Choosing and Analyzing Your Answering Service

Telephone etiquette is the way you use manners to represent yourself and your business to customers when on a call. Proper telephone etiquette has a major impact on your business as it shows professionalism, creates a good first impression, and creates customer satisfaction.

By following the phone etiquette rules below, you can make certain that your call operators are providing the best customer service to your callers and customers.

Essential Phone Etiquette Rules

1.  Speak Clearly and Professionally
2. Answer Calls in 3 Rings or Less
3. Practice Active Listening
4. Control the Call
5. Remain Patient
6. Use the 7 Ps
7. Smile
8. Monitor Your Tone of Voice
9. Focus on the Caller
10. Complete Quality Checks

1. Speak Clearly and Professionally

Clear enunciation is essential for a good customer call experience! Callers tend to contact your business whenever they are ready to move forward in their buying process, so be sure that they can fully understand your call operators, or it could cost you a sale! 

Along with using a clear voice, be sure to speak at a healthy pace. Speaking too quickly can give off the impression that you are impatient, and speaking too slowly can make callers feel as though they are boring you, which is definitely not good etiquette.

2. Answer Calls in 3 Rings or Less

The telephone answering service industry standard is to answer incoming calls within three rings. Answering calls within three rings gives callers a good impression of your business and shows that value your customers and their time.

While three rings may not sound like a very long wait time for callers, three rings equate to about 18 seconds of ringing.  After this amount of time, the typical caller will start to lose patience and will likely hang up and call someone else- your competition!

3. Practice Active Listening

Listening is one of the most basic skills that you learn, but doing so effectively is sometimes easier said than done. Listening—not to be confused with hearing—is an active process that involves focusing on what the speaker is saying without other thoughts or distractions interrupting the conversation.

Active listening requires you to pay attention to your caller, encourage the conversation, question the speaker, and reflect on what you hear. Review this blog from our CEO, to improve your active and customer service listening skills.

4. Control the Call

Over the phone, a caller has only a person’s tone of voice and attitude on which to base their opinion. A tone that displays confidence will have an advantage over a weak tone. Furthermore, a confident tone commands attention, gets interrupted less often, and is more likely to instill confidence in the caller or customer. 

At Dexcomm, we call this controlling the call. Rather than talking over the caller or allowing the conversation to ramble aimlessly, the call center agent is trained to capture essential information and get that information to the correct party. This is important when you are relying on a call center answering service to extend the professionalism of the business that you have worked hard to build.

5. Remain Patient

One thing you should never do while answering phones is rush or interrupt the caller.

When you interrupt someone in a conversation, it implies that you already feel like you know what they will say. When you cut them off, it makes it look as if you think you know what they’re dealing with. This is something that can definitely agitate a customer, so it is best to avoid interrupting anyone and always remain patient during a customer service call.

6. Use the 7 Ps

Always keep in mind that effective telephone etiquette requires you to be prepared, present, polite, patient, personable, professional, and proactive. At Dexcomm, we refer to these as the seven Ps of call handling excellence and believe that they are essential to proper phone etiquette.

Lapsing on any of the seven Ps can have a negative impact on your caller experience, which can lead to a negative impact on your company’s image and, ultimately, your bottom line.

7. Smile

Smiling while speaking over the phone may sound a bit strange, but it makes a world of difference for your callers. Studies have shown that a smile can be heard because whenever a person smiles, they actually use a friendlier tone of voice. 

A call operator who controls the call with a smile will find that callers return the favor. When a caller hears your smile over the phone, they are likely to smile themselves. With all of these smiles, your customer has a greater chance of feeling heard and having a positive interaction with your business.

8. Monitor Your Tone of Voice

Just as smiling can influence a call, a call operator's tone of voice directly impacts the outcome of a phone call. When speaking over the phone, people are unable to read certain cues through body language, so they base their interaction on the tone of voice of their call agent.

