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Oct02

3 Great Reasons not to use a Telephone Answering Service.

Posted in General Business Comments | 1 Comment

 


Much to my bitter disappointment not every organisation needs us. You could be missing zillions of calls and you should still keep your money in your pocket and not spend it with us. So why not?

Well it’s because, as I spend much time explaining to our new staff, nobody wants telephones answering they want the benefits it brings and you might not want the benefits we’ll give you.

So let’s look together at some of the reasons not to buy our call answering services;

1. “I don’t want any more business”

I’m constantly pushing our business forward but there are business owners out there missing calls, chucking new sales opportunities away and they are completely happy with the situation. They know about the unanswered calls and they’re just not bothered. And it’s because they don’t want the hassle and stress involved with expansion.

Lee our web developer is a bit like that. He’s often difficult to track down by phone but he’s now worked for himself (and on his own) for 6 years. He strikes me that he’s very happy with his lot. He’s got no staff, no pressure and no hassle.

So if you don’t want to expand, don’t contact us.

2. “All of my new clients are recommended to me”

Lots of our competitors spin the old yarn that “such and such” a % of callers won’t leave messages on answerphones. It’s a load of rubbish, rhubarb and they’re downright wrong.

As we’ve blogged about before lots of people leave messages on voicemail and the callers most likely to leave messages are the people who already know you and the potential new clients who have been told all about your wonderful products and services by your existing customers. The other side of the story is that the people most unlikely to leave a message are the people responding to your marketing who have no relationship with you.

These referred enquirers however will jump through a lot of hoops to get to you so you don’t need us to capture your calls.

3. “If they can’t get through they’ll ring back”

In lots of situations this is the case. If you’re number 45 in the call queue at the Tax Office or you need to make a claim on your motor insurance then you’ll wait. You might not be happy about it but if you absolutely have to talk to them you’ll keep calling.

Likewise if you are the only supplier of diamond encrusted garden gnomes and there’s a big demand then you don’t need to spend money with us improving your call handling efficiency.

However if you are in a competitive market like the rest of us then maybe you’ll want to give the best service you can.

I’ll be posting about some other good reasons not to use an outsourced call handling company later in the week but feel free to add your own ideas.

Martin Blain
Sales Director

Jun29

Businesses burn the midnight oil

Posted in Surveys | 4 Comments

 

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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Jun21

Should you advertise your telephone number on your website?

Posted in Tips, Knowledge and Experience | 2 Comments

 

 

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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May11

How to win and keep business on the telephone

Posted in Tips, Knowledge and Experience | No Comments

 


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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Mar28

B2B? What hours do you need an answering service?

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Some telephone answering services offer blanket 24 hour cover 7 days a week to all of their customers whilst other telephone answering services only cover business hours. Which telephone answering service package is right for you if you deal mainly with other businesses?

If your clients predominantly work business hours then we would suggest that you only need a business hours service unless your clients are self employed business people (e.g. builders, publicans etc) who may want to be able to contact you in the evenings and weekends. We specialise in providing virtual reception services Monday to Friday from 8am (to catch the early callers) to 6pm. What about cover for public holidays? Our experience is that on these days you might get speculative calls from international callers unaware of our holiday dates but generally if you deal business to business (b2b) then this cover is not needed unless you must be available to overseas contacts irrespective of our holiday dates. Our business hours package includes public holidays.

Let’s say your clients are operating extended hours e.g. you deal with pubs, retailers or cinemas. In this case extending your answering times could help you pick up extra sales enquiries and you should also consider if you are expected to provide customer service to your customers when they are open but you are shut, if these circumstances apply to you then a telephone answering service during extended hours could be a great benefit. We can offer evening and weekend cover to assist you. The hours of cover should be dictated by the hours your clients work.

So who needs a full 24/7 telephone answering service? We feel that there is no need to have full 24 hour telephone answering unless you deal with organisations that are open 24/7 e.g. hospitals and financial service companies and they look to you for service outside of office hours. We rarely get calls to reception numbers outside of normal business hours but we do handle large numbers of what we term “calls outs”. When handling callouts we often take the details form the caller and then alert an on call person to deal with the issue. We ensure our overnight team are kept free to deal with these types of calls which is why we don’t offer blanket 24/7 telephone reception service to our b2b clients.

Let us know what hours you answer your calls.

By Martin Blain

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Feb09

It’s Snow Joke

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Ok, sorry about the title.

I have been speaking to some of our customers about the effect the recent adverse weather has had on their business. Staff not able to attend work, deliveries waiting in warehouses, meetings cancelled, salespeople stood around idle – it all adds up. How much do you think the snow really cost your business?

And do you think anything could have been done beforehand to alleviate most of the problems?

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