Try as you might, it’s not always possible to answer the phone when a customer or prospect calls.

You might be busy with another customer and can’t step out. You might be completing a project. You might be travelling. Or, you might simply miss the call because you didn’t hear it or feel your phone vibrate.

It’s usually no big deal when you miss a call on your personal phone. Often it’s a friend or family member, and you can call them back.

Sometimes it’s one of those annoying sales calls, and missing it has actually been a result.

But when you’re a business, missing a call can lead to a lost sale. Or, it could start to hurt your business’ reputation if you become known for failing on customer service.

You might think, ‘what’s the big deal?’

If you can’t answer the phone, surely the caller will leave a message and a number for you to call them back on, won’t they?

After all, they wouldn’t have called if they weren’t already interested in your product and service, and they’ll be fine waiting a few minutes, or hours, until you call them back.

That may have been valid years ago. But not today. Today you need to be on top of your call answering, and a telephone answering service could be a much better decision than relying on voice mail.

Here’s why.

Missed calls equal lost money: That’s a fact

According to a study by BT Business, a single missed call costs businesses around £1,200 on average.

One thousand, two hundred pounds gone because of a single missed call.

Let’s imagine you missed one call a week over the course of the year.

That’s 52 calls missed.

Based on the average losses per missed call, that’s just over £62,000 a year on average lost.

And that’s only one missed call a week.

That’s a considerable amount of money to lose simply by not picking the phone up, even for a large business.

How telephone answering helps: With telephone answering, you have a team of call handlers who’ll ensure your business never misses a call and all calls are dealt with professionally.

But, you say, surely customers would just leave a voicemail, wouldn’t they?

Customers aren’t likely to leave voicemail messages

You could think it’s perfectly reasonable that a customer interested in your product or service would leave a voicemail message and wait for a call back.

And when the choice was limited, and you were maybe the only business around, that may have been true.

It’s not the same today though.

Today, customers have a huge choice over where and who they buy from.

If a business doesn’t respond quickly enough, customers go elsewhere.

This is backed up by a study published in Forbes magazine, which found that 80% of customers don’t leave voicemails if a business fails to answer the first time.

How telephone answering helps: Instead of asking customers to leave a message in a robotic void, you can have their calls dealt with by a real person who can take accurate information from the customer, and at least leave them feeling like they’ve been heard.

Messages aren’t always clear

While 5G will change the level of service you can experience on mobile, connections aren’t unfathomable, and we’ve all had the experience where the line is breaking as we’re trying to listen to something.

If the customer tries to call you from a bad reception area, you might not be able to understand everything they’re saying.

If that includes key information like their contact details, you might be unable to return the call.

The customer might also have a strong regional accent that you can’t understand on the phone (it happens), and again if you miss information, you won’t be able to return the call.

How a telephone answering service helps: Because messages are taken by a real person. So if something isn’t clear, your call handling team can clear it up to ensure you get accurate and reliable messages every time.

But customers don’t call us on the phone anymore, do they?

It’s true there are many more ways for customers to get in touch with you if they’re interested in a product or service or are looking for help.

We provide some of those alternative services like web chat, so we know the benefits they have in giving extra channels for customers to contact you.

But the thing is, customers still use the phone and, in some circumstances, prefer to call a business and speak to a real person rather than write an email or talk to an online chatbot.

For example, in one study, it was found that 62% of customers prefer to have human-to-human contact over the phone when trying to deal with issues.

Of those, more than three-quarters said they believe a phone call is the most effective way to resolve an issue quickly.

Even if customer enquiries don’t start on the phone, many end there.

According to Google, 70% of mobile searchers regularly call a business from a mobile search ad.

So the fact is, while many customers will prefer to contact your business in different ways depending on the enquiry or stage of the buyer journey they’re at, the vast majority still prefer the phone.

Could you benefit from a telephone answering service?

If you’re struggling to handle an influx of phone calls or need a more reliable call-answering resource than you currently have, try our professional telephone answering service from Face For Business.

With a dedicated team of professional call handlers working as an extension of your business, you’ll never need to worry about missing a call again.

And you can rest easy that every call is dealt with efficiently and professionally.

Whether you want accurate messages, calls directed to team members or even having you removed from spam sales lists, our telephone answering service can help.

Not convinced. Sign up for a no-obligation 7-day free trial and experience the benefits of call answering for yourself.

We’ll set you up on our system, and you can see up close whether telephone answering is right for you.

If it’s not, you can simply walk away. Sounds reasonable enough.