Is your smartphone keeping you a prisoner in your business?

Hey there,

One of the things that can really tie a small-business owner to their business is their phone.

Whether it's dealing with new enquiries or answering questions from existing clients, or, heaven forbid, dealing with a complaint, the owner often feels like they are the only 'competent' person to answer.

Worse, by hogging the phone-answering role, owners miss calls, which could be costing them business:

• According to research published in 2022, micro-businesses that do not answer calls can lose around 30% of potential customers.
• Data from 2022 indicated that businesses that answered calls had a 50% higher conversion rate compared to those that didn’t.
• Another study from 2021 revealed that 60% of customers are more likely to return to a business that provides a positive phone experience.

Answering the phone is one of those seemingly obvious processes we take for granted. It seems as natural as walking. Yet natural doesn't automatically mean optimal.

So today we're going to talk about how to make answering the phone optimal for your business:

• Answering the phone matters. So we'll talk about how to make sure it gets answered.
• How you answer the phone matters too. So we'll talk about how to make sure it gets answered consistently well.
• What happens after the phone is answered matters even more, so we'll start to talk about how you can make that experience really positive.
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How to make sure calls always get answered:

First, realise that if you are the only person who takes phone calls, there's a very good chance some calls will be missed. Or that you will find it difficult to take a proper break. So you need to enable other people to take calls as well as you can.

Next, decide whether you want to answer in-house or get a third party to do it.

Basically, you have 3 options here:

• enable everyone in your team to answer the phone
• hire a receptionist, or make one person a receptionist to answer the phone
• hire a third party firm to answer the phone

Which you choose depends on what your business does and how much you have to spend.

What you do:

If keeping your Promise to your clients involves having an experienced and qualified team, who need to spend much of their time concentrating on the work they are doing for your clients, then having them answering random phone calls may be too much of a distraction.

On the other hand, if most of your calls are queries, that require the team's expertise to answer, they may be the best people to answer random phone calls.

How much you can spend:

If by answering all your calls, you could increase your client base, and therefore your monthly income, you might be able to afford to hire a dedicated person to be your first line of support for phone calls. Or you might be able to afford to pay a third party to do this for you.

Here's how to work out how much you could afford:

• how many new enquiries do you get a month?
• what percentage of them convert to become clients?
• how many enquiries do you miss a month?
• If those missed enquiries converted at the same rate, how much would that add to your monthly income?

How much of that extra monthly income would you have to spend per month to hire a dedicated phone answerer?

How much of that extra monthly income would you have to spend per month to pay a third party answering service?

In any case, it's probably worth designing and testing your call-handling processes before you hand them over to a third party, so I recommend starting in-house and enabling everyone in your team to answer calls well.

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How to make sure your phone always gets answered well

You might think that phone calls are old hat, that people prefer to text or email, but you'd be wrong. A 2023 study found that 54% of consumers reported losing trust in a business that frequently fails to answer phone calls.

At the same time, it is true that many young people don't like answering phone calls from unknown people.

This is where having a process for answering the phone (and for dealing with what comes next) really pays off.

Not only are you building confidence in prospects and clients, you're building your team's confidence too.

So how do you make sure calls are answered promptly, answered consistently and still feel like a proper conversation between 2 human beings?

Use a proven format for answering calls:

Let the phone ring twice, then answer before the third ring.

Why: so the caller can hear their call 'going through' as it were, but aren't kept hanging on.

Before you answer, smile.

Why: believe it or not people can hear your mood in your voice - even if the words you say don't match. It's well known that putting your face into a smile actually makes you feel more cheerful. The caller will hear that when you speak.

When you answer, use the following form of words:

"Good morning/afternoon,

Why: the 'good morning/afternoon' let's the caller get used to your voice, if that takes a few seconds, they still get the warmness of the greeting without having to actually understand the words.

Saying your business name next, lets them know immediately that they've come through to the right place (or not).

Finally, giving your name narrows down their search further, so they know who they're talking to. And simply giving your name, without the usual 'how can I help you?' naturally prompts the caller to start telling you why they called.

