Thinking of engaging the services of a telephone answering service?

Good for you, taking control and making sure you are providing fantastic customer service and ensuring you don’t miss any business. There are lots of service providers out there and in essence each does the same thing. However not all answering services are created equal. It really isn’t a, one size fits all first result after a quick ‘Google’ will do.

What do you want from an answering service?

Have a very clear idea of what you want the service to do for you. Make sure you speak to someone and chat about your requirements. Make sure your requirements are fully understood, as well as the type of business you operate and how you operate.

Getting the right phone number

Do you need a phone number to be supplied for your business if you don’t have one already? If so make sure that you have explored all the details of what is on offer. 0845 0870 and 0800 numbers are all fine if called from a land line but for people calling from a mobile phone there are cost implications to consider.

Think about an 03 or other geographic number instead as more and more people make calls from their mobile phone. Be clear on who actually ‘owns’ the number and what are the implications if you move away from the service? Would you want to lose all your past customers because they have the wrong phone number if you don’t own yours and can’t take it with you?

Questions to ask your potential provider

1. Can I divert my calls?
2. What hours does the service operate?
3. Will I be allocated a receptionist or PA?
4. Are the operators located in one place or do they work from home?
5. What environment are your calls being answered in?
6. How will my messages be delivered, by Email or SMS or even Fax?
7. Does the service offer a trial period?
8. Do you offer diary management, to book appointments?
9. Does the service charge for sales calls / recorded messages?

Paying for your service

How does the service, charge? Some charge by the amount of time a call takes, others charge by the message. Some services offer a Pay As You Go BUT beware there may be a minimum spend or ‘credit’ per month.

Top tips

Make sure you have a read of any case studies or testimonials that are on offer to get a feel for how the service benefits other businesses.

Make sure that the contract period you are entering into is acceptable. Some offer a standard 28 days others up to 3 months, be aware of what you are signing up to.

Finally make sure that you can communicate with the service easily and any preferences you have can be changed or updated without a lengthy procedure.

Contact Answer-it today to arrange a free trial of the service.

Originally published as a guest post by  Chris Markham,  of Bizfix, the Cambridge-based business advice and support company

Do you use a mobile phone for business?  Is it the only number listed on your business card or is it one of many? 
If so I would like to think that the information I am about to share might make you rethink.  Having asked people for their opinions about the use of mobile phones in a business environment, the following shares some of these views.  As well as pointing out some pretty obvious downfalls of using a mobile phone for business.

New Technology

Now don’t get me wrong mobile phones are great and the advent of new technology means mobile phone can be a brilliant tool in business.  You can use it as a GPS device, respond to your Email, access the internet and keep up in the world of social media.  Who knows you might even be reading this blog post from your phone!

A Practical Solution or Not?

 However there are some problems.  If you only have a mobile phone number listed as your contact number for your business, for some it raises issues.  From a purely practical point of view using a mobile can be tricky.  If you are away from your landline phone, you are probably engaged in another activity, perhaps a meeting or performing task for a client so probably unable to answer your mobile phone.  It may also be unsafe to do so especially if you are driving, even if ‘hands free.’  If you are out of the office and can answer your mobile phone, it is unlikely you will be able to look up details a caller needs.  It is also unlikely that you are able to make coherent notes, so that you can return the call later.

 Understandably you may think that using a mobile prevents people from having to use voicemail.  If your phone is in a bad signal area or you cannot answer, the issue you were trying to avoid rears its head again.  Callers are forced to listen to that dreary monotonous voicemail recording.

Professional or Not?

Consider also; how professional it is to speak to a client or indeed a prospect when you have little signal and the sound quality is poor.  Worse still if the call is dropped.

 Factor in also that the public perception of a business operating with just a mobile number is fairly gloomy.  Having asked a variety of people it throws up lost of issues of trust and experience.  Clearly the trust factor is huge and for many the thought of paying a company who operate with only a mobile number is a big cause for concern. Questions such as ‘will they be there tomorrow, or if something goes wrong?’ start to crop up.

