At Office Response we have studied the use of voicemail facilities to see how effective, or not, they truly are. You might be surprised to hear that a staggering 79% of people will not leave a voicemail if they are calling to place an order for a product or service for the first time. And the majority of people surveyed expect to be called back the same day if they do leave a voicemail.

Whilst offering voicemail may be the norm for the majority of personal trainers the real question is whether it really provides the solution you need to grow your business, deliver customer satisfaction & optimise your marketing spend? That said we believe that your real challenge is achieving the optimum workload for you and your business. Clearly the busier you are training the less you are available to take valuable new business calls which will ultimately restrict your ability to grow.

One way to break this cycle is to outsource your Telephone Answering to a live Telephone Answering Service. You could employ an assistant or, more reasonably, use the services of a 24/7 Telephone Answering Service. In our experience, not surprisingly, whichever option you go for will be better than voicemail… but we’d love to hear of your experiences either way.

Please add your comments below or, if you would like to learn more about how Office Response could support you and differentiate your business from your competition please contact our Business Development Team on 0845 223 7004

With this in mind, an increase in clients and working hours means that it is imperative for personal trainers to not only keep up with demand but to differentiate themselves from the growing competition too.
After looking into the fitness industry and personal trainers in particular, it has become apparent that a lot of time and money goes into providing the best training possible with a real focus on continuous improvement but there appears to a lack of guidance when it comes to marketing and lead generation.

Many personal trainers invest a substantial amount of time and money into their business, only to miss potential clients who contact them via the phone during a training session. Or even worse, answer the call and risk losing the valuable client which they are training.
There are numerous articles on the web (including The Professional Personal Trainer – Answering a phone call during a session with a Client) on the use of mobile phones in personal training sessions, all of which conclude that a mobile phone should never be answered whilst they are taking place.

Here are a couple of tips for personal trainers and those looking for one:

‘If you are struggling in the middle of a tough set and instead of spotting you, your trainer is answering their cellular phone or sending a text message, it may be time to find another personal trainer.’ (www.askthetrainer.com)

‘Never answer your mobile phone or gym phone during workouts clients want your complete attention as you are charging them by the hour. You wouldn’t go to the doctor and have him answer a personal call for 5 minutes. ‘(www.myfitnessstudio.co.uk)

Office Response provide professional and bespoke 24/7 Telephone Answering Services to ensure that all calls are captured so that you can concentrate on your core business, provide excellent customer service and in turn both gain and retain valued clients.

If you would like to learn more about how Office Response could support you and differentiate your business from your competition please contact our Business Development Team on  0845 223 7004

With businesses and their apprentices from a variety of sectors in attendance, we were in good company with the likes of Royal Mail, Holiday Inn and Avon and Somerset Constabulary to name just a few. Whilst Office Response was also nominated as ‘Commerce, Innovation and Skills Employer of the Year’, we were pipped at the post by local business Horseworld.

Privately owned Office Response has been working with young apprentices since 2009 and the owners, Iain McGregor and Martin Blain, take a real pride in their on-going development, with a number of apprentices rising through the ranks and securing permanent positions within various areas of the business including the Contact Centre and Customer Service Departments.

Nancy Parker, Head of Contact Centre, quoted “This is a fantastic achievement for Francesca who is now a fully-fledged member of our Contact Centre team among others who have progressed through the Apprentice academy. The event itself was really inspiring showcasing a real variety of talent all of whom are a true credit to Bristol business. Although we did not win the Commerce, Innovation and Skills Employer of the Year award this year, we are extremely proud of our achievements to date and will be back next year more determined than ever!”

Huge congratulations to Francesca who deservedly scooped first place and proudly accepted her award with Bush and Troy of Heart FM. We would also like to thank the City of Bristol College for their continued support and of course the entire Office Response team for their on-going commitment.

Office Response proudly work alongside numerous insurance companies, all of which offer a variety of policies – from home, car and business insurance to specialist yacht insurance. We all know the importance of having secure insurance policies in place for a variety of situations, but there are a small selection of companies offering more unique niche policies to those who seek insurance cover for any given situation, regardless of the obscurity.

Here are a few of our favourites:

Alien abduction insurance – for those who live in fear of being abducted during the night and pulled aboard a spaceship, help is at hand in the form of alien abduction insurance. The first company to offer such a thing was St. Lawrence Agency, an insurance provider who claims to have sold over 20,000 of these policies!

Paranormal activity insurance – back in 2002, it was reported by the BBC that hotel owner Terry Meggs took out insurance to protect his patrons against an unruly poltergeist with the potential to harm. It is said that he paid £500 a year to insurers Ultraviolet, to be covered by their ‘SpookSafe’ policy.

