The cost of not answering your own phone

The fact remains that people want to talk to living human beings who care about their needs and they don’t want to talk to a machine because it will fall on deaf ears and their needs won’t be prioritized or met.

Over the years, many companies have tried to find more effective ways to answer their phones, for example using answering machines, voice mail, or even giving a pager number was once popular. The truth is that the low cost of these products actually helped to greatly reduce business expenses at the front desk, but when we take a closer look at what the real cost of using an answering machine to greet people is, who call, you can see the negative impact on the bottom line. Businesses large and small spend a great deal of money to generate new customers through numerous forms of advertising, whether it’s online ads through Google, Yahoo, Bing, or the old-fashioned phone book standard (and its many forms), mail, brand-name clothing, business cards, signs on trucks and cars, not to mention the huge spending on television, radio, and highway billboard advertising. After spending all this money to generate new customer phone calls, now the caller picks up the phone and dials your number and their first impressions are either a voicemail trap or “please leave a message and I’ll get back to you.” with you when you can.” This is just an invitation for your potential customer to post your business and continue searching to meet their needs. The client called at that moment because he has the time and that moment to satisfy his needs not at his convenience but at yours. How much does it cost you to lose a potential client once a month? Once a week? Once a day?

There are numerous solutions to help companies capture additional business calls. For example you can hire a receptionist to sit at your front desk and take calls, this is a great option but it is also usually the most expensive and limits you to office hours when your calls can be answered and we’re living in a 24-hour world where people call at the oddest times that are good for them, not necessarily good for us. You can forward the call to your cell phone, once a popular option, but many business owners are finding that if they have to take every call, they’re not really doing any work and have to be a slave to the phone. You can hire an answering service, which is what seems to be considered the best option for the doctor’s office in the last 10 years. This type of service also helps all types of businesses, from your plumber in a van to large high-tech companies. A live outsourced secretary service can provide that human voice option and handle your calls that are so important to a first time caller. They can design a format to handle and screen your customer calls effectively, so they only pass urgent or money making calls directly to you and send you emails or screen nuisance solicitation calls.

The hard truth is that if a business is currently using an automated system that handles their calls, their competitors would like to thank them because it’s feeding them new business. In fact, another recent study showed that the second biggest consumer complaint was the inability to communicate with live human beings when searching for products or services.