How much do you think about your customer’s experience of doing business with you? In today’s marketplace technology has leveled the playing field. Everyone is reading the same thing. But some businesses believe customer experience is the only thing that really matters.
Despite media hype for a web-based, virtual-reality business-world, your first touch-point with a customer is still likely to be on that old standard of business communications, the telephone. There are businesses, and maybe yours is one of them, for whom a call is the very first experience that person will have with the company. This is true for many BellesLink customers, like those that work in real estate investing or recruiting.
Revenue for these first-touch-phone-call companies is directly related to the quality of the customer’s experience on that first call. A good experience and a “sales” (yes, sales is a big part of recovery) opportunity happens quicker, therefore an asset can be recovered quicker. A bad experience and everything costs more, more follow-up calls, more time invested and more lost leads. Success rates go down.
First Touch Phone Call
So, if the first touch a customer will have with your business is going to be a phone call, then their experience of that call, what we describe as a call impression, has got to be good or great.
What Creates a Good Call Impression?
There are four parts that make up a good call impression. If you get two parts wrong, two things that create a bad call impression, the person won’t answer your call, call you back or leave you a message. Costs go up, success rates go down.
But if you get all four parts right, costs go way down and success rates go way up.
1. Local Phone Numbers
The customer impression begins when their phone rings and they look at the phone number. If they don’t recognize the number they will make an immediate decision to answer or not. If the number is not a local number, or from their area code, they’re 4X less likely to answer.
The fix is simple. BellesLink lets you make a call—and get calls back—using live phone numbers in almost every city and state.
2. Caller IDs
At the same time a customer looks for a local number they are also looking at the caller ID. If the ID is blocked, unknown, or identifies a type of caller they want to avoid, they’re not likely to respond. Use a caller ID that is a general description of your business, but not mis-leading one. If the subject of your call doesn’t make sense, given your caller ID, the customer experience—the call impression—will be poor.
The solution is to customize your caller ID to suit the topic of your call. BellesLink lets you set the caller ID for each of your phone numbers.
3. Call-back Numbers
Since the majority of your calls will not be answered, you will be leaving messages with a call-back number. Leaving a call-back number that is different from the number you called is not a good call impression. One reason people do this is to send the call-back to a central office number, after using a burner phone or personal mobile phone to make the call from the field.
Instead of using a mis-matched call-back number, BellesLink lets you make and receive calls on the same number, no matter what the device the call is made from—mobile, tablet, or desktop.
4. Greeting Messages
If the greeting message (either live or recorded) a customer hears when they call you back is less than professional, is inconsistent with your caller ID, or is out of sync with the information you left on their voicemail, the odds of you connecting aren’t good. If they’ve had a good enough impression of your call to call you back, don’t loose them to a poor greeting message.
Your greeting message should be customized, just like your caller ID, to the topic of your call. If your call is about financial matters, use a more formal greeting. Always use a greeting that matches your style and/or the reason for your call.
With BellesLink you can use one greeting and voicemail for all your calls. You can record your own on-hold messages. You can have different greetings and voicemails based on who’s calling and/or the callers input.
Call Impression = Customer Experience
Andy Grove once said, “Be very concerned, when everyone is saying the same thing”.
I’ve said this for years now—”If your only connection to the customer is digital, then you have no connection”.
Are you doing what everyone else is doing? If so, be very concerned. Because you’re making the same mistakes they are.
Phone calls are important to your business because a good call impression is important. A good call impression moves the connection from digital to analog, it makes you real.
The key elements, four parts of a good call impression are: local numbers, caller ID control, call-back numbers and custom greeting messages.
If you have any doubts, contact us. Our phone number is 970.328.0400. Either way, be very concerned if you’re doing what everyone else is doing.