Letting Potential Customers Leave A Voice Mail is Killing Your Business

With Web- and mobile-based communications taking over as the dominant means of contact for many customers, voicemail is on its way out. Quite simply, consumers have found better ways to stay in touch.

Recent statistics from Forbes magazine show that 80 percent of callers sent to voicemail do not leave messages because they don' think they'll even be heard.  Other surveys show different numbers. Speech technology vendor Nuance Communications recently conducted a survey with Research Now and discovered that 95 percent of those polled find text messaging more convenient than voicemail.

John Jacobs, a leading Communications expert, puts the voicemail abandonment rate at between 50 percent and 75 percent, depending on the type of business.  "Everyone is looking for instant gratification, and if you can't provide that...a lot of times they'll simply hang up," he says. "Companies are losing a lot of business opportunities because people are not leaving them messages. "

How much business are you losing?  If you have voice mail I am sure you have hang ups.  If you believe these numbers and I do, because I will personally hang up if I have an immediate need and I get a voice mail.  All City Communications will answer your calls live without a recorded greeting and also will give your business a friendly voice to be attentive to the needs of the caller before your competitor is.  What do you prefer?  Live answering when you have a need or a voice mail?  

Customer Retention is as Easy as...

Personal contact with customers is a crucial element in the success of any new business – and it’s one of the most common casualties of growth. As a company grows, the President tends to fade away into his or her office. That can lead to loss of leverage right at the point when a company is starting to take off and needs it most.

The danger is that the company can become just another faceless entity that the customer deals with every day. This danger increases in this era of reliance on computers to handle communications with customers. Think about instituting a policy of sending a personal thank-you note to each customer. It’s not that difficult to do if you stick with it. Just sit down one evening per week and work through your list of customer contacts from the previous week.

Savvy companies will track customer contacts in their contact-management databases, but you can get away with keeping a simple Excel spreadsheet of all thank you cards sent. Trust me, your customers will not forget it!

To really kick the personal touch into gear, spend one day per month doing nothing but making “courtesy” calls to your existing customers. Don’t have any plans to do real business – just call to say hello. Your clients will be pleased and astounded that you took the time just to check in. To ready your mind to play the role of friend rather than business associate, make the calls from home that day.

Really any little thing that you can do to make your customers feel that you remember them and care about them is priceless. I have a particular customer that mentioned to me one day that she was a tremendous Ray Charles fan. Months later when Ray passed away, I sent her a little note of condolence. I don’t think she will ever forget that gesture. She later told me that I was the only one who mentioned anything to her that day. She had been feeling like nobody knew or cared until she received my note.

What opportunities to make personal contact with clients are you missing each day Sure, it’s easy to use convenient excuses like “I just don’t have the time,” or “I’ll get to it next week.” Just remember how much more difficult and time-consuming it is to find a new client rather than to keep a current one.

In the end, taking time to keep in contact with your customers will pay a lifetime of dividends both personally and professionally.

Five Ways to Improve Your Interpersonal Communication Skills

1. Seek out opportunities to lead

Great leaders are great communicators, and what better way there is to enhance your interpersonal communication skills than to seek out opportunities to take up leadership roles?

Taking up a leadership opportunity does not mean going after titles; It rather means being proactive and taking the initiative. In a business setting, it may mean voluntarily bringing coworkers together to solve a problem or develop a concept. By forming teams, directing projects, solving problems or leading a product development focus group, you learn how to communicate with people, thereby enhancing your interpersonal communication skills.

2. Take a speech course

If you really want to improve your interpersonal communication skills, then taking a speech course may be an idea worth considering. A good speech course helps you build confidence and teaches you how to communicate coherently. This is by far one of the smartest ways to improve your interpersonal communication skills.

3. Write, write and write some more

Writing helps you to learn how to express yourself clearly. It makes you think before you speak. Because it requires that kind of control, it helps you to personally communicate to yourself. Internal communication precedes interpersonal communication. Therefore, consistently practicing the art of writing can help you improve your interpersonal communication skills.

4. Rehearse with a recording tool

To be able to communicate effectively, you need to understand the way you communicate. By recording yourself, you will have the opportunity to listen or even watch yourself talk so you can observe your body language, tone of voice, language command, confidence level and even what causes you to communicate effectively or poorly.  Once you make these observations of yourself, it will be easier to improve in some areas so you become an effective communicator.

5. Take an acting class

Acting offers you an opportunity to relate with different kinds of people. It can boost your confidence and language command. Because acting lets you communicate on stage in a manner that will be understood and appreciated by an audience, it can be an avenue to develop your interpersonal communication skills. Watch and learn from effective communicators

There are leaders in every sphere of human life and this includes interpersonal communication. One best way to improve your interpersonal communication skills is to watch and observe how effective communicators communicate. If you want to know whom to learn from, think of the people who leave a positive lasting impression on you anytime you interact with them; those who can motivate you toward a course; and leaders who inspire you – but not manipulate you – to take an action.

