Member Article

Survey highlights the importance of telephone answering services

You could be forgiven for thinking that nobody picks up the phone anymore. Ofcom recently announced a 5% drop in calls made on landlines and mobiles, and with the surging growth in the use of smart phones, social media and text messaging, it’s easy to get carried away with mobile optimisation and social media engagement. A survey carried out by CSnotepad has highlighted that for 37% of business owners and managers in the UK, the telephone is still the most popular customer service communication channel.

The Virtual Receptionist Survey asked 300 UK business managers and administrators about their businesses, their customer service communications and their awareness of outsourced customer services. While email was given as the busiest customer service channel with 56% of the vote, the telephone still represents the majority of customer service communication for over a third of the businesses quizzed.

In many ways telephone customer service is the hardest to get right, as it happens in real time. While emails have expected response times, telephone calls come from people who need immediate answers. There might not be time to have a conference when the customer is waiting on the other end of the line.

For self-employed people, or small businesses, telephone answering can seem like a waste of time – there are so many more productive and influential activities which you could do with your time, so outsourcing customer services such as telephone answering makes a lot of sense. The problem is that many are not aware that outsourced customer services can offer more than message taking and call forwarding.

The survey highlighted that nearly two-thirds of business managers and administrators in the UK were unaware of the full range of virtual receptionist services available. Just 39% said they understood that order taking, call forwarding and diary management could be included in a telephone answering service. Outsourcing customer services helps small businesses to free up resource to focus on other business objectives.

Nearly a third of respondents said they would be prepared more for a telephone answering service if additional services were available including order taking, call patching and voicemail. The best telephone answering services are tailored to their client’s needs, with phones manned by representatives who understand the business, its protocols and objectives.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Alan Cairns .