A defined tone of voice is essential in establishing clear communication between both parties.

Remember, the entire outcome of the call rests on the demeanor and tone of voice your call operator uses.

9. Focus on the Caller

In addition to actively listening to your caller, you must also focus on the caller. Focusing on the caller requires a call operator to completely eliminate all potential distractions such as eating or drinking while speaking to the caller, internet browsing, multitasking, speaking to other customers, and even doodling.

While these tasks may seem harmless, they can greatly influence your ability to focus on the caller. If solving your caller's issue isn't your first priority, you may find yourself with upset callers.

10. Complete Quality Checks

In order to guarantee that your business practices great phone etiquette, you must complete regular quality checks. 

You can do this by making test calls to your business line and verifying that your receptionists or call center agents are using professional telephone call handling techniques.

Cost, integration abilities, and service levels are likely major factors you consider when choosing an answering service provider, but industry knowledge should top the list as well. 

Partnering with an answering service provider with industry knowledge will have a significant impact on your customer experience as well as the experience you have as a partner of the provider. 

When an answering service provider has industry experience, they will have worked with companies similar to yours. This will give your provider many advantages.

Industry Jargon

Every industry has technical terminology that has a specific meaning in said industry. Call operators who aren't familiar with certain industry terms will find themselves caught off guard when speaking to callers. 

It is important that your answering service provider is familiar with the terms that you and your callers will use. Remember, an answering service should serve as an extension of your business and have the ability to help your customers in the same way that you would.

An answering service with experience in your industry will have operators who are familiar with industry-specific terms and phrases. This familiarity will allow for a smoother call between your provider's live call agent and your customer.

Expertise With Specific Software

In order to grow your business and properly manage your calls and schedule, an answering service provider should have experience with specific software.

For example, an answering service provider who has HVAC or plumbing industry knowledge should be able to work with ServiceTitan or offer you API integration or CRM integration.

Tip: When determining the best telephone answering service provider for your business, be sure to probe with direct questions about your industry to find a level of experience and knowledge that you are comfortable with.

At Dexcomm, call data integration allows us to offer more to our customers than traditional answering services.

We can sync your field service platform with Dexcomm’s software to share information, carry out diverse tasks, and reduce rework for dispatchers and administrative staff. Appointments are booked directly in your system without requiring you to pay for unnecessary, redundant data entry, saving your business both time and money.

Syncing your field service platform with Dexcomm’s software allows us to field calls and appointment requests and schedule them right into your own system. For example, many of our customers choose to integrate Dexcomm’s software with ServiceTitan, a widely used scheduling platform that service companies utilize to book appointments and dispatch their teams.

Have you ever felt like you and your business were living on the edge of Murphy’s law?  Not quite to the point where anything that can go wrong always does go wrong, but close.

If you can relate to this concept, you’ve undoubtedly had a day at work that follows one of these scripts:

• -You had a good schedule made but discovered a major installation had not been entered correctly into the system and everyone was behind all day.  
• -A technician arrived at the address in the system only to learn that the address had been entered incorrectly.  This error caused the schedule to be off for the rest of the day and week.
• -You arrive at work to find a list of messages from the answering service.  When making your callbacks you learn that several of your customers sought service elsewhere because they wanted to book immediately.  Or that when making callbacks you cannot reach the customer because the phone number is wrong.  Or that you are embarrassed when making contact because you call the customer by the name on the message, but not by their correct name.

Businesses miss calls for three main reasons:

• 1. The business is too busy to answer calls.

• 2. Customers call after hours or on weekends.

• 3. Customers lose patience and hang up.

If your business is experiencing one of these situations, it can be stressful to you and your employees, as well as harmful to your business. After all, a missed call is a missed opportunity.

Is My Business Too Busy To Answer Calls?

Your business may be too busy to answer customer calls if:

• -The receptionist or person responsible for calls also has a handful of other responsibilities and isn't able to make it to the phone every time it rings.

