Why your business’ call answering still matters

You might think that with all the ways we’ve got to communicate with a business today, picking up the phone is one of the last things we’d think about.

Especially with all the things you read about young customers who prefer messaging, chatbots and basically anything that saves them from having an actual conversation with someone.

But you’d be wrong.

In fact, about 60% of all customers still say that picking up the phone is their preferred way to contact a business, especially small businesses.

It’s easy to underestimate the importance of call answering for a business today.

Afterall, why worry about missing a call when your customer can easily message you, fill out a form, ‘talk’ to a chat bot or send you an email?

The problem with all that, is you’re trying to get your customers to contact you in the way that’s most convenient for you.

They expect, and deserve, to be able to contact you in the way most convenient for them.

So, considering that, here’s why call answering is still important for businesses.

1.  More personal customer service

Having a chat function on a website or a live messaging service on your social media posts is all fine, but it doesn’t get away from the fact that it’s impersonal.

And when you’re a customer trying to solve a problem, or find something out, you want to feel like you’re being valued and not just treated like a number.

Having a person on the other end of the phone who actually answers when you call is an easy way to create more personal customer service.

By connecting customers with a person, they’ll feel more valued and like they’re actually being listened to.

Rather than forced to fix all their problems themselves with the help of a short how-to guide on your website.

2.  Easier communication management

One of the setbacks of having so many forms of communication for your business, is that you have to manage them all.

If you’re a smaller business, trying to keep on top of three, four, even five potential methods of communication can be impossible.

Even if you’re running a bigger business, it could still end up costing you a lot of money hiring someone to manage your web chat, email, calls, messages and everything else you use.

But by putting some investment into your call answering, you only have one thing to manage, and that’s a direct line between you and your customer.

They don’t have to jump through hoops to get in touch with you, and you get to spend more time helping them.

3.  Happier customers

We’ve all had that experience as a customer when we need to get in touch with a business to get help or ask a quick question, only to be met with complicated website instructions or popup chat boxes.

All we want is to call someone, explain what the problem is, and get it fixed as soon as possible.

For those instances, having someone available at the other end of the phone, even if they take some details and let the customer know the problem is being looked at, can go a long way to creating happier customers.

4.  Help your reputation

Reputation for customer service is everything in today’s business world.

In fact customer service is up there with price and product as one of the deciding factors customers use when thinking about where to go and whose services to use.

If you get a reputation as a business that’s hard to get hold of, customers will quickly turn away from you and find another business that’s actually there when a customer needs them.

5.  Create more confidence for customers

As a customer, you know the reassurance you get when you see a phone number attached to a business in a directory or on their website.

Even subconsciously just seeing a phone number improves our confidence that a business is available, and there’s an actual person at the other end of the line who can help us when we need it.

Yes, having emails and web chats are important today.

But there’s nothing quite like talking to someone and having your problems solved by a person.

It’s a mistake to discount your call answering

With so many channels of communication available to customers today, you might think it’s easy to just let your call answering fall behind.

If a customer calls you and you don’t answer, it’s not like they can’t get in touch with you some other way, right?

Wrong.

In reality, customers have so much choice about what to buy and who to buy from that failing to pick up the phone to them can easily lose you a sale.

Also, sending a paying customer to voicemail or asking them to fill out a web form so you can get back to them when it’s convenient to you is a sure way to put that relationship in jeopardy.

Customers want to be able to contact you on their terms, when they want.

So if they choose to call you on the phone, you need to make sure you’re there to answer when they do.