There are so many ways to contact businesses today. From emails, to social media, to letters, to direct messages, to chat bots.

But did you know that most customers still prefer to pick up the phone and call businesses when they have a question or issue that needs resolving? Especially when they’re contacting a small business.

Dealing with phone calls is a core part of business. It’s a simple, easy and personal way of communicating with customers, prospects and even internally.

So you’d think it would be a key part of employee development to ensure teams are confident when it comes to answering the phone.

But that’s not the case according to a recent study we’ve completed.

We found that the majority of employees receive no training when it comes to dealing with phone calls.

This is bad in itself when you consider that a negative experience in customer service is enough to drive customers away and cost you money.

Especially today when many businesses are actually competing on customer service because their goods and services are so similar to those offered by the competition.

But it’s also negative for employees who are left feeling anxious when it comes to phone calls because they don’t know how to deal with them, or how to carry out basic functions like transfer calls or take accurate messages.

The whole situation is a customer experience problem waiting to happen.

According to our research, the majority of employees are so nervous about dealing with calls that they’re actually avoiding picking up the phone at all.

This leaves customers sitting around listening to their call ring out, leaving them frustrated and likely to go somewhere else or, potentially worse, leaving voicemails after listening to a robotic automated voice telling them no-one’s available to help.

We know from our research that the majority of employees rank phone calls as their least favoured method of communication with customers. Instead they prefer emails and other text comms.

Mostly this is because teams can deal with this type of communication in their own time, and there’s no risk of the enquiry escalating quickly, or dealing with an angry customer over the phone.

Being faced with an angry customer is one of the biggest causes for anxiety when it comes to calls, so it’s not surprising that employees with no training would prefer to avoid calls altogether.

Why we need to focus on phone calls

While there are many ways a customer could contact you, nothing replaces the personalisation and human touch that comes with talking to them on the phone.

But we know this can be difficult when employees are trying to do their jobs, and it’s easy for them to see calls as a distraction, rather than an opportunity.

One way around the problem can be to invest in telephone answering.

A call answering service can take the pressure of phone calls away from your team and ensure every phone call is answered quickly and professionally every time.

With a call answering service you can put more focus on your company and let our team handle your incoming calls.

We ensure urgent calls are put through to the right team member every time, or make sure accurate messages are delivered in a timely fashion so they can be dealt with later.

And all this comes with less cost than hiring full-time staff to handle calls. Interested?

Book a consultation or sign up to a free trial