This blog was first written in 2017 and has been updated for 2023

Hundreds of staff split across multiple offices and international customers calling from all over the world are just part of the challenge of call management in large businesses.

And that was before the world got tipped upside down and covid changed how the majority of businesses work – with many large organisations like Amazon, Airbnb and Google ditching their offices completely.

Now employees are spread over even more locations – many in different countries – which makes call management an even bigger challenge.

Biggest challenges of call management in large companies

Call volume

Large organisations can deal with hundreds of calls on a daily basis.

Whether it’s internal calls and meetings with international colleagues, customers looking for support, or sales enquiries – the sheer volume of calls into a large company can be overwhelming without a proper management system.

This is particularly true in businesses that have no dedicated phone answering support and expect whichever employee is closest to the phone to answer it when it rings.

No obvious call routing

For calls to be transferred properly, it’s critical that whoever answers the phone knows the routing options for getting the customer to the right person first time.

In a large company with hundreds of employees this is an even bigger challenge.

Should you forward calls to a particular person, are calls distributed to a department, is the person or department even in the same time zone as you, what if there’s an out of hours issue?

Effective call routing is essential for ensuring the proper transfer of calls.

Disparate message taking

Taking a message on the phone might sound like a simple task.

But in a busy office, with employees dealing with calls between tasks, it can be easy to forget to ask for certain information that can make it harder – or impossible – to return calls properly, if at all.

This becomes an even bigger problem in large companies if a caller has come through to the wrong department and needs to leave a message, as different departments might require different information to deal with a message.

Retaining business numbers

For a large organisation in one location, it’s a lot easier to have a central business number and a series of extensions based on the other phones in the office.

But when your employees are spread across working from the office and working remotely, it becomes a lot harder to balance having a single point of contact for customers to use, and connecting remote employees.

Hard to scale international call management

Call management using dedicated full-time or part-time staff can get expensive quickly.

With the volume of calls a receptionist would need to deal with, you’d need to hire multiple full-time workers, and even then they wouldn’t be able to deal with every call coming through.

As soon as they pick up one call they’re essentially out of commission until the call ends. And for the sake of your customer service, you don’t want a caller to feel like they’re being rushed or are an inconvenience.

One potential solution is a call centre, but then you have to consider sacrificing the personal element of your service that the majority of customers say is hugely important to them.

How call answering for large businesses can help

Dedicated call management

With a call answering service, you get a single point of contact for customers to call regardless of where your employees are located.

Retaining this single number means it’s simple for customers to contact you while retaining the flexibility and benefits of having a more remote business.

Keep costs low

The best call answering services work in the same way as cloud software, in that you buy a service package and only pay for the services you use (unlike having a fixed cost, like an employee salary). This means you can be much more flexible with your costs based on the amount of call answering service you need.

Retain flexible hours

As a large business, you’ll likely have more customers who are unable to contact you during the normal 9-5 (because they’re at work too).

Relying on employees to deal with out-of-hours calls in impractical from both a cost and work/life balance perspective. But good telephone answering services can add out-of-hours call management to your business for a fraction of the cost.

At Face For Business for example our out-of-hours call answering means you can still take calls from 8am to 8pm Mond-Fri and we can even add some weekend call cover if you need it.

Improve your call routing

As we’ve mentioned, call routing is a major source of problems for telephone answering in large companies, especially if calls are ending up in the wrong place – it can be easy for customers to get stuck in a loop when this happens.

And there is more potential for this problem to occur when people are working from so many different places.

If an employee picks up a call they might not know the best person to send the caller to, they might not know if that person is working from home or an office, or if they’re even available.

With a dedicated call answering service for large businesses, you can have more control over how your call routing works.

You can work with your receptionist team to create call routing options based on the nature of a call, and then assign specific people to deal with the extension. Day-to-day your receptionists will stay on top of who is available and how the call should be routed.

Why choose Face For Business for your large business’ call answering services?

We care about your company reputation just as much as you

We know you have built up and earned your company’s reputation which is why we know it’s crucial to get to know your business before we start answering your calls. It is so important that our PAs understand fully the responsibility of answering your calls, which is why our recruitment process is so rigorous.

Before we employ our PAs they undertake various tests and training regimes, to ensure that every call they answer is handled in a professional manner, using your agreed call handling instructions.

We believe that because a real person is answering the phone, questions can be asked, feedback given and callers are made to feel valued and appreciated which adds value to any organisation.

We act as support for your support staff and PAs as well as you

For bigger businesses, we can handle all your calls or answer overflow traffic from your switchboard as and when the need occurs.

We can transfer calls to specific departments, extensions or mobile numbers as well as forwarding detailed messages via email or text.

This process allows for calls and queries to be dealt with the utmost efficiency and clients are able to go back and listen to how their calls are handled, a service that is very popular.

We will also provide support to your departmental receptionists and PAs when they are encountering particularly busy periods during the day.

When they are unable to answer their phones, the calls will divert to us and we’ll take the call and send the message back to the receptionist/PA or to the relevant department – whichever your call handing instructions tell us to.

Our PAs build excellent working relationships with your support staff, too.

As well as helping you with your calls during busy periods we are also here for interim cover for lunchtimes, holidays, sickness, or while permanent posts are being recruited for.

There is no need to ever feel unsupported with your phone calls.

Read more about our call answering service here.

A large legal practice in North Wales has been using Face for Business for the purpose of dealing with overflow calls from their Rhyl office.

We have found Face for Business to be an asset to the firm in that they take a number of calls that potentially, we could have missed. It means that we are capturing first time clients who, in all likelihood, may have phoned other firms.

It has also removed the potential problem of clients complaining that their calls are not answered as soon as practically possible. In addition, we have found the call handling of the staff at Face for Business to be excellent.

Our clients have commented on how friendly and helpful they are. Therefore, we would recommend Face for Business to any large firm, to undertake call handling work.

Save HR costs as your business grows

As your business grows, our services can grow with you.

Rather than having to add more phone lines, take on more staff and even increase current employee workloads to deal with a rise in phone enquiries, we can take care of all of this, and you will come to rely upon our service for the management of your overflow calls, saving you the cost of employing additional staff to cover peak times or, as mentioned earlier, staff are absent.

Back-up for training days, departmental meetings or even office move

We aren’t just here for the day to day needs of companies, at Face for Business we can also offer you additional support during essential team meetings, away days or departmental meetings.

Never worry about overloading another department with your call volume again.

Simply let us know when you are out of the office, let us have specific call handling instructions for each member of staff and we can inform your callers of when to expect a return call, or can even transfer to other staff, wherever they may be based!

Disaster recovery or emergency phone answering support

Additionally, we also know that while technology can enhance a business, it can also bring it down.

Don’t worry, if your phone system goes wrong, all your calls can be re-routed by us so nothing is missed, as was the case when we provided emergency fully outsourced reception duties for a large commercial company based in Manchester…

Due to the logistical challenges of migrating two offices into one, at very short notice, we were left without the use of a telephone system and were unable to answer our inbound telephone calls, which are the lifeblood of our business.

Thankfully, Face for Business stepped in quickly to provide a solution for handling our calls and diverting them through to the relevant emergency and staff mobile numbers as appropriate.

Throughout the process Face for Business were friendly and courteous to our callers and demonstrated a knowledge of our business, which helped make the transition appear seamless.

Thanks again for your professional support.

If you would like more information about our fully outsourced reception for larger businesses you can visit our webpage here.

Alternatively, please call us on 0333 323 1007 and we’ll be happy to have an informal chat about our service.