When your phone rings and you are unable to pick up, what happens next is more important than you might think. Research also highlights that around 80% of people will not leave a voicemail if their call is not answered! This silent majority is potential clients, partners, and opportunities that just go up in smoke.
For any size of business, such a failure of communication can have severe repercussions. A missed call is a missed opportunity, and in today’s fast-paced world. The answer might be an answering service from Signpost for your business.
The gap between growth and stagnation can come down to simply how easy it is for people to get in touch with your business. Knowing why callers hate to use voicemail and having an effective solution, on the other hand, can entirely change your communication game, and that can make a huge difference to your business.
Why Callers Would Not Leave a Voice Mail
The reluctance to voicemails seems to be driven by several important factors, which are indicative of a shift in online communication behaviors and expectations:
- Immediacy expectations – The modern consumer wants an answer now. 90 percent of customers consider a response “immediate” if it arrives to a customer service question.
- Confusion about what happens next – Most callers fear a message will disappear into never-never land.
- Phone anxiety – A lot of people do not like recording messages and, like real life, would rather have a conversation straight away.
- Past bad experiences — Callers who have ever left voicemails that were not returned would not ever leave one again.
- Other Points of Contact – Prospective clients these days have email, text, and chat options available instead of voicemail.
What Does This Mean For Your Business?
While you are missing phone calls, the potential customers who do not leave a message are not going to wait for you to call back; they call your competition. A study shows that if your business misses a single call, you could lose as much as $1,200 in potential revenue. For a small business, these lost opportunities can make the difference between thriving and just surviving.
Additionally, frequent missed calls can make you appear unreliable. In a world driven by customer feedback, the appearance of being out of reach is bad for business. And when callers cannot get through to you and they do not leave messages, you miss the opportunity to meet their needs, have unhappy customers drag you into a swirl of negativity online, and you do not even have the chance to fix the issue.
Furthermore, current customers who are unable to contact you may feel underappreciated. The annoyance of a missed call without any desire to leave a voicemail can be strong enough to even harm a long-term customer base. In the long run, this barrier to communication can result in reduced loyalty and customer churn.
Solutions and Fixes For Your Business
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Adopt a Live Answering System
A live answer system also assures every call is answered by a person. The beauty of this process is that it removes voicemail from the equation altogether, satisfying the caller’s desire for a prompt response. Common operations, such as passing along urgent calls, scheduling callback appointments, and notetaking, can be handled by the live answering staff.
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Fine-tune Your Call Management Process
Design a set of procedures regarding the degrees of incoming calls during the busy hour. Consider:
- Department or knowledge-based call routing
- It all boils down to how well your staff is trained to professionally manage calls
- Establishing our very own internal response time metrics
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Keep Track of Call Patterns
Log the timing of incoming calls, and when it’s most likely that calls will be missed. This information enables you to distribute resources more efficiently and to recognize high-demand times when extra assistance might be required.
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Leverage the Power of Contemporary Communication Channels
Become available beyond phone calls. To do this, you can:
- Integrate web chats on the website
- Offer text message options
- Create clear email contact routes
- Set social media response guidelines for your organization.
