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!