You are on your own and the phone rings: who answers in the meantime?
Hands full, a customer in front of you, and the line ringing. How to stop choosing between the two.
3 min read
What you get out of it
You keep both hands free, and you stop losing a customer because you were busy.
Whoever gets no answer calls the next one
When a line rings out, the caller doesn’t think « I’ll try later ». They go back to their search and dial the number below yours. By the time you call back, the table is booked elsewhere, the quote is requested elsewhere, the appointment is taken elsewhere. A missed call isn’t postponed — it’s handed to a competitor.
Picking up costs you something too
The alternative is worse: you drop what you are doing. The customer in front of you waits, the pan keeps cooking, the job stops. Every call taken at the wrong moment costs you ten minutes of focus, and there are fifteen of them in a day. You pay for the call you miss, and you pay for the one you take.
What changes in a working day
Your agent answers every call, even several at once. It informs, books the appointment or takes the order, and sends the confirmation. At the end of the day you get the list: who called, when, what they wanted and what was decided. The two or three unusual cases get transferred to you mid-call.
Common questions
- Will my customers realise they are talking to a machine?
- Yes, deliberately: the agent says so in its first sentence. What the caller wants is an answer right now. An agent that pretends to be human eventually gets caught, and trust does not come back.
- What if the request is unusual?
- It transfers the call to the right person without hanging up, or offers a callback. A well-tuned agent would rather hand over than invent a price or an availability.
Topics covered
- answering the phone when you work alone
- handling calls small business
- call answering service
- stop missing calls