An SME (Small to Medium Enterprise) that has employees to answer its calls

If we mis-communicate, it’s bad for business
If we mis-interpret the customer, it’s very bad for business
If we miss calls… it’s extremely bad for business

A big misconception that a lot of SMEs (Small to Medium Enterprise) have is that they don’t miss any calls because they have the staff to answer the phones. However, if they have the ability to drill down into call logs and other such details we often find that business owners are stunned at how many calls they actually miss… then routinely become extremely paranoid that one of those missed calls is THE call that is going to land a big customer and then they take steps to plus this potential gap.

This can be for a variety of reasons including:

Staff already being on the phone
Having more staff than incoming lines (so customers hear an engaged tone)
Staff being in the toilet, on breaks or absent from work
Staff dealing with other matters in the company

… and the list goes on… and it’s exacerbated when everyone is working from home and there are lots of other distractions

The good news is that most modern phone systems can produce this data for you, so a company can see what the reality is in terms of missed calls.

And it can be a real eye-opener!

A company in this position has 3 options:

Stay as they are.
Stay as they are, but set a divert in place to a call handling solutions provider so, after a set number of rings, the call is diverted and answered professionally by the call handling company.
Route all incoming calls to a call handling company. Depending on the structure of the company this can be more cost-effective than having staff answering the phones at all.

By using a call handling company, a company can be confident that their public-facing telephone number is being answered correctly, consistently, 24 hours a day and in a professional environment.

The customer also gets a heads-up as to what the call is concerning so they can be more prepared when they get in touch with the caller.

A smaller company that has no employees to answer its calls

Many large organisations use call handling companies as we all know… but what people don’t always realise is that the majority of most call handling companies customers are small micro-businesses, not the PLC’s of this world.

These smaller companies have realised that as the minimum wage rockets, hiring, maintaining, and paying staff is very expensive… and they need to be paid even if the business is not busy. Not to mention headaches like payroll, holiday pay, National Insurance, sick pay and auto-enrolment pension regulations.

Everyone knows how important it is to make a good first impression, but often all of these burdens placed upon the employer make the prospect of hiring too costly, difficult and complex. Naturally they often then choose to route their public-facing telephone number to a call handling company instead.

That way they know that the calls are being answered 24/7 in a professional manner giving a fantastic first impression of the customer’s business, confident that they will be getting an emailed message within 5 minutes with the caller’s details and a description of what they are looking for.

Now an option is for a company to just put their mobile telephone number on their website, and this can work for very small enterprises or when the caller is known to you, but many people misinterpret that message as a company looking unprofessional like the business has no solid foundation.

In this day and age where everyone works from all over the place, it’s often the micro-business that really sees the benefit of using a professional call handling service… allowing them to appear to have an office presence and staff working for them.

Ans to make it even more attractive, you are only paying when calls are answered… not when it’s quiet.

At Call Handling we can assist in taking those worries with call handling away; not only will we look after your queries but we will take the relevant details to make sure you have the information you need.

Why not contact us today and start your free 14 day trial of our call answering service.

In the meantime why not check out our blog post all about “What is call handling?”