• -The receptionist answers calls, but your business is receiving so many calls that it is impossible for a single employee to answer them all.

• -You are out working on a job when a caller tries to get in touch and you aren't able to stop work just to answer a call.

If your business is too busy to answer calls, your business has two options. You can hire additional staff who will focus solely on answering incoming calls and handling customer inquiries. This option may work for some businesses, but it can cause more harm in the long run due to increased labor costs and the need for additional employee training. If your business is too busy to answer incoming calls, how will you find time to train new employees on your company procedures?

Another option is to outsource your calls to an answering service. An answering service can handle all overflow and after-hours calls for your business, allowing you to focus on running your business and providing for your customers. 

Why Do Callers Hang Up?

In some instances, you aren't necessarily missing calls, but you are still losing customers. This can occur when:

• -The customer is put on hold or put in a queue by an IVR system, loses patience, and calls a competitor.

• -Your customer calls for a simple inquiry but is sent straight to voicemail by a busy receptionist. Upset by your company's inability to help, your caller hangs up and calls a competitor. 

These customers could be ready to book an appointment immediately, but because your business is too busy to answer their call at the moment, they will hang up and book their job with a competitor who can give them the attention that they need.

Is Voicemail Hurting My Business?

Many office managers believe that installing a voicemail will solve their missed calls problem, but this could actually be adding to it!

While companies like to think that a voicemail is good, consider how often you check your business voicemail. Is it every day, every other day, or maybe when you see it has become full? By the time you check your voicemail and call a customer back, they most likely have booked a job or scheduled an appointment with another provider who did answer their call. 

Even if you check your business voicemail religiously, you could still be missing out on potential customers. This is because most callers will not leave a voicemail.

If you currently have an in-house receptionist or dispatcher answering all of your business calls, you are off to a great start! Your callers are likely being handled by a well-informed individual who can provide them with the answers they need. 

But, a majority of these receptionists and dispatchers are full-time employees who have a lot of additional responsibilities along with answering incoming customer calls. If you plan on growing your business and as a result, receiving more incoming phone calls, you may consider hiring additional receptionists and dispatchers to field these calls.

An alternative to hiring additional employees to answer calls is working with an answering service. In fact, working with a premium answering service can actually lead to decreased labor costs.

You Don’t Have to Hire or Train More Employees

When you outsource the calls that your business receives, you can pay whoever is answering your calls as a contractor.

For example, if you hire full-time employees to answer calls that your business receives overnight, you will have to pay these employees whether the phone rings 100 times a night or doesn't ring at all. But, with an answering service, you will only have to pay for the time that an agent is on the phone with your caller and works on your account. 

This allows you to avoid bringing an employee into the company while still saving money on benefits and training. It also allows you to capitalize on your time by allowing you to avoid adding management duties associated with an in-house employee to your daily tasks. 

Access to a More Diverse Talent Pool

When hiring an employee, you may only have access to a small, local talent pool. This could mean you have to compromise on the quality of your call operators.

Many companies have found that outsourcing phone calls gives them access to talent in other parts of the country. For many businesses, the perfect answering service provider may not be local, so working with a national answering service provider can give them access to that diverse talent pool.

Save Money on Training

Another way that working with an answering service can decrease labor costs is by helping your business save on training new employees. 

Training a new employee appropriately often takes weeks. Along with the time spent, you should also consider the resources that you will need to use when training a new employee. Even after a new employee is fully trained, you must still set aside time and money for additional management to supervise and help your new employee.

Partnering with an answering service can help cut costs associated with training new employees. Premium answering services already have highly trained call agents who are prepared to handle your callers and represent your business with the same professionalism that you would.

The problem is that there are only so many people on your internal staff and a seemingly unlimited amount of customers to satisfy. In order to best satisfy your customer base, you need a greater team of highly professional, compassionate live agents who act as an extension of your business.  You need a  group of people that will sit in your chair, figuratively, and treat your customers the same way you would, literally.

