Each day I speak with lots of different business owners over the phone. As you would expect sometimes, I get an answerphone or an answering service. Sometime one of the team picks up the phone.
At times I encounter a pleasant person who answer the phone with the firm’s name and takes the details and they arrange a call back – all great.
Sometimes I get a muffled hello and telling me a I need to call back, when I ask for a good time to do this, I get a reply saying they are not sure.
I sometimes get greeted with a lovely personalised answerphone message with instructions on what I need to do to leave a message and other ways of contacting the person.
All of these work for me.
What isn’t great is message which say you are out of the office 1st January when I ring you on the 20th January (I know January is a tough month but are you really recovering from New Year’s Eve still?)
Or answerphone message which just say leave a message – whom am I talking to again?
Answering services are great as long as the person answering the call is well briefed by you. When they ask me to spell the name of the person I want to talk to….not a great impression.
Picking up the phone when clearly eating doesn’t impress me, nor does them having a side conversation with a colleague.
Or the phone just ringing out, 6 rings, 7 rings, 8 rings, 9 rings, not answer or even worse it then clicks to an answerphone.
Think about it, first impressions count – I could be your next big client or I could be your most important client getting asked ‘how do you spell your name?’
If you haven’t done this in a while…ring your office and see what you get both in office hours and outside office hours. You never know it could be the biggest thing you have done this year to improve your business.
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