3 Reasons Telephone Support Is Crucial For Your Growing Business

Toll Free Numbers

It may seem like an antiquated notion to have a telephone answering service or even a receptionist in this day and age.

After all, doesn’t everybody just use the Internet for everything? The truth is that telephone support is just as crucial as it has always been for businesses. You can’t overlook this channel, especially if you want your business to continue to grow.

Telephone Support is Vital to Success

There’s a massive divide in today’s consumer base, with two huge generations that have almost nothing in common playing tug of war with marketers everywhere.

The Baby Boomers are all for the things people have been used to for a long time: telephone calls, television broadcasts and stores that exist in real life. Millennials, however, need what they need right now and don’t mind to order products online if it saves them time and money.

Depending on the type of business you’re running, you may find that you cater more to one generation or the other, but they are both so enormous that you can’t ignore them completely. This is why bricks-and-clicks retailers exist, they’re adapting to the times.

Just like those traditional retailers that now have web arms, your company needs to reach backward and make telephone support available for those who need it.

If you need more reasons telephone support is important for your business, these three should help:

Customers of all ages like using the phone when there’s an issue. According to ZenDesk’s numbers, 48 percent of all support interactions happen on the telephone. In fact, 80 percent of customers prefer to deal with customer service this way. The only support type with a better consumer satisfaction score is live chat at 92 percent to the telephone’s 88 percent.

Telephone interactions can foster deeper brand loyalty. It’s harder to sell to a new customer than to someone who has already bought from you before.

It’s also harder to turn a person who has only ever interacted with emotionless chat bots and self-service tools into a brand ambassador. Callers forge a different sort of connection with companies. They get a little taste of corporate culture and create emotional ties with your brand over the phone via your customer service representatives.

It helps reduce friction to improve sales. Sometimes, you just need a little hand making a purchase. For example, if someone went on your website and was looking for a specific item a friend told them about, it might take them a long time to figure out where to find the thing and how to purchase it. Since the item in question is going to be a gift, the customer doesn’t have a lot of interest in exploring your site right now. They just want to buy the thing.

This is where having a bank of operators or an answering service can come in really handy. That shopper can call up the number, order the item and have it on its way long before they would have gotten their credit card information entered on your site as a first-time visitor. Finding more ways your telephone operators can reduce friction will equal many more sales.

Marketing, television and even the telephone itself have changed a lot in the last few decades, but there’s still a huge need for telephone support. Your shoppers or clients will sometimes need your company’s help and having a telephone crew means that you won’t disappoint.

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