Auto Attendant – Your Thoughts

I recently started asking people for the their thoughts about ‘telephone auto attendants.’  You know the ones, you wither have to press a series of buttons and listen to seemingly never ending menus,  if it is a really fancy system you can speak to the robot and it is meant to recognise what you need.  More than likely it can’t understand you if you have any sort of accent, speak to fast, soft, slow or any other variation along the same theme.

I got some strong and passionate responses to the question. including  ‘Any business serious about customer service shouldn’t use a telephone auto attendant’  In fact someone responded ‘They should be banned’

Why do you make me feel this way?

We agreed but the question remained – what is it about the telephone auto attendant that makes us feel this way.  It seems that when the auto attendant picks up the phone the immediate thought is that the caller is going to be placed on hold for a long time.  The other fear was that of sucessfully navigating through the auto attendant menus and then being cut off for no apparent reason.  The frustration then builds and then the  caller feels that they are wasting their time.  It is clear that callers feel that when they call a business using a telephone auto attendant that they are not getting a good customer service experience and that the business they are calling simply does not care.
Customers want to speak to a real live person that can either help them immediately, connect them to who they need to talk to or feel confident in that leaving a message with a real person the right person will call them back and assist with their enquiry

There is a solution!

Answer-it started working with a client recently who had made decision to move away from their telephone auto attendant.  The feedback they have had from callers to their business has been very encouraging.  People are relieved not to have to navigate (what they confess was) a confusing system.  This particular business has found a solution and are pleased to have made the change to using a telephone answering service as their solution.  If the caller cannot be helped immediatley or connected to the relevant person, then a detailed message is taken and forwarded and the caller gets a timely response to their message.

Technology a step too far?

So  has technology gone a step too far.  Should  customers, reasonably be expected to speak to and deal with robot’s.  My sales experience  tells me that people buy from people, and my customer service experience tells me that people like to deal with people, you simply can’t beat the human touch.  So ditch the auto attendant! and join the ‘Answerettes’ at Answer it in their newest mission to ‘Beat the Bot.’

Is it just me?

I recently had an ‘is it just me’ moment.  My ‘is it just me’ moment was about voicemail.  I really dislike voicemail, I don’t like leaving it and I don’t like recieving it.
I had to wonder if this was an irrational moment and whether anyone else felt the same way.  Research shows that only 1 in 5 people will levae voice mail  and the other 4 are unlikely to even call back on another ocassion.
So I started to ask people about their views on voice mail, on all aspects. 

Leaving, receiving and retreiving.

I found that there was a reasonably even split in.
* Hating to leave it
* Love to recieve it
* Hating all aspects of it.
(yes I know that hate is a strong emotion to relate to voicemail but I wanted to be true to the people I asked and if that is the way people genuinely feel then who am I to criticise)

Leaving voicemail raised the following issues -:
* Feeling nervous about what to say
* Worrying about sounding silly
* Apathy about actually getting a return call.

Loving receiving voicemail came up with the following -:
* Feeling wanted or needed
* The excitement of ‘It might be an order’

Hating all aspects of voicemail -:
* The clarity of the message when retrieved.
* Callers not leaving the information needed to be able to call back or deal with their requirement.
* The pressure and stress that the blinking red light can cause.
* The unknown element of what the caller wants or needs.
* The possibility of an unhappy caller or a complaint, aggravated by having to leave voicemail.
* Uncertainty of, if and when the voicmail gets listened to and actioned.
* If the message retrieved is of such poor quality that a call back can’t be actioned, then there is a worry that the client feels ignored or neglected.
* Hating being a slave to the technical master (in this case voicemail)

I want to speak to a real live person!

The overriding comment that most people made was  ‘I’d prefer to speak to someone (a real live person!)  to be sure the message gets dealt with’
As well as -  ‘Lots of calls, lots of message leaving can be both demoralising and frustrating’
We agree!
Voicemail can portray a mixed image of a business, some might think that you cannot cope with their business as you are just too busy.  Some might think your business is too small to cope, if your office can’t even answer the phone.
All customers want to speak to ‘someone’ a real live person that can listen and understand their wants and needs. 
Even if the person they are calling cannot help immediately, they feel more confident they have been helped and that the right solution / relevant person will come back to them with the information they need. 
In terms of customer complaints, a customer situation where they are  forced to leave a voicemail can escalate the situation.  They may think you are avoiding them, or worse they may feel completely abandoned.  If they get to speak to someone (We like to think of the ‘someone’ as us, the Telephone Answering Service)  the customer can explain the situation, rant if they like, the situation can be somewhat diffused and dealt with effectively as the main parts of the message are relayed and emotion in most cases is taken out of the equation. (By this I mean that if a customer complains to you the business owner it can be hard not to feel that your business (your baby) is not being attacked.)

