The Office Response Telephone Answering Blog

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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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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Top 12 Telephone Answering Tips

Telephone answering skills are critical for businesses. The telephone is still most business’s primary 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 before the third ring if 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) Enunciate 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.

Answer all your calls within one business day. The early caller can get the contract, the sale, the problem solved… and reinforce the favorable impression of your business that you want to circulate.

9) 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?”

10) Don’t use a speaker phone unless absolutely necessary. Speaker phones give the caller the impression that you’re not fully concentrating on his call and make him think that his call isn’t private. The only time to use a speaker phone is when you need more than one person to be in on the conversation at your end.

11) If you must use an answering machine to answer calls when you can’t make sure that you have a professional message recorded and gives callers any other pertinent information before it records their messages. Update your answering machine message as needed. For instance, if your business is going to be closed for a holiday, update your recorded answering machine message to say so and to say when your business will reopen.

12) 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.

Should you advertise your telephone number on your website?

One might think that the answer to this is an obvious one and that all websites should have a contact telephone number but there are points to consider;

Who are your customers?

If you sell business to business (B2B) then the answer if a definite ‘yes’! Even though buyers will use email or your website contact form to make their first enquiry some will want to call you. Whereas we think telephone numbers should be visible across all business sectors it seems to be common for companies within the internet marketing world not to use phone numbers on their sites. They do all the work to get the search engines to find their sites and then they don’t pubilcise a number. To me it’s lunacy.

And another small thing; when you do publish a phone number make sure you answer the calls!!!! I was looking for examples of business websites without telephone numbers so I’ve just searched Google for “internet marketing Bristol”, I was surprised that the first three sites all displayed telephone numbers so as a test I rang them all, would you believe that my first two calls went unanswered?

Now if your business deals directly with consumers (B2C) the decision to advertise a number or not depends on a few things;

How much money are you making per customer?

Over the many years that we have been managing calls we’ve had a fair few enquiries from companies where the average sale value has been so low that there has just been insufficient margin to justify the cost of call answering; either in house or by outsourcing it to us. Some business models just don’t warrant the cost of call answering.

A good example of this is a great business called worldstores.co.uk. They are very smart internet retailers selling products as diverse as beds for hundreds to Ipod accessories for just a few pounds. They’ll answer calls 24/7 on the bed’s sales line but you won’t find a telephone number anywhere on the Ipod site. The sites are run by the same management team but they’ve made very different decisions about telephone calls based on the economics of the products they are selling.

How well known is your brand?

Brands are all about trust and loyalty. Consider that you are going to use the internet to buy a bed. Tesco sells them online and there’s no telephone sales line number on their site. They are doing away with the cost of manning a call centre over long hours and letting their brand do the selling. Unsurprisingly the lesser known independent suppliers who are competing need to publilise telephone numbers to give buyers the confidence that the Tesco brand delivers. Many of our online retail customers find it hard to quantify the benefit we give them by having a 24 hour answering service supporting their online selling but they know it helps them to make sales by giving buyers confidence.

E-commerce businesses should beware of falling into the trap of thinking that everyone will order over the internet. Whereas lots of buyers are happy to tap in their credit card details others will want to order over the telephone if they are not comfortable about who you are or what type of service you provide.

By Martin Blain

Sales Director

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Using an Outsourcer to qualify Sales Leads

One of our customers uses our telephone answering services to ensure that their sales people are maximising their time. Their problem was that many of their sales enquiries were actually enquiries for information – the callers weren’t ready to buy yet. This meant that they were spending lots of money staffing a sales team that had become an information line!

The solution was to outsource the calls to us and reduce the size of their sales team. We developed a call script that took the caller through a qualifying process to see where they were in the buying cycle. By using conditional scripting (i.e the caller is asked different questions dependant on their circumstances) it now means that only qualified callers that are ready to buy are transferred to the sales team. All information from other calls is used by the customer to provide information to the callers and prepare them through marketing methods for when they are ready to buy.

If you have a service or product that attracts callers seeking information, guidance or assurance before buying, or you seem to attract lots of calls from timewasters, we might be able to help you.

By Steve West

Marketing and Business Development Manager

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How to manage your calls whilst away on holiday

With half term next week, many people will be packing up the camping gear or jetting off abroad. If you are a business owner, or have responsibilities that involve having to be available on the phone, what options are there to manage your calls whilst you are away?

Divert calls to your Mobile phone – It won’t be much of a holiday if you’re lying on the beach talking business all day, but technology now allows your calls to follow you wherever you are. You need to consider what the network coverage, reception signal and diversion costs are going to be. If you are holidaying with family you can also expect some moans…

Divert all calls to Voicemail – If you leave a voicemail message explaining that you won’t be available then at least they have an expectation of when you will be able to respond. This could work for you if your caller’s needs are not critical and can wait. Most voicemails have the option to ‘dial in’ remotely so you can pick up your messages and deal with them.

