Competition between businesses for a place under the sun is fiercer today than ever before. For a product or service to remain well-positioned on the market, it must limit the number of missed sales opportunities and a great deal of these arise from unanswered phone calls.
Even though the humble phone is now seen as an ‘old’ technology, it still delivers the most qualified sales leads to business. It is difficult to imagine how much missed calls hurt businesses. There is a staggering statistic revealing that UK businesses are losing £31.6 billion each year because they fail to take their calls.
SwitchboardFREE have been offering phone call management services for over 10 years and they have thoroughly analysed anonymous call data from more than 60,000 businesses in the UK alone, millions of calls, and over 100-million talk time minutes to discover the ways in which missed calls affect companies, small or large.
What SwitchboardFREE found was that 35% of calls made to their customers were missed. More disturbing is the general rule that the majority of missed calls rarely, if ever, phone back. SwitchboardFREE had to think of a viable solution to the problem that is costing businesses millions in lost revenue and the answer is simple – you need each call to be answered quickly, by a person and the information gained needs relaying and acting upon quickly.
SwitchboardFREE came up with the innovative Pocket Receptionist to answer calls and gather information from every call. Pocket Receptionist use experienced in-house professional receptionists to take calls on behalf of businesses, thus ensuring a positive customer service for callers, as excellent phone communication is critical to the success of any business.
Consumers prefer speaking to a human rather than stumbling upon an automated voice asking them to leave a message. When customers fail to get through to a provider, the consequences are severe. Research shows that callers are generally reluctant to leave a voicemail and over 86% of missed calls leave no message. 7 out of 10 consumers have ended their relationship with a company due to poor customer service. Pocket Receptionist tackle the problem by providing adequate phone cover to their clients who can choose to have all calls answered by a pocket receptionist or overflow only unanswered calls. Pocket Receptionist can do a lot more than just take a message – they can provide first line customer service, offer initial advice, and even take orders and payments via a hosted billing platform. A real time update is sent via email, SMS or the free Pocket Receptionist smartphone app.
Pocket Receptionist take care of keeping the costs for businesses low. Employing full-time receptionists can add a large amount to a company’s cost base, while outsourcing this function is extremely cost-effective. The optimisation of costs experienced by businesses who have started using telephone answering services, is evident. Up to £12,000 a year could be saved up by using a virtual assistant whilst delivering a more constant service with no need to worry about holiday cover, lunch cover or sick cover.
Companies and professionals are increasingly relying on phone answering services to manage their calls, in turn developing a more profitable business that grows faster. Pocket Receptionist can be used on its own or in conjunction with a smart number from SwitchboardFREE.
Take a free trial at www.pocketreceptionist.co.uk/f
Press release distributed by Newsmakers on behalf of pocketreceptionist, on Thursday, 25 May 2017. For more information subscribe and follow https://twitter.com/newsmakers_pr .