August 11, 2017
Why You’re Missing out on Sales
There are many things that can heavily impact sales and the bottom line of your moving company. Things like response time, first impressions, online reviews and presence are all major factors. In today’s digital age, it can be easy to forget the most important form of customer communication: the phone.
Did you know that even with email and technology, 80% of all business interactions take place over the phone? Or that 85% of consumers whose calls are not answered on the first call will not call back? This is huge!
What’s more – Did you know that local moving companies don’t answer their phones during general business hours? Our internal research team conducted a study of 350 local moving companies and found that over 42% did not answer calls during general business hours and 23% do not return missed phone calls within 24 hours.
The fastest way to lose sales is to miss a call. And if you’re spending on marketing, why invest in advertising to get a missed call?
We get it. As an owner with a limited sales team you have to be a jack of all trades and it’s tough to get to every phone call. Being expected to work literally 24/7 is unrealistic for anyone. Sometimes it can be slow and other times all the calls come in at once, making it hard to staff appropriately. Every missed call is a missed opportunity and lost revenue.
Here are a couple tips to help you ensure you get to every phone call:
Configure call queues
Make sure your call queues are configured optimally in an effort to reduce missed calls. Having a call queue system that is equipped to handle your inbound call volume will significantly help with this. Make sure they are configured for each agent, phone number, department and the call center as a whole. At Oncue, we take care of this portion for you so you don’t have to worry about it.
Outsource sales to experts
If you don’t have employees who are willing to remain on-call to help answer the phones after hours, then hiring a remote workforce to field calls outside of your normal business hours (or during) is a great solution to reduce missed calls. It just so happens that we know of a great remote team that would be willing to help you out with this. The best part? They are highly trained and knowledgeable in the moving industry and only charge on a pay-per-booking model.
Start working ON your business instead of IN it
Once these things are set up, start forwarding calls and let them get to work. The best call centers will use a solid call script, have call recordings that will set you up for success and lead to more bookings. Eliminating missed calls and making more money seems like a win! This gives you the time you need to focus on growing your business and alleviates the stress of dealing directly with customers.
Want to listen in on an actual sales call? Email us at [email protected] to get a live call sent to you. Like what you hear? Reach out and we’d be happy to help you get started.
That’s a good point that optimizing the queue for calls would help to make sure that you get through them a fast as possible. I feel like that could go a long way to help productivity. I should look into a way into doing that if I start a business so I could make sure I get to alk the customers in order.
So very true…When I started my moving business waaay back in 2008 one the biggest advantages that I had over the well known established boys here in my town was that I just answered the phone.
I can’t tell you how many times I heard from customers that they were frustrated because the other moving companies never answered their phones or returned the calls that they had gotten…
I had policy in place that everyone got a call within an hour or two…PERIOD. And I put that in my phone message script…it worked like a charm.
Just by answering the phone or calling back when I said I would able to build and boom my business in 2008 in the height of the Great Recession in the hardest hit state in the country, Michigan.
Amazing content right here.