And, as a bonus, it also stops you from turning that 'how can I help you?' into a meaningless jingle - a jingle which will only annoy your caller if they are calling because they aren't happy.

This form of words will feel odd at first, but get people to persevere, and it will soon feel, and sound, perfectly natural.

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How to make sure what happens next is always positive

First, a couple of really simple rules of behaviour:

• be professional.
• be open about the process you are following. As we saw last time, people are fine with inexperience, as long as you are honest about it. What they definitely don't want is false promises. Promises that will only be broken.

Next, triage.

A phone call is essentially an interruption in the work you are doing for other clients. And just because a phone is hard to ignore doesn't necessarily mean the call should take higher priority.

So it's a good idea to apply some simple triage to calls as they come in. Especially if you are a services business, where people are naturally disposed to want to give answers, however long it takes, and however much that impinges on other clients' work.

A good rule of thumb is that if the caller's reason for calling can be dealt with in 'X' minutes or less, deal with it immediately. This would cover putting them through to a colleague, taking a message or answering a simple question. Of course 'X' can vary, dependent on your business - anywhere between 5 and 15 minutes.

Why:

• A 2022 report from a customer experience research firm found that approximately 30% of calls to service organizations are follow-ups related to unresolved issues from previous interactions.
• The same 2022 research indicated that businesses that manage to resolve issues in the first call have a 70% higher customer retention rate compared to those that require follow-ups.

This means that if you can, you should always aim to resolve things on the first call.

A first step would be to start using the answers to FAQs you've started collecting after the last newsletter!

If the call cannot be resolved within your chosen timescale, let the caller know this, take enough information to enable you (or someone else) to resolve the issue, then let them know how you will go about getting a resolution, and when you will contact them to let them know the result.

This could be as simple as 'I'll talk to X/ look it up for you and call you back with an answer by X 'o clock, give me your preferred phone number',

or as complex as 'I'll investigate that for you and get back to you when I have an answer. I think it should take about <time>. I'll call you back after then regardless and let you know where I'm at with it.'</time>

Make sure you do follow up. Even it's only to give them a new deadline for resolution. According to a 2023 survey, about 40% of customers expressed frustration when they had to make follow-up calls to resolve issues.

Here's how this process might look as a diagram:

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Finally, keep a record of all calls and actions taken, and make sure everyone has access to it.

Why: Making promises and keeping them is what businesses like ours are all about.

• A 2023 report found that 65% of customers expect service organizations to have a record of their previous interactions, including any unresolved issues.
• A study conducted in 2021 revealed that handling follow-up calls can consume up to 20% of a service organization's resources. If the call effectively re-starts from scratch every time the caller phones in, this percentage rises even higher.

That’s it.

Here’s what you learned today:

• Getting other people to take phone calls as well as you can is another simple way to get started on freeing yourself up to take a break.
• Phone calls may feel old-fashioned, but there are still plenty of people who like to interact with a business in this way. Being good at answering the phone can grow your business.
• Having a process for answering the phone and triaging calls instils confidence in your team AND your customers, and can significantly increase the amount of time and brain-space you have to serve your clients better.

Why not get started by drafting your own 'Answer Client Question' process? Sketch it out on a big sheet of paper, put a few bullet points under each Activity 'bubble' as a reminder of what to do.

E.g. under 'Recieve Question' you could have:

• Can I answer this in 'X'minutes?
• If not say: "your text"
• Otherwise, Answer Question

Under 'Notify of Progress' you could have:

• Call the client
• Tell them "Your text"
• Let them know when you expect to get the answer

And under 'Notify of Answer' you could have:

• Call the client
• Tell them "Your text"
• Let them know the answer

At this stage you don't need to add anything to the other Activities, since your team probably already know how to Find Answer and Answer Question.

One final, important point. The process covers the usual case. If a client calls with a genuinely urgent enquiry, of course you are going to deal with it immediately. Just make sure the urgency really is genuine.

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Let me know how you get on.

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Thanks for reading!

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