Why Effective Call Answering Has Never Been More Important
As the impact of COVID-19 continues to be felt, effective call answering has never been more important for your business.
With many firms having instructed employees to work from home in an effort to curb the spread of the virus, remote working has surged and now become the norm for many businesses across the United Kingdom. We’ve replaced physical meetings with telephone calls, video chats, and even more emails!
But what does this mean for your customers?
If your team is now split across multiple locations and you no longer have a physical office in operation, who is fielding your inbound customer calls? In this age of uncertainty, customers need reassurance that your business is open and continues to support them. They may also have more questions than usual regarding how your business is currently operating and need additional assistance due to the lack of face-to-face communication.
Because it’s more difficult to meet with customers in person, the telephone could become your greatest asset. It’s critical to make sure you answer every call promptly and professionally. One way to achieve this is simply to instruct your usual receptionist or switchboard operator to handle calls as they usually would. However, there are a few new challenges you may need to overcome:
- Technology: does your reception team have the necessary equipment to fulfil their obligations and answer every inbound call? Even if they do, does their home environment have the capacity to support two computer screens and enough lines to be able to answer and patch calls?
- Cover: who will manage the phones when your receptionist inevitably needs to take comfort breaks or stop for lunch? It’s no longer as easy for someone to just jump on the front desk and cover for an hour.
- Support: What happens if your receptionist has technical issues with the phones or is unsure of how to handle a particular call?
These issues are surmountable but it’s good to be aware of, and plan for, anything that could go wrong when moving your reception service to a remote setting.
A call answering service can help
Outsourcing your telephone call answering to a dedicated third party might be the answer. An effective call answering service gives you access to a team of highly trained, professional receptionists that are experienced in handling phone calls from a range of different industries. The one thing we can guarantee about our team? They will answer every inbound call to your business without fail! You’ll always have cover – no lunch breaks, comfort breaks, holidays or technical issues here.
You may have a voicemail service set up for when your receptionist is unavailable, but nothing beats human contact. In fact, in recent years we have seen people move away from leaving voicemails, choosing rather to hang up the phone and look elsewhere than wait for the dreaded beep. With the current climate being challenging for a lot of businesses, it’s imperative that your customers or stakeholders are taken care of and every potential opportunity is captured and dealt with appropriately.
What if I already have a receptionist?
If you are simply looking for additional support or extra cover for your existing reception team, a flexible call answering service can support you with this too.
You may want your receptionist to focus on more specific aspects of your telephony strategy and therefore use a call answering service to deal with more general enquiries. Or, perhaps you’re looking for peace of mind that the phones will be answered when your receptionist takes breaks during the day.
Bear in mind that some employees may not be able to work their regular hours from home if they’ve had to take on childcare or additional caring responsibilities related to COVID-19. So, a call answering service will plug any gaps when your receptionist or members of your team are not available. You’ll never miss a call again!
Next steps
If your business has changed due to the impact of COVID-19 and you want to learn more about a call answering service, please do get in touch! We can create a bespoke and flexible quote that’s tailored precisely to your business needs and budget. Alternatively, give us a call on 020 8906 6666 – we guarantee we’ll answer!
