Four Tips for Better Phone Calls
Have you ever called a business and were greeted with “What do you want?” when they picked up the phone? We have, and we understand how frustrating it is for a customer to experience a bad phone call situation. We have put together four tips for creating a better phone call experience for both you and your customers, and we hope they will give you an advantage over your competition!
- Call yourself! Go through the process of what your customers will experience. Do you have a voicemail set up so that the customer knows they have the correct phone number? What does your voicemail sound like? Is it inviting and friendly? Does it have all the information your customers need such as when you are available for calls, or maybe if you want them to leave a voicemail? Your voicemail is such a great place to make a good first impression! Remember: the person calling may be a lead wanting you to conduct their sales!
- Consider getting a separate phone number specifically for your business. You can do this if you use a digital service, which is explained in point #3, or if you get an entirely different phone line for your business. This allows you to protect your privacy and create that separation between your personal life and your business.
- Consider using a separate phone service for your business phone number. Grasshopper, RingCentral, Nextiva, and GoogleVoice all make services that allow you to receive phone calls to your personal cell phone, all while using a unique phone number just for your business. This can give a great polished feel to your business communications and helps you separate your business from your personal life. Some of the benefits of using digital service for communication:
- Calls route to your personal cell phone
- Calls can be routed to team member phones if you aren’t available
- You can turn off routing after certain hours so people can’t call or text at all times of day and night
- Your mailbox doesn’t get full
- You can tell the difference between business calls and personal calls
- You can set the call to route differently by creating prompts such as, “Press 1 if you need to have an estate sale, Press 2 if you are one of our current clients, Press 3 if you need pricing info”
- Consider using a personalized answering service or a dedicated employee that handles all phone communications. Let’s face it, phone calls can get overwhelming, especially if you are already busy with another customer! That is where having someone from your team answering phone calls or paying for an answering service can be of great help to your business. By having someone else handle answering phone calls, you can continue to work on current projects and leads while still ensuring an answer to a calling customer. This can also help reduce the chance that you miss out on a sale and prevent the customer from simply moving on to your competitor to inquire about their services. We have heard of companies hiring a team member to just take leads!