Attractiveness insurance – another unique one which has featured in the Daily Mail, is the ‘FaceSafe’ policy which will pay out if the policy holder is no longer deemed as attractive. In one case, to claim on the policy the holder would have to be declared unattractive by a panel of 10 builders – a test she said her husband appreciated being a builder himself!

Winning the lottery – Lloyd’s of London offers policies which will protect an employer if more than two of their staff win the lottery and decide not to return to work. It has been reported that payment is triggered when two or more staff win at least £100,000 each, and leave within 14 days, and the payout would be between £25,000 and £500,000 to cover the cost of hiring temps or recruiting new staff.

If you work in the insurance industry and know of any other unique insurance policies, or even if you’ve taken a policy out yourself, we’d love to hear from you!

According to a recent YouGov survey on behalf of Citrix Online over 20% of UK employers are being put under greater pressure to by their employees to adopt increased workforce flexibility.

Whilst the employee’s drive is typically to improve work/life balance there are significant benefits to be obtained for the employer if they readily embrace the vast raft of personal communications tools that are available to them.

The fact of the matter is that many employers are used to working this way within specific disciplines e.g. field sales. The challenge for any employer is to gain from the benefits (cost savings, productivity & staff well-being) whilst not suffering from any of the potential down sides.

At an entry level web based technologies such as citrixonline.com and sococo.com allow effective team working through the use of multi-media (often better than you’d have in your own office anyway!) and “presence” (knowing when people are available as opposed to where).

At the opposite end of the scale Avaya Aura delivers a state of the art unified communication platform that can seamlessly link all employees of an organization wherever they are!

Andrew Millard, senior director of marketing at Citrix Online, recognizes that there is a huge change taking place in the UK workplace.

“As the boundaries between office hours and personal time become less distinct, managers are losing control of how people ‘work’,” he stated.

“Individuals want to prioritise what they do. It is no surprise therefore that there is so much resistance to work shifting, as managers have to move to evaluating performance on results over time rather than on the basis of physically seeing them working at their desks.”

The fact of the matter is that by focusing their management on results and not just “being there” there is a self-fulfilling win-win. The employees are supported in their quest for a better work-life balance and the employer is rewarded with greater overall performance.

Mr Millard said that the good news for employers is that mobile devices enable employees to take charge of their time, by “self-prioritising in an effective and controlled way”.

At Office Response we have been working with innovative home workers for over a decade now. By providing telephone answering service and more complex contact management solutions such as 24/7 order lines and 24/7 help desks Office Response has enabled individuals and companies of all sizes take control of their own work loads and work patterns increasing their productivity, profitability and their work/life balance.

If you would like to learn more about how Office Response’s Telephone Answering Service could support you and your business please contact our Business Development Team on 0845 223 7004

Companies House have revealed that the number of UK registered companies increased by over 7,000 during May this year.

According to The Office for National Statistics, (for the three months to April 2011) the number of employees and self-employed people working part-time, because they could not find a full-time job, increased to the highest figure since comparable records began in 1992. With more than 35,000 people delving into the world of self-employment last year, there are now almost 4 million small-business owners and freelancers in the UK.

Emma Lunn, writing for the Guardian commented, ‘’Why this is happening is not hard to answer: redundancies, a lack of good jobs, and the fact that in some industries it can pay to go it alone.’

Office Response has similarly seen a marked increase in enquiries from the recently self-employed. The majority of small business owners invest a substantial amount time and money into developing their business and it is understandably becoming more important than ever for them to differentiate through the delivery of a professional service.

By using a professional telephone answering service to outsource their call handling needs these fledgling entrepreneurs are able to concentrate on developing their core
business whilst we ensure that each crucial new business opportunity (phone call, email etc) is captured by seasoned professionals… 24 hours a day.

If you are a small-business owner and would like to know how outsourcing your call handling needs could help boost your business please contact Office Response’s Business
Development team on 0845 223 7004.

Dan Hobson, after a nervous meal, triumphantly marched up to the stage to receive the honour of being 1 of 2 people to receive the accolade of being “Highly Commended” in the “Agent of the Year” classification. The top agent is the most competitive award of the event and during a private conversation with one of the judges we were told Dan came within a whisker of an outright win. Well done to Dan.

Heather Dawes was shortlisted for the third year in a row as one of the best Contact Centre Managers in the region and yet again she was pipped at the post for the top prize. Getting to the final three is in itself an achievement as the forum now contains some of the strongest contact centres located from Swindon via Gloucester to Truro. Evidence of the strength of the competition was that last night’s event at the Bristol’s Marriot hotel was attended by 336 people.

In the company classifications we were up against those corporate giants Orange and DAS for “Best use of Technology”. Comparing our budgets to that of the other finalists it is staggering to think that we even got shortlisted but in the end our innovative use of our call recording technology was not enough and Orange predictably scooped first place.

We are clearly very proud of our achievements and would like to take this opportunity to thank the broader Office Response team, our agents, recruiters, trainers, team leaders, and managers who made them a reality.

