The phone rings. A potential customer is reaching out to your small business. This valuable opportunity demands careful handling; the experience they have will shape their entire perception of your brand or business. When someone calls your company, what do they expect? Moreover, how can you meet (or even exceed) those expectations every time?
Why Do Customers Call Small Businesses?
Knowing why customers call is key to meeting their expectations. Although no two callers have the same motives, most fall into three main categories:
- They have a question: Customers may call because they need information about your offerings, policies, capabilities, etc. that they couldn’t find on your website or other materials. Questions range from narrow product specs to larger service inquiries.
- They want to purchase: Calling enables prospects ready to buy or current customers reordering to directly discuss deals, pricing, options, and complete transactions through live conversations.
- They have an issue: Existing patrons may call with problems regarding billing errors unresolved through emails, defects needing troubleshooting or general complaints better addressed person-to-person.
Of course, categories can blend; a caller questioning shipping times for a recent order has both an issue and purchase need. But classifying core reasons helps small businesses prepare for fulfilling caller expectations.
What Do Customers Expect from Calls?
When reaching you by phone, customers likely expect variations of these five interactions:
- Quick answers: Callers want issues resolved without prolonged holds or callback delays. They expect employees to directly provide information or quickly connect them to someone who can.
- Friendly service: Speaking to pleasant representatives demonstrates professionalism and appreciation for their business. Rudeness guarantees loss of future sales.
- Personalized assistance: Since callers took the effort to contact your business personally through phone calls, they expect personalized support catered to their unique needs, not just generic replies.
- Easy interactions: Being forced through complex phone trees to reach the right department or repeat information across multiple transfers leads to frustrations. Streamlined discussions are essential.
- Follow-through: Question askers expect answers. Buyers expect order confirmations and shipping updates. Complaint filers expect resolutions or next steps. Promised return calls must happen.
Fulfilling these expectations means implementing comprehensive call handling strategies. Voicemail alone is insufficient. Using answering services enables small businesses to deliver everything customers desire from phone interactions.
Answering Services Set You Up for Call Success
Partnering with an answering service like Apello gives small companies advantages for achieving caller expectations time and time again through:
- Immediate Answers: Answering service agents are available 24/7 to answer phones so customers never have long waits. Extensive training on partner companies’ products and services allows them to directly resolve many basic inquiries immediately.
- Patient Guidance: Friendly, professional representatives seek first to understand each caller’s needs before helping them through issues or transactions. Customers feel well taken care of.
- Insights Enhancement: Detailed intake forms help answering service staff gather key details about customers and questions to best route calls or collate feedback for businesses to improve understanding of individual needs.
- Ongoing Communication: Answering service records contain complete documentation of issues which internal teams use for structured follow-up with customers as their matters evolve to final resolutions.
Leveraging the strengths of answering services means small businesses reliably satisfy customer call expectations and drive loyalty, referrals and growth.
Conclusion
Customers call small businesses with distinct needs ranging from questions to purchases to complaint resolutions. They expect quick yet customized assistance from pleasant and knowledgeable representatives along with structured follow-up. Partnering with an answering service allows entrepreneurs to not only meet baseline service expectations across the board but seize opportunities for creating “delightful” call interactions that wow patrons.