Why a Property Manager should have a Live Answering Service

My good friend recently relocated from one apartment to another.  It wasn’t to save money and it wasn’t motivated by needing to be closer to work.  He moved for one reason.  He never could contact a person, without leaving a voice mail, to have his issues addressed at his apartment.  The only way he has been able to have his issues fixed was for him to show up in person at the office, during normal business hours.  If he didn’t have time to show up in person, he would call and leave a voice mail and like usual, nothing would ever get fixed or corrected.  His frustration led to him finding a different apartment complex that gives him better service by having better response time and availability to his needs.   

He was explaining this to me this weekend when he told me why he moved.  This made me think to share this story with other Property Management companies.  A Property Management company should have a live voice answering their calls for emergencies.  Some emergency type calls include no heat calls, no air conditioning calls or water flooding.  Some of our current Property Management companies utilize our services for situations I just mentioned but our service also helps their on call people avoid answering every call by having our operators tell their callers, for example, their lock out is not considered an emergency and will have to wait for morning or that if there is a parking emergency, they should call the police themselves or if is regarding an invoice they should call back during business hours. 

We will answer all your calls live, as your company.  The callers will not know that we are not in your office.  We can take detailed messages and dispatch any emergency calls to your on call staff while filtering non-emergency calls to be sent via email in the morning.  We will provide 35 operators to answer any calls live from your callers without the added expense of hiring someone to be responsible for answering the phones after hours and weekends.  We will speak to your tenants and listen to their concerns immediately and based on your instructions, dispatch the call accordingly.  Don’t lose tenants because you have nobody available to answer your calls.  Utilize an answering service to enhance your availability to your tenants.      

Never Miss a Call and Why That Matters to You

I think we can all agree that availability to your customers and potential customers is a key component of business growth and success.  Whether you are in the funeral industry where being available to your families is paramount or in the service industry where many people will search for a specific service such as plumbing or heating in their area, it is extremely important to be available to answer the call.  As important as availability is to your business it is almost impossible to always be available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year including Holidays to your potential customers and current customers.

All City Communications provides a solution to that problem by being available to answer your calls by a dedicated group of customer care specialists 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.  We can answer as your business without the caller ever knowing that we are not in your office no matter what time the call comes in.  After speaking to the caller we have multiple options to dispatch the call to you.  These options include; texting, patching, calling and emailing.  Additionally, you will get a report of the call history and the dispatch result to help manage your employees and to keep record of the caller’s information.

Ensuring that you will never miss a call is essential to the success of your business.  All City Communications has professional, dedicated customer care specialist that will handle the needs of your callers and address their concerns immediately.  Do not let your competitors be more available to potential customers that you are.  Contact All City Communications and we will give you the competitive advantage.

5 Important Items to Consider When Choosing an Answering Service

1. Can I provide a script, or information on how to handle calls for my company? – Scripting is an essential part of a quality answering service.  Scripting requires operators at an answering service ask every question you need and helps the operators determine the correct person to dispatch your call to.  If the answering service you are considering just offers to answer your calls without taking the time to script out the call taking process, pick another company.
2. Are you able to screen and to forward calls? – This is an important question for very small businesses. No one wants the business answering service to take calls blindly (particularly ones from those pesky telemarketers). However, we also don’t want the service giving the runaround to our best clients. So, finding a business answering service that will screen calls, while also forwarding the important ones to a cell phone will be incredibly helpful. Regarding the in between, the person originally taking the calls could answer questions or direct the caller to right place.
3. Are you folks able to handle orders and/or appointments? – Even with all the technology available to take orders online and to book online appointments, many people still like to do it on the phone. If this aspect is still an integral part of your business, then you need a business answering service who can do these things for you and forward you the information. This question also ties in with number one, as the service also needs to be able to see what’s already been ordered or booked. A business answering service will only hurt you if they continually double-book appointments or call customers back telling them what they want is out of stock.
4. How do you handle messages? – Most business answering service companies have messages set up in a number of ways. You can have them delivered via voice mail, text, email, or fax. It’s up to you to determine which is best for you, and which companies deliver in the way that’s best for you. It’s also important to figure out how the business answering service will take the message, as in what information they will, or ought, to take when taking a message.
5. Do you have a business answering service specific to my industry or service? – Those with a law firm or a medical practice might prefer a business answering service that’s experienced in those industries. Obviously, a law or medical practice will need someone who can handle their clientele well, and will be able to get the information they need from the callers. Most business answering service companies offer more than a general answering service, and have either special answering services or at least experience in working with attorneys, chiropractors, startups etc.

5 Characteristics of a Good Operator

Customer Service Experience- I think it's important for someone to have experience working with customers in a professional setting.  It helps them understand how to act in a professional setting.

Active Listening Skills/Deductive Reasoning- I think it's often important for an Operator to be able to listen to the caller carefully and determine what they are calling about in order to not only more efficiently take care of the caller, but also make sure that the caller does not get upset by repeating themselves.

Inflection in Voice (phone voice)- It's often hard to tell someone's tone/mood, etc over the phone.  Having someone that can create the right tone in their voice to the caller can often times help a difficult call be more easy, or comfort a caller that may be in distress.

Empathetic- Being able to relate to the caller and how they are feeling will allow them to open up and get the appropriate questions answered and the customer feel as though they are truly being taken care of by someone who cares.

Patience- Often times callers can be hard to understand, phone connections can be poor, or a caller could be extremely irate.  Having someone that can be patient with the caller and not get upset can be key in handling some of these situations.