As a business owner, we understand that to build a stable business your involvement needs to be overarching, with the freedom to take meetings, have time to research new opportunities and evaluate your strategies and processes. We also understand that if you are a small business, you may simply be too stretched to provide more than a reactive approach to sales and customers.
Without dedicated support to handle calls and admin, businesses often lack appropriate arrangements on how to, what to, when to, and whom to report customer support tasks. When information from a customer call is not recorded and analysed it leads to more work for you and your colleagues and potential frustration for customers due to delayed and inaccurate responses, all the while without any useful information being fed back to you on how to improve your offering and encourage repeat business.
Our aim at Need More Time is to integrate with your business in the same way an in-house receptionist would, and because of this our call handlers have often been praised for their friendliness and ability to provide a professional impression, making small businesses feel well established and more trustworthy to your clients. Providing a nurturing experience for your customers means that they are more likely to recommend and re-use your services, and having in-depth analysis of each call we take for you lets you see the exact flow of your business, channels for marketing or areas of improvement. We’ve outlined below some of the types of information we record on calls and the far-reaching practical benefits to you:
Who they were calling for? –
Have they been directed to the correct department for their issue prior to calling?
Is there a delay in response from a specific colleague that may be holding up work flow?
Is a specific colleague or department being inundated with calls?
Having this information allows you to see which departments receive the most calls for your business, which could highlight areas for business development or increased staffing needs in a particular area. Perhaps you get a lot of callers chasing invoices or delivery, suggesting that your process needs to be reviewed. With personalised call instructions you can sign-post new enquiries, appointment bookings and cancellations, queries and complaints and much more so that no matter the call we can give customers the right information to get the sale moving.
Caller Contact details –
Having up to date contact information for your customers allows you to deal with tasks faster, without wasting time looking around the office for the errant post-it note with a contacts’ number on. Your contact lists may have the main line for a company, but often a caller will want a direct response for an issue, so having their mobile number or direct extension can increase resolution times and improve your customer care experience.
Having the option of both a phone number and email address ensures that you are always able to make contact with callers, making them feel heard and allowing them to proceed whenever suits them best – this demand for flexibility from consumers is exponentially on the rise, driven by technology and the current remote business climate.
Detailed and bespoke message taking -
Our call handling teams make detailed notes from all calls – taking reference numbers, appointment dates, the best time for you to call the customer back, if there is related email correspondence, customer location to check area service coverage, or if they are a repeat caller chasing an update on their purchase. Alternatively, try our Business Assistant service and have your Need More Time team action the requests for you.
Using our unique Call Outcome system, calls are given tags by operators based on the events of each interaction, and with our reports you can quickly see the bigger picture for your business. This can help you gauge the amount of new business enquiries you are getting through our services and see our effectiveness at guiding customers down the sales path. You can adapt to new markets by seeing directly what customers are asking for
By taking a comprehensive message we allow you to find customer details on your systems more quickly, easily filter their request to the right department or contact, then handle their enquiry in a timely fashion.
This efficient handling of clients will have a tangible effect on your customer experience: Many of our clients have received compliments on the friendliness and professionalism of their receptionist teams, without customers ever knowing that we are not in the office with you. Answering your calls is one of our core services, but we take you further by offering customer insights and data that you can use to develop your products and services.
Flexibility is our strength, so no matter the size or sector, we can offer a personalised service with minimum disruption to your business. Take a look at our personalised Telephone Answering services, or to discuss a specific solution we’d be more than happy to talk it through with you, call us on 020 3303 3303.