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 …continue reading
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:
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
If you are in the process of trying to decide whether a telephone answering service will benefit your business you may find this blog article useful. Liz Duvall, Group Marketing Manager of Great British Mobility, outlines how our call handling services support their business objectives…
“I don’t know about you, but one of my pet hates is automated phone answering services. You know the sort of thing……press 1 for sales, press 2 for accounts etc… and then you get another set of options, followed by a “all our operators are busy, please leave a message…etc” aaargh!! I just want to talk to a human being!!
At Great British Mobility we offer a range of rise and recline chairs, adjustable beds, scooters and bathing aids. Our customers are predominantly elderly or have mobility problems and we want them to feel that they are important right from the very first point of contact. Therefore having the right people answering our phones is crucial to the success of our business. At Office Response not only are the staff human but they always sound like they have answered the phone with a smile on their face.
When a customer calls one of our freephone numbers, and enquires about our products, we want to talk to them. However, if all our staff are already taking calls, how do we deal with the overflow? Its very simple really; our phones ring for 4 rings and if they are not answered they then route to Office Response. A polite person will then capture their details and nature of their call. This information is immediately emailed to the relevant department at Great British Mobility.
When I initially contacted Office Response I found the staff incredibly efficient and willing to help. We had a portfolio of 126 freephone numbers and I assumed it would a complete headache to transfer everything over to Office Response destination numbers. I couldn’t have been more wrong and the whole process was managed professionally and efficiently. This now equates to over 1000 calls a week that Office Response handle for us now and the service is exemplary.
We have had a few little teething troubles along the way such as the odd call script that needed a tweak, or a particular 0800 number that required the calls to be handled slightly differently and when queries have been raised they have always been dealt with promptly.
All in all, the move to Office Response has been made easy and dealing with the staff has been an absolute pleasure – from management and customer services to the agents answering the phones. We know our customers are in safe hands and in a very competitive market its reassuring to know that Office Response value our customers as much as we do.
For more information on Great British Mobility’s full range of products you can visit them at http://www.greatbritishmobility.com/
Here at Office Response we have seen a significant upsurge in the number of Solicitors practices utilising our services as they have identified the value of 24 hour customer … read more
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