So what are your thoughts on voicemail?  We don’t know about you but we are human beings and would rather interact with other human beings than a robotic machine who says it is taking my message. We’ve seen i Robot hmmm can we really trust the Robots?
So if you would rather that your customers had a fabulous experience everytime they call your business and you want to eliminate the need for them to speak to the robot then the team at www.answer-it.co.uk  a professional telephone answering service (that offers more than just taking a message) can help you.
We’ll talk about auto attendants another day!

Would your business survive a CRASH Test in customer service?

Contactability

As a business are you contactable.  Can customers reach you when they need something?  Or do they leave a voice mail or have to dial one of the many numbers listed on your business card?

Reliabilty

Can your customers rely on you for consistent service? Surely this is the key to turning them into advocates of your business and recomending you to a contact.

Acceptability

Are your terms and Conditions and they way you trade acceptable to your customers.  Is the way you resolve issues acceptable?

Speed

Do you act quickly in your business.  Are any issues resolved swiftly and without delay?

Helpfulness

We all like to think that we are helpful to our customers, but is it the right kind of help.  Is everyone in the business empowered enough to be able to help?

In recent discussions with various people about ‘Customer Service’ the biggest issue that people complained about was  not being able to speak to someone on the telephone.  People found it very frustrating either listening to the phone ring out or reaching a voicemail. www.answer-it.co.uk can help!

Getting this blog post written has proved a reasonable challenge, in the best tradition of cliché I have wrestled with many interruptions!
All of us are bombarded with interruptions on a day to day basis and with the rise of portable technology it seems there are fewer places, if any to escape to.
Email, phones ringing, instant messages, pagers and sms alerts are just some of the interruptions we all have to deal with.  In today’s fast paced world time is our most finite resource.  It is a great equaliser no one anywhere in the world has more than 24 hours each day to utilise.

It has been estimated that interruptions consume almost one third of our working day. Of course an interruption is by definition  ‘an obstruction or hinderance’ in reality it is nothing more than an unexpected event. (This is where the ‘Attention Management’ bit comes in)
Many people categorise interruptions into two categories good (when I do the interrupting) or bad (when I am interrupted.)  However more scientifically interruptions can be categorised as follows.

Total Interruption – eg a telephone conversation – in this instance no focus at all remains on the original task
Dominant Interruption -  eg a walk –The original task is allowed to develop at the back of the mind
Partial Distraction – eg Instant messaging – Attention is drawn away from the original task letting it proceed more slowly and less accurately.
Background Activities – eg listening to music – Without the intensity of the above but still affecting progress.

How we deal with interruptions is also important. Many of us (aprox 73%) deal with them immediately to get them out of the wayand experience a sense of closure.  Although this is admirable, the original task we were dealing with is bound to suffer.  The most disruptive Total Interruption occurs in one of two forms, either in person or over a communications medium such as Email SMS or Telephone. 
Franck Tetard of Institute for Advanced Management Systems Research, Finland. Produced the Interruption Process Model, a complex piece of research which highlights the effects of interruptions.
Research suggests that more than 60% of interruptions can add between 10 minutes and 1 hour to someone’s workload.  The recovery time after the interruption, depending on the intensity of the interruption and the original task, in nearly half the cases, was between 5 minutes and 30 minutes.

The impact on all sorts of businesses is clear, time is being lost through interruptions.  Accountants I am sure could do without telephone interruptions throughout January.  Designers could do without interruptions while doing what they do best or while preparing a presentation, Electricians, Plumbers, Carpenters, Builders, Tree Surgeons all need to focus on the task at hand or the consequences could be terrible.

The most pressing of these is the telephone.  Not least because of the noise it emits when demanding your attention, but the thoughts that go through your head before you answer. Is it a potential customer, it is an existing customer, is it a sales call, is it a recorded message…. The possibilities are endless.

If you would like this Total Interruption taken care of the and help with your ‘Attention Management,’ the team at Answer-it  (recently dubbed ‘The Answerettes’) are ready to be interrupted!  http://www.answer-it.co.uk

So 2010 is upon us and the pressure is on for resolutions.  So aside from the usually, lose weight, be more healthy personal New Year resolutions, have you made any for business?

Personally I have a few in mind that use words like ‘target’ and ‘focus,’ having had a brief chat with Dragons Den Rachel Elnaugh by the power of Twitter.  It may be that what she had to say resound through not just 2010 but the rest of the decade as well.

Rachel suggests creating a list of positive affirmations around the value you intend to give others in 2010, as well as clearing the clutter and she doesn’t just mean the annual office and desk tidy up of old papers and junk.  Have a clear out of the clients that you don’t enjoy working for, suppliers who let you down and employees that irritate you.
She says that during 2010 you should surround yourself with people and things that make you feel good.

So what are your New Year resolutions for business? Improving communication and customer service, time management and out sourcing are a few that you might want to focus on and all ones that the team at Answer it can help you with.  Perhaps now is the time to get a plan in place for those ‘Disaster days.’ You know the ones, when the phones are down, when the receptionist is sick or indeed when the British weather just doesn’t play ball and you need telephone backup.

