5 Customers You Are Losing Without an After-Hours Answering Service- Pt.2

As a business owner, you should get into the habit of looking at every incoming call as a potential sale. The ringing of your business telephone should excite you. After all, getting the attention of a new customer is half the battle and if they’re calling, you only have one opportunity to make a great first impression. Why waste that opportunity by sending leads to your voicemail?

Read on to learn 5 types of customers that you are losing by not having an after-hours answering service:

1. “Your website is confusing.”

At any given time, you have customers cruising your website researching your company and looking for specific products. Some of those customers are hot leads; ready to buy your product. One problem, they’re stuck on your home page because your website is not user-friendly. If you don’t have customer service representatives available to speak with them on their timetable, you’re going to lose their business to your competitor.     

Your website is the new brick and mortar storefront. Making it difficult for your users to navigate your website will negatively impact your online conversion rates. When you provide 24-hour telephone support, you’re able to capture the percentage of leads that are exiting your website out of frustration.

Step back in time a little and imagine you only had your storefront business to sell your products in. Having bad user experience is like having:

• • A store with no front door for your customers to walk into;
• • A checkout line and register with no cashier;
• • Hundreds of products on display with no price tags.

You need to make buying your product or service as easy as possible. When a customer is confused, you need a support team on standby ready to guide them gently. But when you forward your business calls to a voicemail outside of your normal business hours, you’re shutting out those customers that are ready to buy.  

An after-hours answering service team allows you to improve your conversion rates that are stunted by a confusing website design. We can troubleshoot those confused customers through your website or process their order while we have them on the phone.    

2. “I’m not satisfied.”

This particular customer has purchased your product or service but was not satisfied. They will call your business to try and voice their complaint or discuss your return policy. After waiting through 3 or 4 rings, your dissatisfied customer is greeted by your voicemail and asked to leave a message. If this call was made on Friday at 6 pm and your office doesn’t open again until Monday morning, you are giving this disgruntled customer a whole weekend to build their anger.  

 Consider this startling statistic before forwarding another customer to voicemail, “Nearly 7 out of 10 Americans will hang up on your business if you do not give them an opportunity to speak with a live agent.” Your dissatisfied customer will most likely not leave a message and will be even more frustrated with your brand. He or she might be so riled up that they voice their complaints to an audience that will always listen; social media and review sites.    

At this point, not only have you lost the future business of this unsatisfied customer, but you have also lost the business of people in their social circles. If you had an after-hour answering service working around the clock for you, this customer experience would have ended in a very different way.

3. “I’m a weekend shopper.”

Millions of Americans are preoccupied during the week with hectic schedules filled with juggling work, family and home responsibilities. It’s no wonder that you can find those same people shopping on-line over the weekend.  

According to a recent study performed by Opera Software, “Mobile shopping traffic is highly concentrated on Sundays.” So if your business is like one of the 270 million eCommerce businesses considered in this study, you need to offer customer service support on weekends to meet the demand of your online customers.

A weekend answering service can also customize the way your phone is answered. So if you are running a special social media promotion to reach your potential customers on the weekends, our customer telephone representatives can help convert those leads. On your next tweet or post, just add the engaging and simple call to action, “Call now to place your order.”

Not marketing on the weekends either? It’s time for you to consider scheduling your posts during the weekends to attract your target audience. A study by Salesforce reported, “Twitter engagement for brands is 17% higher on Saturday and Sunday compared to weekdays, but only 19% of all brand tweets are published on weekends.”

Don’t lose out on customers that prefer to do their shopping and communicating on the weekends. Hiring after-hours telephone support costs as little as $19.95 per month and our telephone operators only charge you for the calls we take on your behalf.

4. “Are you real?”

Have you ever been burned by a scamming fly-by-night website? Unfortunately, some of your potential customers have been fooled and now they’re overly cautious and suspicious. Providing a phone number for consumers to call if they have any questions is a great way to show apprehensive customers that you’re a reliable and trustworthy business.

A recent case study performed by KISSMetrics took two identical websites and tested them against each other. The only difference between the identical sets of landing pages were that one included a phone number while the second one omitted a telephone contact number altogether. The findings were astonishing, “The overall difference was that businesses that had their telephone number on their website received, on average, 10% more conversions than those websites that eliminated the business telephone number.”

There’s no doubt about it, having a business phone number will positively influence your website’s conversion rates. Listing your number is easy to do. Hiring a qualified after-hours answering serviceto answer those calls is where your focus should be.

 5. “I don’t want my identity stolen.”

Fortune3 recently shared the top 7 reasons people are scared to shop online. It’s no surprise that people avoid shopping online because they are scared that their identity and/or credit card information will be stolen from your site.

Don’t lose your customers that prefer to make purchases to a live telephone agent. Provide comfort to your calling customers by giving them an option to call your business and place their order verbally.  

Our business answering service was first established back in 1983; that’s 30 years of experience in handling highly secure and confidential information. We take great pride in our secure and efficient telephone order taking and payment processing services. When shopping for telephone support, be sure to ask questions about their security methods and equipment policies.  

Start the Conversation, Our After-Hours Answering Service Looks Forward to Hearing From You!

Are you tired of losing customers because they don’t want to leave a message on your business’s voicemail? An after-hours answering service can be affordable as you need it to be. Here at A Courteous Communications, we offer competitive virtual receptionist rates and only charge for the calls we take on your behalf; having the luxury of 24-hour telephone coverage is completely free.    

Start the conversation at your convenience by giving us a call, day or night, at 1-800-785-6161 to speak with an account specialist about your business. Let’s discuss how our talented team of customer service representatives can help you capture all of these once-lost customers.