1.866.840.3062

It’s been a couple of weeks since the launch of our new website and I must say that I am very pleased with the recent results. In fact, I would say that our response rate is at least 15X more than what it has been previously. However, still a majority of our responses tend to be phone calls.

I have found this to be true for most businesses that I have worked with. (Especially in the service industry.) It seems that many consumers are time poor and if they can, they would rather pick up the phone and speak to a live person than waiting to hear back from a form submission. Sure, maybe this will all turn into phone text messages in the future;) But, you can’t ignore the fact that many of us still would like to talk to a knowledgeable live person.

A couple of years ago, we chose a call tracking supplier to assist us in measuring off-line responses that resulted from online promotion. Little did we know how important this technology would be for clients that not only measure their online efforts, but also any other advertising medium they were using. Many of our clients consistently use over 20 numbers or more to measure where their hard earned marketing dollars are going.

But what’s truly interesting, is that many or our clients are using it to identify shortcomings in their sales process since many choose to record phone calls (a free feature we offer all clients.) If you have never used call recording before, please be aware that many states require that you notify the end user that the call is being recorded. However, once enabled, you will get a tremendous amount of insight of how calls are getting handled through the pipe. Additionally, just as you would seek to improve usability on your website, you can use this information to better your call experience to the end user and sharpen your sales force skills.

Here are some typical pitfall scenarios that I have witnessed:

1. No answer or endless loop- the call literally doesn’t go anywhere…yikes!
2. Endless transfers- the prospect is taken though several departments and no one seems to be sure who is supposed to handle the call.
3. Call goes to the gatekeeper & transferred to voice mail- in many occasions, the call is answered by a live body and then transferred to the sales force, which isn’t present and the prospect gets a voice mail.
4. Call goes to an inexperienced salesperson- in effect, the call is mishandled by a salesperson that can’t properly qualify the call. I’m not sure if this is one of the worst scenarios, but it certainly can be improved upon with some sales training.

There are likely even more worthy points that I haven t mentioned above. However these were the first to come to mind and are all equally not desirable. At one of the jobs I worked at, we had several rules (that I still use today) to handle calls more professionally. They are:

1. Answer the calls within 3 rings- no one likes to wait to talk to a live person.
2. Answer the call with smile- consumers and businesses can actually here the mood that you are in. If you look forward to answering a call, you are likely not in the right state of mind to give the caller what they want.
3. You own the call- although you may not be the right person for the call to get to, your job should be to get it to the most qualified person to handle it. Additionally, if you can solve the person’s problem and caller asked for someone that isn’t in, you should take care of the problem as if it was your own client.

This isn’t the end all to be all list, however I have found them to be very useful in helping potential and current clients feel that our company is confident in how we do business. Moreover, if you aren’t using call tracking to measure or identify your company’s call usability, I recommend that you make that a goal in the very near future because you could be turning away business that you worked so hard to get.

If you have some other useful calling tips, I would love to hear from you.