Duncan Bannatyne had this warning when I asked him for his comments on this blog post.  ‘2010 is the year of danger for British businesses and it is best to proceed with caution.’

So finally my own thought following on from what Duncan Bannatyne warns is not to let you guard down in 2010, don’t get comfortable feeling that the worst is over.  If anything, up your game in all areas of your business.

If you snooze you loose

Sarah was looking for a copywriter to help with her website. She had asked her friends and had got a list of people to call. Now Sarah was working through the list and started to get really frustrated. Call after call resulted in a very polite voice mail message. Like so many other people, Sarah hated to leave a message. What is more, the recordings were so bad she was not going to call back. The third person on the list answered and that was the copywriter who got the work.

How much business is lost every day just because of answer phones? We will never really know how many enquiries we have missed. We do know that people like to speak to people and not a machine! Once we get to know someone then leaving a message on an answer phone is not such an issue – we do it everyday with our mobile phones. However, leaving a message with a total stranger is not quite the same thing.

If you cannot answer the phone yourself then get someone who can. Even if it is just when you are out of the office. I have used a telephone answering service for the last 8 years and messages are instantly sent to me by SMS so I can respond quickly. Shop around and make sure you choose a supplier that is right for your business. In these times of economic slow down we cannot afford to let a hard won enquiry slip though our fingers. ‘If you snooze you lose’ as the saying goes!

‘What’s that? or How does that work?’

When I meet people at various events and networking meetings, they invariably ask what I do. When I tell them about ‘Answer it’ a Tele PA / Telephone Answering Service. These are the 1^st questions I get asked.  So I thought as it was such a popular question, I would attempt to answer it here on my blog.

Essentially Answer it takes telephone calls for businesses when they either cannot or do not want to, including overflow calls.

More than that, the people that take calls for these businesses do much more than perform as a human answer-phone, call centre, contact centre or call handling facility.

At ‘Answer it’ we pride ourselves on being an extension of the business we are answering for.  We are in the business of building great relationships and communication with our clients.  This in turn, means that all callers receive a great service from an informed ‘thinking on their feet’ individual on the other end of the phone.
Our team are able to not just take a name and number and have someone ring the caller back.  They gather all relevant information and details so that our clients are informed and can call back with the relevant information to hand and at a time that is convenient to them.
Where required the team is able to give information to callers or take bookings, payment, even gather information and send out brochures, applications or other marketing material callers.

So how does it work? This is the clever technical bit!

Clients divert their business phone and or mobile to a dedicated phone number Answer it supplies.  They are in complete control of this and can switch the divert on and off as much or as little as they like.  They also have a variety of choices (depending on telecoms supplier) of how to divert their calls. This can be permanently, on busy or no answer or a combination.

Once the call is diverted our system uses a combination of ISDN CTI and CLI Technology does the rest in a matter of milliseconds to alert the team to a call for a particular client.  The Answer it process then leaps into action.  Once the call is completed the call details are sent by the client’s chosen method almost instantly.
‘Answer it’  is totally committed to outstanding customer service, communication, reliability and trust.

Answer it,  Cambridgeshire based Tele PA – Telephone Answering Service
Is offering the 1^st  5 small businesses  to contact them a free month of their service.  As part of Small Business Week (Starting 19^th October)
The service supports all sizes of business but is particularly helpful to small business in key areas of time management, customer service and growth.
By taking telephone calls for small businesses when they can’t ‘Answer it’ helps create a great impression to existing clients and prospects as they get to speak to a real person each and every time they call the business.  Small business owners are often constrained by time and getting tied up on long unnecessary phone calls can be stressful, with that ‘To Do’ list growing longer by the minute.

Interested Business owners should contact Emma Fryer at Answer it on 01954 253770 or Email info@answer-it.co.uk for more details.

Customer Service – ‘Should you get what you pay for?’

Do you expect outstanding customer service regardless of the amount you have paid for a product or service?
Or are you fully accepting that by paying a little bit less you know you are compromising on service.
Would you rather pay a fraction more to know that the service you are going to receive will be much better and you will feel valued as a customer.  Indeed should you have to pay more to be safe in the knowledge that you will be treated well?

My response to the question above is a loud and resounding ‘NO’  I have a choice in who I conduct business with and I feel I deserve great service regardless of who I choose because I have that choice.

If it turns out I made a bad choice and I receive poor customer service, I can choose again.  But we all know that repeat business is a great thing especially when it leads to reccomendations.

So where does your business stand on customer service?  Do you aim to deliver the best experience to all of your customers every time they have contact with your business.

Do you have set standards that your customers can expect and do you regularly exceed these expectations?

On a daily basis ‘Answer it’ helps many different types of business deliver exceptional customer service to their clients, prospects and anyone they might conduct business with.

Until next time.

Emma