5 Tips For Handling Your Business Calls
You know that every call is important to your business, whether it creates a sale, or it’s an angry customer. It’s a way to learn from your mistakes. How you talk on the phone is extremely important and can be a big deciding factor on your returning business. We all know that there are many different circumstances where you could become nervous or unsure of how to respond, but we have come up with a few ways to handle it. Here are 5 tips for handling your business calls.
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Don’t let a call go passed the third ring.
Try to answer the business call by the third ring, and try not to let it go to voicemail. If it happens that the call goes to voicemail, give the caller a call back and apologize for missing the call. Hiring an answering service if you are a busy business could be a good option for you, you would be saving potential customers and saving on the cost of hiring an in-house employee.
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Open and close the conversation professionally.
Opening the business call with a pleasant greeting can set the tone for the call. A simple way to do this is “Good morning/afternoon/evening this is *insert your name* how can I help you?” or “Thank you for calling *insert business name here* how can I help you?”
With ending a call, you can thank the customer for calling or simply wish them a great day.
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Collect the caller’s information.
This is helpful for many reasons, this could be a potential client or sale so you want to have a way to contact them for whatever reason, it might be because you got disconnected, or even to let them know about a promotion that is coming up. If you obtain their name at the first of the call, be sure to use it during the conversation to let them know that you truly are listening and are invested in what they have to say.
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Create a script or a cheat sheet.
Having a script or a cheat sheet of answers can eliminate the “I don’t know” and having to call your customer back. There will be things that will pop up that you may not know and that’s fine, but adding it to your sheet can definitely help with finding answers on the spot. It means a lot to a customer if you say “I’m not sure, but I can find out and call you back as soon as I can.” That creates a great rapport and balances a trust between you and your client.
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Never make up an answer you don’t know on the spot.
Making up an answer is never the way to go, it can tarnish not only your company’s reputation but also yours. If you don’t know an answer you can simply tell your customer that that is a good question, and you are happy to find an answer and call them back.
We hope these 5 tips for handling your business calls have helped. If you want to hire a virtual receptionist to answer your business calls, please give BaseTend a call!