Six Ways to Minimize Sales Losses Due to Voicemail
Last week, I was talking to Al Jones of Here’s the Scoop in Airdrie, AB. He was saying how Monday mornings find their voicemail box practically full but with very few messages left. These are calls where people listened to the message but choose not to leave one. This situation is not unique and is found in varying degrees by all companies here in Alberta and BC.
Why are few messages left? Largely, its a cultural shift where the fastest and easiest way to get a response is by telephone, and of the most unreliable… voicemail. When your callers reach voicemail, they have a choice to leave a message or not. When they have an urgent need and voicemail will not do, their options are to Google, send an email, call back later or call the next person who may be available. All of these mean that you may not have the opportunity to serve that caller again.
Six Ways to Reduce the Rate of Abandon Calls and Increase New Customers to Your Business.
- Answer the Phone, The best way to ensure the callers don’t phone someone else, is by answering the call.
- Get a Dedicated Sales Number. New customers are more likely to abandon voicemail and call someone else. With a dedicated Sales number, you can give the calls a higher priority and extended answering hours.
- Make your calls ring on more than one phone and more than one person. Calls can be redirected to both office and cell phones giving more opportunity to answer the call regardless of situation.
- Clearly define when you will be returning messages. Use your voicemail message to let them know when they’ll be hearing back from you and keep it short. When they know you will be responsive to a left message, they’ll be comfortable waiting for your reply.
- Extend the time to ring before voicemail and allow for more opportunity to answer the call.
- Use voicemail to email to get your missed calls immediately and returned faster.
The more calls that are answered immediately, the less are at risk of being answered by voicemail and lost. If you are an organization of limited resources, we (Helia) can help implement phone features you already have or use new technologies to help you manage more calls with less people and for a lower cost. Call us and find out more.
Dar Zuch
Business Phone Specialist
Helia Technologies
