Your answering machine or voicemail system is really quite lovely.
It quietly, and cheaply, picks up the phone every time it rings enough, inviting callers to leave a message for you. Unfortunately, they don’t because they’re not really sure that you’ll call them back. And besides, your competition picked up the phone after two rings.
Obviously your marketing is working, but it won’t be truly energized until you can convince people to leave a message if you’re out. What you really need is a better phone solution.
Packing Professionalism Into Your Marketing Lead Capture
There’s nothing inherently wrong with having voicemail as a backup plan, but to be honest, it’s wasting your marketing dollars and losing you more leads than you may realize. According to research firm Telecompaper, 69 percent of callers hang up when they’re ask to leave a message. That’ll really eat into your wallet.
Fortunately, you can stop the bleed with a little help from an answering service. They can provide professional telephone answering services for all kinds of businesses, from lawyers and doctors to service pros and even funeral homes.
These are just a few of the service offerings that will really electrify your marketing plan:
24/7 live telephone answering. Sure, you don’t usually get calls at 2 am, but what if that one guy happens to think of you and then gives you call? Since your answering service charges for the calls they answer, all the nights you didn’t get a 2 am call don’t cost you a penny. The one night you do, it could be the lead of a lifetime.
Custom hold music. Even though callers don’t like to talk to machines, they are willing to listen to hold music as long as they know someone will come back to the telephone. That’s good news because you can use that hold time to offer additional promotions or introduce new products, boosting your sales dollars per customer.
Virtual receptionists. If you’re really ready to roll out the red carpet for your callers, or you’d like to get to know your answering service team a bit better, choosing a virtual receptionist ensures that your callers will always get the same handful of people when they call.
Your team will be the only people who answer your phone, giving you the same flexibility you’d have if your receptionist was in-house. The callers who are new to your company won’t know the difference because they’ll get the same high-quality attention that you’d give them yourself, and the impression your answering service will leave will stick with that lead through the sales process.
Answering Services and Marketing Go Hand In Hand
You don’t have to go all out and buy the most expensive telephone answering service package out there, even investing in a starter plan will make a world of difference to your marketing efforts. Every lead that hangs up on your voicemail has the potential to influence the decision of everyone in their circles.
Do you want to be the company that gets a reputation for leaving callers hanging with voicemail?
