For many businesses both small and large, the benefit of using a call answering service is a no brainer. It effectively deals with overflow, allows your business to be operational 24/7 and can be tailored to fit your company’s exact needs. Despite all the apparent benefits however, there are many myths that tend to surround it. Sadly, not the cool kind of myths that involve dragons but the kind that really mess up the running of your business.
The great shame is that many businesses dismiss Call Answering Services based on these myths and nothing more, which can have a hugely negative impact in the long run for all parties.
So, let’s take a look at these myths and see how true they are. Better yet, lets debunk them as they so richly deserve.
No-One Calls Businesses Anymore
There’s no doubt that social media has been readily adopted by the majority of businesses and has become a standard way for customers to reach out to brands, yet against all expectation it certainly hasn’t made the classic phone call redundant.
Ah but how do we know this you ask? Well Invoca recently discovered that 65% of people would rather use the phone to communicate with a business as opposed to the 24% that would prefer to fill out a web form. You could be forgiven for thinking this data came from 1992 but it was actually only published last year. And really, it’s not so hard to believe, we are after all social animals and when there’s a problem or an issue we need to resolve then a sympathetic ear and a verbal promise to deal with it is always going to beat a form or a bot. Or an owl if you’re considering going Potter with your business plan, which we don’t recommend by the way.
We Can Answer Our Own Calls Anyway
Well you can, but the real question is, should you? The first problem is that if you are expecting your staff to complete their jobs as well as answer all incoming calls then you are also inadvertently causing them to be less efficient with their workload. We know, scary, right?
To put some context to that, the University of California Irvine found that a member of staff who is interrupted during a task takes on average a full 23 minutes and 15 seconds to fully get back to the initial task. That’s a lot of head scratching time.
Not only that but many businesses simply fail to manage the sheer amount of call traffic they experience and thus lose revenue. In an era where people expect immediate gratification you can rest assured that waiting for someone to pick up a call is not tolerated for very long. Which means that each missed call is a missed business opportunity.
Call Answering Operators Aren’t Skilled
This is possibly the most prevalent of all the myths and seems to stem from the misconception that a repetitive job is mindless and thus has no need for skilled operators. On the contrary (as anyone in this type of role will confirm) whilst the act of answering a phone is repetitive, the calls themselves will bring a different set of challenges each time. Some calls will be from concerned or angry customers, some from delighted or simply confused ones. The ability to read people and respond in an appropriate manner is fundamental to success in this role and means that you need to be an exceptionally good people person. The kind of person who gets invited to parties out of liking rather than pity...
Anyway, not only are Call Answering Operators required to be great with people, they also need to be able to problem solve, think on their feet and adapt to each new challenge quickly. Not exactly what we’d call the hallmarks of an unskilled individual.
And So
When it comes to your business, customer service is the key to success and if you don’t have the man power or time to dedicate to this all-important area then you can quickly find your business suffering for it. A Call Answering Service removes the stress from your employees and the strain on your business, providing that much needed contact point for your customers who still place the majority of their faith in a phone call.
So, take that Myths. Now, time to deal with the pesky issue of Nessie…
