Businesses cannot work without customers and building relationships, and maintaining those relationships with your customers is essential. Tracking customer emails and response times for those are pretty simple to track, as are times for invoices to go out, but telephone communications may be a bit trickier to keep track of. This goes for missed calls as well.
Customer communication can never be undervalued, and since the number one method customers turn to when something that is important to them needs to happen fast is the telephone, the last thing you want to do is to be unavailable to them when they call. If you don’t have the proper protocol in place, it is likely that missed calls are going to cost you money.
The Reality of Missed Calls
Missed calls can be perceived as a matter of confidence. Whether you a global business owner or a smaller mom and pop shop, you want your customers to know that you have it all under control. This is how you build customer loyalty and, in the end, how you build and sustain your business. Failing to answer phone calls will frustrate customers and leave issues unresolved. This convinces customers that you are not there for them and that you do not have solutions for their issues.
Here are some of the scenarios that may occur, ensuring that missed calls are costing you money:
- A customer calls you and the call rings until the customer gets frustrated and hangs up the phone
- A customer is placed on hold and either assigned to a queue or offered a call back at a later time
- Your voicemail answers a call and the customer is given an option to leave a message or hang up
Now, the scenarios above could occur as a result of insufficient staff to answer the phones at all times or staff that is busy with other calls or duties. This could also happen as a result of not making phone-based customer service a priority, a customer calling after business hours, or not having the right technology to handle the realities of providing great customer service to your customers.
Here are a few statistics that can really put things into perspective:
- 80 percent of communication for businesses still takes place over the phone
- Close to 85 percent of those whose calls are not answered will not call again
- Over 60 percent of unhappy clients will take their business somewhere else
- People are 1.6 times more likely to tell others about poor customer service
After looking at these statistics, it is easy to see how missed calls are costing you money. This is where call forwarding comes into play.
For many businesses, particularly small-to-midsized businesses, this may not seem like a problem on the surface. It is easy to dismiss this idea and not really focus on how missed calls are costing you money. Especially when budgets are tight, phone calls can seem like something you don’t want to invest any time and money into. But, the truth is phone communications are very important.
Unitedworldtelecom.com offers the call forwarding feature in conjunction with virtual phone number set up for calls to and from almost any part of the world. This can be extremely beneficial for business owners and managers who are on the go and do not want to miss calls. When planning to be away from the office, one can set it up so calls can be automatically forwarded to your cell phone or another landline. You won’t have to miss another call. Calls could also be forwarded to a staff member working in another time zone or a call center that covers calls made to your company after hours. There are many possibilities to ensure you resolve the issue of missed calls costing you money.
