|
According to recent studies, nearly 4 out of 5 people
calling into a small business who get voice mail do not leave a
message. And it’s likely that this trend will only increase in the era
of text and instant messaging features built into smart-phones.
Some of the psychological reasons that people don’t like to leave
voice mails is that customers inherently understand that voice mail is
not real-time, and not checked frequently. Yet we live in a world of
increasing urgency where minutes today are the equivalent of tens of
minutes in the pre-Internet age.
The other is that search engines have taught us that even for local
businesses and professional services, competitors are just a
mouse-click away. Rather than leave a voice mail and wait for a
callback, many people will simply search for another vendor. Studies
from Google and MarketingSherpa have shown this over and again.
For business owners as well, voice mail can be a
hindrance. Honestly, who likes sifting through and listening to each
voice mail message, scribbling down callback names and numbers,
|
|
having
to hit the repeat button to clearly hear digits, and then to clear out
the voice mail inbox?
IVR can help
An Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system can help
funnel your calls so that customers who wish to speak to someone in
sales can press, for example, [1] and have those calls
forwarded to a cell phone (you probably don’t want to send those calls
to voice mail), but those who have general inquiries such as directions
or office hours can service themselves by pressing, say, [2].
Not only can such systems route the more urgent calls to the right
person and phone number, but it also reduces the chances that someone
looking for general information will abandon due to a voice mail
greeting. For instance, if someone is calling to see if the local
dentist down the block from their home is open on Saturdays, they
could hear an option, “To hear our location and office hours, press
2,” instead of a general greeting—which gives them the opportunity
to simply hang up and do a Google search for a dentist down the block
from their office instead.
|
|
Think about sending your sales leads to an answering service off hours
A new trend in voice mail systems is speech to text
translation. These systems attempt to convert the audio
of a recorded message to text, sending you the message as an SMS or email.
The problem is, with 80% of your callers hanging up when they hear
the voice mail proompt, you’ve lost your sales lead. For the few
that do leave a message, the accuracy of the translation leaves a lot
to be desired.
That’s why Halloo came up with a new type of answering service, that you can subscribe to on demand. Send just your
sales overflow to the Halloo live receptionist, or just your evening
or weekend calls. You can prioritize your call routing to balance between
cost and service level.
On-demand answering services like Halloo’s only
charge a couple of dollars per answered call, so unless your product
and service have razor thin margins (like the Dollar Store) think
about making this investment. It’s easy to set-up and rarely does it
not lead to positive ROI.
|
