High Call Volume: Tips and Tricks to Handle It Efficiently
Phone calls matter more than ever in a post-pandemic world. Customers can’t always meet you in person, so they rely on your voice to solve their problems or buy your products. What if you miss a call? You lose money, simple as that.
You need someone to answer your calls, but you don’t have enough staff.
As a business owner, you have three choices: do it yourself, hire a full-time employee, or use a phone answering service. You can also outsource or hire part-timers, but that’s not ideal. In this blog, I’ll show you why a phone answering service is the best option for you.
Handling Your Business Calls
When your phone starts ringing off the hook after you’ve introduced a product or launched a promo, that’s good news. The least you can do is answer each call and make the phone conversation count. The call may not close a sale, but it will give you a lead.
Unfortunately, when call volume is high, it’s hard to balance speed and quality. Here are experts’ tips when you answer customer calls:
- Limit your call queue time. Based on the “Zendesk Customer Experience Trends 2020 Report”, 60% of customers consider long call waiting time the most annoying aspect of customer experience. Don’t let your customers wait. You can either buy a voice answering machine that can record voice messages for callback or work to process other calls quickly so you can jump into the next one.
- Lessen average handle time. Some customers tend to be chatty or take time to present their problems. Without realizing it, you might have spent an hour on a call. Assess your average handle time to see if you’ve been efficient.
Average Handle Time (AHT) is the average time you spend per call, including any post-call work you do to solve the customer’s problem. To determine AHT, use this formula:
AHT = (Total talk time on the phone + total call hold time + after-call work time) ÷ number of calls.
If you received ten calls in one day and your total handle time is 8 hours (480 minutes), your AHT is 48 minutes per call. That is too much phone time. Consider reducing your average call handling time by doing the next two.
- Prioritize more urgent matters. When customers have many concerns, they talk too much and discuss different issues in one call. Summarize the key points of their call in your head and prioritize critical and urgent matters. Repeat this issue to the caller for confirmation and if you can’t give an answer to the rest, ask when you can return their call.
- Keep a notepad or a list of answers to FAQs. To help recall usual responses to customer inquiries, keep a list of FAQs on your desktop that you can refer to when asked. Keep a notepad near the phone, where you can jot down the caller’s concerns or questions. If the problem is not something you can address, you can take those notes and show them to the applicable department.
- Close the call with a to-do list or action plan. Give your caller a list of your next steps or their next steps to solve their problem. This is to avoid any misunderstandings or misses on your part.
Hire a Receptionist
If you don’t have the luxury of time to handle calls and your other employees are handling core aspects of the business, you might want to hire a receptionist who will act as the first point of contact for the customers. They’re not expected to solve technical or complex problems, but they can answer basic questions and triage calls to ease the call queue. They can also book appointments, set up reminders, and forward messages on top of receiving calls.
You may hire a live or onsite receptionist or a virtual one who can handle your calls remotely. Keep a few things in mind when you choose the latter.
- Hire a person with excellent communication skills in the language you use for your customers.
- If you’re hiring a receptionist who doesn’t live in your area, ensure they can work in your time zone.
- Check on them daily through Zoom, Skype, or Google Meet to ensure they have every information they need.
- Give them the training they need to serve your customers better. Teach them your standard business greeting or give them a call answering script. Hold 1-on-1 sessions if they have questions.
Harnessing the Power of High Call Volume
You might think that high call volume is a problem that you need to solve. It’s actually a sign that your business is booming. There are also some challenges that come with high call volume. If you don’t handle it well, you could end up losing customers and sales.
Here are the two main risks that you need to avoid:
- Customers get frustrated by long wait times or no answer at all. They stop calling you and look for other options.
- You miss out on new leads and opportunities that could grow your business even more.
That’s why you need a proper answering service that can reduce call volume without lowering profits.
And there’s no better answering service than My Receptionist. We have the experience and the expertise to handle any amount of calls for any type of business. Whether you’re a small startup or a large corporation, we can help you turn your high call volume into a huge opportunity for your business.
Best Answering Service for High Call Volume
My Receptionist has been an industry leader in the call-handling space since their introduction to the business world. They’ve managed to carve out this spot for themselves by focusing on the fundamentals that all other call-answering services overlook or just downright ignore. Those fundamentals are “call quality”, accessibility, and customizability.
My Receptionist trains its live agents to handle each call with the attention and care that it deserves. This isn’t one of those services that just rushes from one call to the next in hopes of getting as many done as possible. Since My Receptionist has the manpower to handle a high call volume, its agents don’t have to worry about leaving anyone on hold.
Moreover, My Receptionist lets you develop a custom call script and send it in so that the online secretary service’s call agents can put your script into action with each call. You can learn more about My Receptionist’s core features on the relevant page provided.
Complete Answering Solution for High Call Volume
While My Receptionist may be the best call answering service available, its companion service, Always Answer, is the best complete answering solution. This is because not only does Always Answer offer everything that My Receptionist does, from a highly trained workforce to custom script capabilities but Always Answer also offers additional features such as customer surveys.
Through their customer surveys feature, you can gain valuable data about how your services and business can be improved. Always Answer even records every call in its entirety so that you can review them at any time. These calls are recorded and stored for 30 days at no additional cost to you.
If you want to extend the time that these calls are kept stored, all you need to do is pay a small additional fee. There are many more benefits that this inbound call center service can offer you.
Use Technology to Crush Your High Call Volume Problem
Inbound calls distract you when you’re out of the office or busy with core business tasks. You need to focus, but you also don’t want to miss any opportunities. Here’s what you can do:
- Voicemail. Set it up for every phone unit you have. If you work from home, get a separate line for business and a separate voicemail box. Don’t let your personal life interfere with your professional one.
- Email. Give your customers the option to email you instead of calling. They won’t have to wait in line, and you can reply at your convenience. Plus, you’ll have a written record of everything they say.
- Automated call answering service or virtual phone system. This is the ultimate solution for handling inbound calls. It works 24/7, so you never miss a call. It has a preprogrammed script and routes calls to the right person or department. It can answer most of your customer questions without you lifting a finger.
High call volume can be a handful for business owners, but it’s a happy problem. With these options, you can manage your calls, your business, and your customers while retaining your sanity. My Receptionist offers virtual reception and phone answering services you can hire to keep your office efficient.
Call us today to ask about our services or to hire one