Missed Calls in Your Business

90% of consumers expressed dissatisfaction with calling a business.

What was the part that everyone despised the most? Having to contact a company multiple times for the same issue. Second and third place go to dissatisfaction with long hold times and repeat their problem to various representatives.

Most business owners recognize that clear communication with customers is an important aspect of running a business. Whether a current customer is calling about an issue or a prospect is calling with questions, their call must always be answered. 

Missing a call sends the client and potential customer the message that they are not a top priority in your business. You may believe that slipping up now and again isn’t a big problem, but the consequences can be disastrous.

Continue reading to learn what causes missed calls, how they affect your business, and what you can do to avoid them in the future.

What Causes Missed Calls for Businesses?

Calls might be missed for several reasons. It is critical to identify the cause of the problem so that you can fix it as quickly as feasible. Here are a few frequent reasons why your company may be missing calls.

Customer Service Isn’t a Top Priority

Providing excellent customer service should not be put on the back burner.

While other critical tasks such as strengthening internal processes and lead generation must be prioritized, a poor customer service experience can cost you revenue and harm your reputation. When a customer has a bad experience with your company or believes their business is unimportant to you, they will feel undervalued. This may cause them to take their business elsewhere — somewhere where they will be treated better.

The Company Is Understaffed

If your firm is in its early stages or is expanding quicker than expected, you may receive more calls than your employees can handle. Accelerated growth is a fantastic issue to have. However, it is critical to meet your clients’ needs, or else your growth may come to a standstill or even shrink.

If your organization cannot afford to hire more personnel, you must find a better solution – a means to develop a procedure that can handle as many calls as feasible. 

You Receive Calls Outside of Business Hours

There are only so many hours in a day, and most of us wish there were more.

It is unrealistic (or ideal) to expect your personnel to answer customer support calls after typical work hours. If you have to consider shifting workers to handle calls around the clock, you’re probably in need of a new solution.

It is critical to implement a customer service strategy that cares for your consumers and potential consumers even after business hours while also respecting the time of your full-time personnel.

The Impact of Missed Calls

According to studies, missed calls cost firms more than $123,000,000.

Even if you only miss one call every day, that is 365 missed opportunities to keep a current customer or get new business – and these missed opportunities can have a substantial impact regardless of the size of your organization.

Negative Impact on Reputation

Whether they had a good or poor experience, customers inform their peers and share their opinion about a firm.

By 2020, 87 percent of customers will have viewed internet evaluations for local businesses. When this much money is at stake, prospective clients must read glowing evaluations about your company.

Remember, those bad events have far-reaching consequences. If you treat a customer poorly, you can be sure that word of mouth, social media, and internet reviews will spread.

Negative reviews can harm your business in two ways: current clients may feel neglected, forcing them to take their business elsewhere, or new consumers who have heard negative things about your firm may opt not to work with or purchase from you.

You Miss Out on Potential Revenue

The most significant impact missed incoming calls have on your organization is the loss of a prospective transaction. Although clients can convert in other ways, such as forms and checkouts, some prefer to speak with a live person to understand your business better.

If a potential consumer takes the time to phone in, they are most likely a warm lead or require assistance with something.

Waste of Budget

Driving business to your company’s phone lines costs your money. Missing up on an opportunity to respond to a potential consumer is the same as throwing money away. Your marketing efforts, advertisements, and money are all for naught if you can’t communicate with the customer you’re trying so hard to attract.

How To Prevent Missed Calls

Your organization has several alternatives for preventing missed calls. Implementing a call-answering strategy and methodology will assist your organization in reaching its maximum potential.

Set Up Automated Hold Messages or Call Forwarding

Setting up automated hold messages or call forwarding can assist you in recovering from missed calls.

If your customer has an urgent issue that needs to be addressed or a problem that needs to be remedied, they will not mind waiting for a short time to call you. Keep in mind that long hold times annoy, but temporary hold times and a clear explanation of the hold’s purpose let the caller know that someone is working on their call.

Providing a wait-time estimate for paused calls will help improve your customer’s experience. 

Call forwarding allows you to reroute calls to a different location, such as an employee’s cell phone. Using a system like this allows your clients to be sent to the next available employee, which is advantageous for businesses that receive a high amount of calls throughout the day.

Phone systems like this serve to boost your company’s visibility, boost employee availability, and reduce response time to customer inquiries.

Outsource to an Answering Service

Outsourcing your customer service chores and duties to an answering service or call center is a better solution to missed calls.

Answering services provide well-trained personnel who are available to customers and clients 24/7. This includes support after hours, on weekends, and holidays. By partnering with an answering service, your staff will be able to focus on more duties relating to their core job instead of being distracted by taking incoming calls.

Furthermore, using a call center is less expensive than recruiting a new employee in-house.

Create Different Lines for Each Department

If hiring an answering service is out of the question, for the time being, consider implementing different phone lines throughout your company and directing callers to the appropriate queue. Creating a phone line for product inquiries that go to your sales team or a billing line that goes to your accounts payable department, for example, will be a better use of your staff’s time.

Having a phone line for each department allows customers to go directly to the best point of contact without dealing with an automated system or being transferred between departments. This also gives your employees confidence because they know they are experts in the issue for which the customer is looking for a solution.

Multiple phone lines also eliminate the need for a receptionist or staff member to monitor the phone line for all incoming calls, saving money and time for everyone.

Solve Your Customer Service Issue Immediately

You must resolve your missed call problem as soon as possible. This will assist you in maintaining a good reputation, reaching your full earning potential, and effectively managing your budget.

There is a better solution to this problem, such as hiring an answering service, automating forwarding and hold processes, or establishing multiple lines within your company. Select the method that makes the most sense for your company.

A successful customer service experience is critical to the growth of your business. Contact us now to get a quote for your business customer service.