on a weekday

These numbers back up our own in that we take 40% of all of our calls outside of traditional office hours.

So if you are B2B what hours should you be answering your calls?

Martin Blain

Sales Director

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Voicemail Survey – And the winner is…

After receiving over 500 responses to our Voicemail Survey we have decided to compile the results and pick the winner of the iPod Touch. To keep things fair, all the email addresses of the entries were put into a basket and Jo Davies, our Accounts Manager, was blindfolded and asked to pick the lucky winner.

Well Done to to Bob Code of MJP Solicitors in Liverpool who is the lucky recipient of the iPod Touch!

The Voicemail Survey has uncovered some very interesting facts about the telephone habits of  businesses and consumers so a big thank you to everyone who took part. We will be publishing the results through our Blog very shortly so click here to subscribe to our RSS feed and learn the truth about Voicemail.

Steve West

Marketing & Business Development Manager

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Help us find the Truth about Voicemail!

At Office Response we like to challenge things. We find it helps us to continuously improve our 24 Hour Telephone Answering Services. So, when I recently heard someone pontificating that “80% of people wont leave messages on voicemail” it made me wonder where that information actually came from. Lots of our competitors have the statement on their website as a way of highlighting the benefits of telephone answering services. However, no-one seems to know what research was undertaken or by whom.

So, to get to the bottom of the facts, we have decided to do our own research. Please take a minute of your time to complete our 10 Question survey. We will then publish the results on our blog so everyone can benefit from knowing the truth about voicemails.

We will be giving an iPod Touch to one lucky participant for their time – Good luck and thank you in advance!

by Steve West

Marketing & Business Development Manager