Get someone you know to ‘man the phones’ – This solution can work for you if you have competent employees, business associates or friends that can represent you and your business. Brief them on common call types, what to say and who to contact if there is an issue.

Divert your calls to a telephone answering service – If you already use an answering service it’s a simple case of letting them know how to handle your calls whilst you are away. If you don’t have one you might want to call us.

By Steve West

Marketing & Business Development Manager

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Never Assume When Selling – The 3 Rules

Sales trainers will tell you that in order to succeed you must assume that every sales pitch will end in a closed sale. It’s also referred to as ‘positive thinking’. But there are dangers associated with this – how many times have you assumed what the prospective customer wants without discovering their real needs?

The 3 Rules

• Ask Questions
• Listen without guessing
• Check you’ve got it right

Ask Questions

I have 3 young children and spend most of my time being bombarded by questions from them; “How does that work?”, “What is that person doing?”, “WHY?”. If you have children yourself you’ll notice how they don’t have the ‘inbuilt assumptions’ that us adults have. They ask lots of questions to get THE FACTS. The more questions you ask the less you  assume. Another important benefit of good questioning or ‘fact finding’ is that it also allows you to expose any assumptions the other person may have (yes, its not just you!).

Listen without guessing

Listening is not waiting for your turn to talk. To truly ‘listen’ you need to completely disassociate yourself from what the person is saying and focus solely on them.  The most difficult part of this is not reacting to what they are saying and simply making mental notes (or written notes) of what they are REALLY saying.

Check you’ve got it right

Once you’ve got the facts go back over them with the person you’re selling to. You can do this either by verbally reiterating what you’ve recorded, sending the person an email with the key points or physically looking at evidence of what they are describing.

By following these 3 rules will have solid evidence that you can then find sales solutions to. I’d love to hear any other tips you have to stop the ‘dreaded assumptions.’

By Steve West

Marketing & Business Development Manager

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How to win and keep business on the telephone

By definition businesses need to grow to survive and often turn to the telephone as a way of generating new business or business leads for their sales team. The emphasis of this activity is often on winning new business. Outbound telephone activity is most successful when it is part of an overall strategy for developing business.

In business-to-business sales, your strategy needs to consider where you will get most payoff from your activity. Many businesses are forced into outbound telephone activity by a need to grow or to defend themselves against a competitor who is eroding their market share. Consider the calls you make in the context of your overall strategy and your database of customers, nil accounts (ones who have stopped spending with you) and prospects. If you don’t do this you run the risk of investing huge amounts of time and energy in call activity that gives meagre returns and is demotivating for all concerned.

A lot of businesses give the outbound calls to people who have been employed as inbound call handlers or administrators. Very often these people hate the idea of telephone selling because they associate it with the calls they receive when they are settling down with their favourite television programme or are in the middle of their evening meal. Business-to-business telephone sales is different. Your fundamental aim should be to develop relationships with potential and existing customers so that they understand the benefits of doing business with you and value your contact.

The contact you make needs to be meaningful and increase your revenues. That can not be done in one phone call. Successful campaign management activity is both a science and an art. If you examine your sales process, and develop dialogues that work for each type of call you need to make; if you do your sums about the numbers of calls that can be made and where those are best placed; if you train your people, and ensure they are not distracted from their outbound activity; in short, if you are clear what you want to achieve, and organise your people to give yourself the best chance of doing that, then your outbound call activity will bring results for your business.

But your competitors are probably calling the same customers that you are identifying as important to your business. How do you differentiate yourself from your competitors? Quite simply, you differentiate yourself in the calls that you make. If they are heavily scripted, that vital chance to connect with the customer is lost. Your emphasis is usually on the number of calls rather than the quality or outcome of the calls. Don’t make the fatal mistake of just setting targets based on the number of calls that people make, believing that the numbers will get you results. Don’t count calls – make calls count!

The people you select to telephone your customers need to understand your competitors, your products and services, and how to explain them over the telephone. They need to understand your sales process and handle objections effectively. Most importantly, they need to understand how to structure a call, and then have the skills to connect with and relate to the customer. They need the skills to have meaningful conversations, to allow intelligent dialogue to build a relationship that benefits both your business and the customer. They will be trying to build a relationship, maintain a relationship or indeed regenerate a lost account. They can only do this if they understand how the telephone affects communication, and what they need to do differentiate your calls from those of your competitors.

If your company has a clear brand your brand values can be incorporated into the call to create the Brand Voice. This can be a really useful coaching tool and can translate your brand into behaviour which builds your reputation. The language, the call structure and the communication skills of your people and their coaches will build the experience for the customer, which will reflect the promises you make in your advertising. By developing the skills and processes to manage customer relationships by telephone, you will see how cost effective this can be as a means of good contact with your customers.

By Steve West

Marketing & Business Development Manager

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