Office Response are delighted to be recognised for our innovative use of Intranet technology by winning the ‘Greatest Business Impact’ Award at the SORCE Intranet User Conference.

Delegates from over 50 different organisations including Manchester United PLC, the Youth Hostel Association, Balfour Beatty, Discovery Foods, Thomas Cook and the Royal Horticultural Society voted in recognition of outstanding achievements by an organisation in driving efficiency using their Intranet or CRM Portal.

We have developed the use of our technology by creating a combined CRM application and Customer Service Helpdesk. This has been followed by integrating a successful Intranet and HR portal for the whole company to share information and  processes making us more efficient and improving communication. Our customers have also benefited by experiencing further improvements to the quality of our telephone answering service and enabling us to react even quicker to their needs.

Katherine Smith

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The implied focus here being on driving internal efficiencies.

Whilst I agree with Rupert my question is how early in the business process can we start to introduce effective process and exercise real control? The subtext being… did it really need the introduction of ABS to drive consumer focussed change?

Anyway, If we combine Alastair’s observations on marketing management with Rupert’s vision for process, rigor and reporting it feels as if there are a couple of real opportunities early on in the marketing journey.

By applying some of the lessons learned from practitioners in the more commercially aggressive markets such as insurance or retail we can see that there are numerous proven technologies and processes that can be employed to create additional value whilst reducing operational costs.

I recently conducted some analysis on call volumes to legal practices in the UK and found that c.32% of potential new business fell out of office hours. If Tesco were to take advantage of the forthcoming Alternative Business Structures do you think they would let potential new instructions walk away from them ?

Consider the money invested in generating those 32% of enquiries… that were then ignored! Without a strong process around your Client acquisition and retention strategies you will likely end up paying good money to generate business for your “market savvy” competitors.

The reality is that the cost of providing the outsourced 24/7 Telephone Answering Service is typically out-weighed by the increases in new business generated and the reduced marketing cost per case. The management information generated by the call centre can then easily be mapped straight into your own system allowing you full end-to-end management of the process and absolute transparency around your costs and ROI.

As Adrian Ott describes in her award winning book The 24hr Customer opportunities to “sell” are becoming ever more restricted. If, as described above, you start your managed process (the marketing journey) from the initial point of contact you will immediately gain a significant competitive advantage.  

This is as true for the legal profession as much as any one else. If you’d like to know more please contact our Business Development team on 0845 233 7004.

As you may have previously read here on the blog, Office Response took part in the Sue Ryder Care Big Wigs Challenge which ran from September 2010 until January this year.
For those of you who may not know, the challenge involves each team being presented with a £50 note, the aim is to raise as much as possible by using that £50 along with their initiative to come up with ingenious fundraising ideas. After 4 months each team must return all profits, along with the £50, to the charity.

There were a total of 18 companies who took part in the challenge, the OR team consisted of 9 people from different areas of the business, including the Managing Director. We held a 24 hour bike ride, charity auction and Big Wigs Big Breakfast mornings, along with other fundraising activities, to raise an amazing £1885.96!
The Office Response team attended the finale at the Bristol Hotel where they were crowned ‘Most Inspirational Team’. The grand total was also revealed to be an astonishing £45,800!!

Here is what our Managing Director, Iain McGregor, had to say of the challenge:

‘’The Big Wigs Business Challenge was a brilliant way to bring staff together at Office Response, have fun, and raise an amazing amount of money for Sue Ryder at the same time!
With a team of 9 people from different areas of the business it was brilliant to see the team spirit generated by the combined determination to raise as much money for the charity as possible.

The highlight of the challenge for us was the Charity Auction held at our Christmas Party. We auctioned off 12 items, including a meal for 2 at Zizzi restaurant, Manchester United football tickets, spa vouchers and lots more. We managed to raise over £500 through the auction and it was really good fun too!

The challenge was highly beneficial for us at OR, throughout the challenge there was clear staff and skill development, not only for the Big Wigs Team, but also for everyone else in the business. Activities such as our 24 hour sponsored bike ride managed to get the whole company together to work as a team and hit our fundraising target. With clear benefits for us at OR, raising a substantial amount of money for an amazing charity and having fun at the same time, it really was a brilliant challenge to be involved in.

We would definitely recommend taking part in the Big Wigs Challenge, being part of something as special as improving the lives of others is inspiring and the hard work you put in is definitely worth it!’’

This October, Felicity & Kat from Office Response will be taking part in a 10 day trek across the Sahara Desert for Sue Ryder, please take a look at http://www.virginmoneygiving.com/TurnUpTheHeat-SaharaTrek

For more information on Sue Ryder Care, or to get involved in any fundraising, please visit their website www.suerydercare.org

Katherine Smith
Marketing and Sales Support Executive