Phone Answering Tips for the Holiday Season

The more I read about virtual phone services, the more I like them. For small businesses, they can really help provide customer service and communication at a reasonable price - and make the small business look much bigger.

Below Kevin Baker, my1voice Product Marketing Manager for Protus offers tips on how a virtual phone service can help keep your small business running during the holidays - and help provide some time to enjoy the holidays with your family as well.

• Tip 1: Record informational messages that answer repetitive questions. Rather than taking time to answer the same questions about what days you'll be working over the holidays or what time the business is open, pre-record a message and make it an option on your virtual receptionist. This tip is extra helpful for businesses whose hours will be varying greatly during the holidays.

• Tip 2: Spur holiday sales by offering door busters. Add a burst to your ads and/or direct mail/email promotions encouraging customers to call a particular extension you set up to promote the door buster of the day. You can even use different extensions for each advertising vehicle so you can track which ones get the most calls - thus telling you which are the most effective at driving customers to action.

• Tip 3: Post frequent status updates on hot holiday items. Each holiday season there's an item or two in low supply and high demand. When that happens, customers tend to call around to see who has it. Rather than taking floor personnel time away from live customers to answer the phone, you can use the information message to post updates on your current inventory levels of those items. Be sure to add a date and time so customers know how current the information is.

• Tip 4: Set up other FAQ messages so customers can help themselves. If you have questions that come up often, and that have simple answers with no choices, create an FAQ recording that customers can check themselves. Just remember to leave them a way to opt out and talk to someone live if they want.

• Tip 5: Put a Call Me button on your website. These days customers often gather information on the Web then use other means to make the purchase. Make it easy for them to call by adding a Web call button to your website. Customers click the button, input the phone number they want to use to receive the call, and are connected quickly - while they're still looking at the product or service on the screen. It's doubly important if you're a retailer without a Web purchasing capability.

• Tip 6: Use the conference call feature to tie up last minute business deals. Instead of missing out on holiday parties you can step aside with your peppermint hot chocolate in hand and finish-up last minute business with the my1voice conference call feature.

• Tip 7: Don't stay behind waiting to receive a fax in your home office while your family heads out to the in-laws for a pre-holiday feast. You can choose to have a notification sent to your email address on your smart phone to let you know when your fax has arrived, or you can have the fax itself sent directly to your email inbox! Treat my1voice fax delivery the same as you do with your voicemail messages. Never stand waiting for a fax again!

• Tip 8: Use smart call forwarding to offer 24x7 customer support. When customers need help during the holidays, they usually want it right now - even if it's 2:00 in the morning. With a small staff you can't be in the office 24x7. But you can use smart call forwarding to forward calls to any phone you choose. Have each person on staff take a night to provide that support during the holidays - then advertise it's available.

• Tip 9: Use smart call forwarding to carve out a little time for yourself. A small business owner's time is not his/her own anytime during the year. But during the holidays it's especially precious. With smart call forwarding you can sneak out to do a little extended shopping, trim the tree with the family, or a holiday lunch without losing touch.

More on Phone Systems & Handling Phone Calls

• TalkSwitch: PBX Phone Service for Small Business
• 3 Keys to Business Phone Greeting Success
• Phone Answering Tips to Win Business

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