In fact someone I discussed this matter with told me that if you accept credit card payments the merchant services provider requires the business to have a landline.  Another I spoke to said simply that they found the practice screamed, home office, and unreliable.’ Also making the point that these numbers as well as 0845 or other non geographic numbres can be pointed enywhere.  Others also commented that calling a mobile phone from a landline is or at least perceived to still be expensive by many.

 If many numbers are listed you do risk sending callers of on a bit of a treasure hunt to be able to contact you, dialling number after number with no success can at best be annoying and at worst why should your customers have to ‘hunt’ for you?

Damaging to the Business and Brand?

So the image and branding of you and your business may also be put on the backfoot if you are only displaying a mobile phone number or indeed a list of numbers.

The Answer?

We may be biased but wouldn’t it be better to advertise / display just a landline number, and have it answered efficiently and professionally each and every time someone calls your business?  There are other solutions but we think that http://answer-it.co.uk fits the bill and judging by our testimonials so do many of our clients.

Until next time.

Auto Attendant – Your Thoughts

I recently started asking people for the their thoughts about ‘telephone auto attendants.’  You know the ones, you either 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 too 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  the  caller then 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 that 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 the 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 receiving 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 leave voice mail  and the other 4 are unlikely to even call back on another occasion.
So I started to ask people about their views on voice mail, on all aspects. 

Leaving, receiving and retrieving.

I found that there was a reasonably even split in.
* Hating to leave it
* Love to receive 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 voicemail 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, www.answer-it.co.uk a Professional Telephone Answering Service)  the customer can explain the situation,  the situation can be 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!

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.

Road safety charity BRAKE in it’s guidance on Eliminating Driver Distractions, advocates a complete ban on mobile phone use, hands free or otherwise, whilst driving. Roz Cumming, Fleet Safety Forum Manager at Brake, said “It is all too tempting for drivers to let their mind wander from their driving – yet in a split second their distraction can cause death.’

The information goes on to question, if being on the phone for business whilst driving creates the right impression?  Speaking on the phone in the car whilst driving makes you sound distracted and frantic.  You are unable to consult relevant paperwork or take notes.  Consider how irritating it might be for the person you are calling, especially if reception fails and you get cut off.

Having considered the following research carefully and factoring in the statistic that only 1 in 5 people will leave voice mail, we believe that there is a much safer and far more professional approach than diverting the office phone to your mobile. Use a telephone answering service preferably the services of our fabulous team at Answer it.  However safety first and even if you do want to use a telephone answering service and you prefer to just use voice mail, make a change and be safe!  No telephone call, no matter how great the deal, can compare to the devastating effects that could be caused by you, speaking on the telephone whilst driving.  No telephone call is that important.

December 2003 saw the introduction of a fixed penalty for drivers using a hand held mobile phone whilst driving.  In February 2007 the fixed penalty was doubled and there was an addition of 3 penalty points.  This new law now includes an additional offence. ‘Causing or permitting a driver to use a hand held phone whilst driving.’

Obviously this puts the onus of responsibility, and therefore liability, onto the employer.  ROSPA (Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents) points out that installing hands free kits, whilst not contravening the ban, does mean that employers may still fall foul of health and safety laws.  If an investigation was to determine that the use of the phone contributed to an accident they could still be held responsible.

ROSPA point out that in certain circumstances even driving hands free can be illegal.  Depending on the individual circumstances drivers could be charged with ‘Failing to have proper control of their vehicle’ or could even be prosecuted for ‘Careless and dangerous driving’

The Transport Research Laboratory conducted a series of studies that underlines the dangers of using hand held and hands free mobile phones when driving.

