Tips for franchisors and wholesalers: how to become the first and last company the customer called

Customer didn’t call seeing your number in the search results, because your phone number caused him to distrust. Mango Telecom specialists found that the “beautiful” number displayed in the search results increases the number of calls: customers are sure that only a reputable and successful company can afford a simple and memorable number. It is also known that the 8-800 number not only removes the psychological barrier of customers from the regions, but is also a favorite number even among customers from the city where the company operates. By the way, if you often call back customers from regions, set up your telephony so that your number is determined by them as local. It is noticed that only a few people are not afraid to pick up the phone when they are called on intercity. 

Customer called but heard short beeps or waited too long for an employee response. There are not many companies to which customers are ready to dial for hours. If your product or service may well be replaced by something similar, do not doubt that on short beeps or endless “Wait, please answer” you lose dozens of potential customers. Here the score goes literally for seconds: the longer a person waits, the less important it seems to your company. Modern technologies make it possible to organize a multi-channel number inexpensively and distribute clients among all managers when it is necessary in the busiest hours. 

Customer called on the phone after hoursbut he was not called back after. Analysts at Mango Telecom noticed that very often customers call one hour before the start and one hour after the end of the company's business day. Most likely, your company is one of those who do not even know about such calls and are likely to lose sales at this stage. 

To avoid this situation, use one of the following methods. 

1. Distribute calls during off-hours by branches in other time zones: most likely, during the initial call, the client will not even understand which region he was transferred to. 

2. Every day, appoint a duty officer who will answer calls forwarded to your mobile phone in the morning and evening. Here, however, there is a danger of scaring away the client with crying children, barking dogs or the sound of the TV in the background. 

3. Hire a special employee who will look at missed calls in the virtual PBX every day and process them. It will be cheaper than losing sales. 

4. Set up voicemail or a program that will send late customer numbers to email. 

5. Finally, another option is to organize a voice greeting: thank you for the call, promise to call back and do it - do it! - his promise. Do not deceive customers at eight o’clock in the evening with phrases like “Now all the operators are busy, but our call is very important to us, so stay on the line.” The client could not stand the conversation with your complex and long voice menu. Actually, a voice menu (IVR) can be a true salvation for your sales team if you set it up correctly. It removes the need for the secretary to participate in the sales process, because your customers are probably no more stupid than the girls in the reception and they themselves can perfectly navigate with whom they need to talk. But for this, the voice menu should help them in this: configure it based on the needs of the client, and not based on your organizational structure. 

In other words, do not offer the caller a choice from the “sales department”, “development department” and “customer service department”. Better offer him a choice for those who are already a client of the company and for those who are just thinking of becoming a client of the company. Make your voice greeting as short as possible: only the largest banks can afford to tell the subscriber about the conditions of a new loan for two minutes. Analyze the number of calls lost during the IVR phase. If it is prohibitively large for you, rewrite the text. 

Also pay attention to what choice in the voice menu clients make most often. If, for example, the selection under the three button is the most popular, move it under the first button. So you spare most of your subscribers to listen to what does not apply to them. The client could not stand communication with your employees. This is not even about impolite and unfriendly managers, but about the bureaucracy that may arise during telephone calls. 

What are we talking about? Probably, you at least once called a mobile company and you know how tired it is, switching from one employee to another, to repeat each of them their name and reason for the call. In many virtual exchanges, you can save customer data so that all other managers can see who they are talking to. Instant identification will pleasantly surprise your potential buyer. In addition, to increase the number of sales at this stage, try to abandon the system of even distribution of calls to managers at different levels. 

Mango Telecom experts have calculated that department sales increase if all calls are first transferred to the most qualified manager, who handles complex tasks faster and transfers simple ones to a less qualified colleague.