Technology makes the business environment ever more competitive, particularly for SME’s who have less resources available. It has become increasingly more important to give a good first impression to all customers, new and old.
An infographic produced by Answer-4u highlights the fact that 80% of businesses still receive their incoming communications by the telephone. A surprising figure considering the rise in new communication technology such as e-mail, Smartphones and Social Media.
With the majority of people still preferring to pick up the phone and 75% of people not leaving a voicemail and instead hanging up, it is clear that customers want to speak to a human. 85% of all these missed calls will also not call back.
On average SME employees spend 3.3 hours dealing with complaints because they can’t reach employees in a timely manner. 7 out of 10 consumers have ended their relationship with a company due to poor customer service and 61% of these consumers have taken their business to a competitor instead!
Many big businesses run their own call centres to answer calls on evenings and weekends, to fit their clients’ needs. However the costs of operating a call centre for an SME can be financially crippling.
So what are the options available to an SME? One option is to outsource your inbound call handling to a professional telephone answering service provider. By handling calls in this way, you can free up office time and can spend your evenings and weekends relaxing instead of following up voicemails and answering calls.
Have you ever wondered what that phone call you missed was worth to your business? Many businesses throughout the UK are leaving £££’s at the door due to missed calls.
For further details on how much missed calls can be costing your business view the infographic here.
I’d love to hear your comments. Do you have any tactics you use to organise your time and manage your calls more efficiently. Drop me a message by Google+.