 In the first study the TRL research team concluded that in some aspects of driving the impairment of using a hands free phone whilst driving was worse than that of having the legal blood alcohol limit (80mg / 100ml.) This level of impairment, worse than this widely accepted benchmark of reasonable performance, highlights the increased accident risk caused by mobile phone conversations when driving. In closing the research states that. ‘Drivers need to be strongly discouraged from any mobile phone activity whilst behind the wheel’

The second study was intended to benchmark the impairment to driving caused by use of a hands free mobile phone against other in car activities such as adjusting the radio or temperature controls.  The research shows that drivers making a hands free call were more distracted, showed worse response time, poorer speed control and a marked reduction in situation awareness when compared to other activites.  The study also points out that there was a;  ‘distinct effect on the quality and character of the conversation.  The rate of talking, the number of pauses, number of errors and performance on verbal and numerical reasoning tasks all deteriorate when driving at the same time.’

 ROSPA’s guidelines to employers illustrates the need to raise awareness amongst staff of the dangers of using a mobile phone, even hands free whilst driving.  They recommend that mobile phones are switched off whilst driving and point out that good communication is still achievable without using a phone whilst driving.

We certainly believe good communication is still possible even with a mobile phone switched off, we have a great solution. www.answer-it.co.uk

 A Cambridgeshire police spokesperson said: “The law clearly states that it is illegal to use a hand held mobile phone whilst driving and we will continue to prosecute people putting the lives of other road users in danger. 
Driver concentration is paramount to road safety and care should be exercised when doing anything behind the wheel that could potentially distract you from the road.”

BRAKE – http://www.brake.org.uk

ROSPA – http://www.rospa.com

Transport Research Laboratory – www.trl.co.uk

Way back in early 2007 I was invited to my very first networking breakfast.  It was a daunting affair to say the least.  An early start surrounded by lots of strangers looking well dressed, confident and articulate.  Having to give my very first pitch to a ‘live’ audience was terrifying. I rambled on about using a Telephone Answering Service and tried in a clumsy way to highlight the advantages of using Answer it Telephone Answering service. The assembled business people were all very gracious I am sure I got a ‘well done’ and even a polite round of applause!  So despite my trepidation the experience was not as bad as I thought it might be.
Afterwards however as ‘Visitors’ to this breakfast meeting we were sheparded off to an anti room and having had a 15 – 20 minutes sales pitch for the organisation were confronted with application forms.  We were helpfully told we could pay by company cheque or credit card.
I struggled to understand what the fees I might pay would cover.  to which I didnt get an answer only the fact that the organisation is a business.

I didn’t join this organisation.  I did however secure one of my 1st clients through it.  This person asked me to substitute for them at a subsequent meeting.  I had my doubts.  Was I going to be subjected to another hard sell pitch.   As this was one of my first clients and wanting to create a good impression I agreed, having ‘checked the diary,’ to substitute.
At this breakfast I met a great lady who let me know about various other local networking events. As I attended these events I learnt about even more events  I was shocked to actually discover what was going on in the business world without me!
Certainly many of these events are ones I might not attend due to the nature of my business.
But the amount out there (just the ones on my doorstep) was overwhelming.
In fact I think if you werent fussy you could attend a breafast lunch and dinner most of the month and never be in the office.

So since 2007 I have been out and about Networking, getting to know people in the local business community.  Finding out how they can help me and indeed on more than one occassion how I can help them.  That is how I see it now.  When I first started networking I made all the classic mistakes I have since listened to speakers talk about and audiences guffaw about (While I silently blush.)

I have found networking to be very powerful.  I have met some great people along the way.  I have referred business to people I have met and been able to ease others into conversations and make  (I hope) helpful and useful introductions.  In turn I have had business referred to me, I have even met people who say ‘Oh I know you you’re the telephone lady’  Great!  That means I can spend time getting to know how they heard about me, what they do and if I can help them or if I know someone else who can.

I continue to network and discover new groups and new people.  BUT what I have been thinking about lately is this.
How many people have the same 1st experience of networking as I did? What happens then?  Do they go quietly back to their office and remain there isolated from the world of local business on their doorstep.  Might those be people I or my fellow networkers might want to do business with?  What if they had a different first step into networking?  We all know first impressions count so what would happen then?…..

Until next time

Emma