Even if every provider out there did meet the standards depicted, “Are they worth it?” is the question.  When choosing an answering service provider, ask yourself “What is my return?” versus “What am I going to spend?” 

To answer this question, let's consider the varying levels of return that your business would see from an after-hours answering service.

Flexibility for You

As an answering service, we often hear, from our clients, that it will be confusing to customers to not reach “so and so”.  This is that one person who every customer is so accustomed to speaking to when they dial your business.  That person is most likely YOU!

However, you have a life outside of the office and you have other job responsibilities in addition to answering the phone.  You likely have to handle the customers, vendors, technicians, ownership, and everyone else that walks into your front door and requires your immediate assistance.  My guess would be that the phone never ceases to fail and rings when you are either already on the other line or preoccupied with another one of your responsibilities.  Am I right?

Having a conditional call forwarding feature (programming the business line to ring for a predetermined number of times on your end before then forwarding to additional support) can make a night and day difference.  Not only do you not have to feel so tied down to the phone, but you can also avoid having to divert your attention away from tasks in-progress.

If your business is like many of our clients, in addition to handling all incoming calls during business hours, you or someone in your office is also responsible for taking an on-call cell phone home after hours to continue to field customer calls. While this may prove necessary to best serve your customers, it can easily result in employee burnout!

After working a full day, your employees deserve to clock out and get a chance to fully recharge. Even with the benefit of overtime pay, the best employees may still miss these after-hours calls or grow to dislike their work. You, your employees, and your company would be better off with a well-rested, happy employee.

But what about voicemail? 

Couldn’t a simple voicemail system easily solve this issue? While using a voicemail system could allow your callers to leave a message, it surely won’t guarantee it. In fact, 80% or more of all callers who reach a voicemail decide to abandon the call entirely (and usually call one of your competitors)! With only a number to reach them back at, you and your staff are left playing everyone’s favorite game of phone tag (and you are IT).

Flexibility for Your Technicians & Dispatchers

Many home services businesses will have their overnight technicians or dispatchers handle these incoming after-hours calls. The technicians and dispatchers are already on call for emergency jobs, so why not just have them answer the incoming calls as well? As an answering service, we can share several reasons as to why this solution is not ideal.

While some of the calls that come in overnight will be callers in need of an emergency technician, a large percentage of your after-hours calls will not be urgent. These calls can range from billing inquiries to general questions about your business. While such questions are surely important, they shouldn’t interrupt your technician while on a job, in an attic, or in the middle of face-to-face interaction with a customer.

An after-hour answering service allows for the technician to focus on the task-at-hand and can help your dispatchers succeed. That means a higher efficiency with job completion, fewer missed calls, increased captured opportunities, and most importantly a happier and more effective employee. Additionally, if you can find an answering service provider who can integrate with your scheduling software, consider the amount of administrative time a technician can avoid by having all of the customer’s information created and/or verified in the system, as well as, a booked job created and ready for dispatch.

Flexibility for the Customer

Last but certainly not least, “How does this help my customer?”.  In today’s world, instant gratification is everything.  When a new or existing customer calls in, no matter what time of day or day of the week, they expect someone to be available to help.  They expect you to be flexible to their needs and the timing of said needs.

If you are not readily accessible, a new customer calling in after-hours will most certainly look down the list of Google results and attempt to connect with your competitor.  An existing client may give you the benefit of the doubt, but if it becomes a trend that the same competitor may soon walk through their home doors. You must take the time to consider the cost of a missed call to your business.

An answered phone call can make all the difference for a customer who just wants to be heard.   After-hour answering services can provide this by simply picking up the phone, listening to your customer,  and accurately documenting their information and reason for the call.    A premium answering service will take this even further by reaching out to someone who can help and potentially booking a job in your scheduling software system such as ServiceTitan.