Help Maximise Your Bottom line

Every year around September/October plumbers experience a huge spike in calls from consumers looking for their heating boilers to be serviced before the harshness of winter sets in. There’s an expectation that this will be the busiest time of year with the prospect of turning one-time customers into longer term clients! In preparing for this spike in demand, Jim the Plumber decides to launch a special offer and to invest in an advertising campaign to get the word out.

Now imagine, after investing that money, Jim the Plumber decides to NOT bring an extra person in to handle the phone calls because the extra salary would cost too much money. Each day during this peak period the phone goes unanswered while Jim is driving or attending a job. His regular admin person missed emails and calls too as she was busy with additional invoicing and scheduling due to increased demand. And the calls that were answered were not attended to properly as everyone tried to get everything done.

To make this scenario even more absurd, imagine that after tallying the disappointing sales from this peak period, Jim figured that all the money he had spent on marketing just didn’t produce the increase in sales he was hoping for, causing a lower margin than the previous year because of the additional marketing spend!

As outlandish as this situation may seem, it is not that different from the way many small businesses operate today. Everyone is busy, and the phone is often handled as an add-on responsibility to those with other tasks on their plates. Sales opportunities and business growth are often missed.

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Customers expect professional and timely response

Harvard and MIT studies have concluded that consumer expectations have changed dramatically – even in the last 5 years. Consumers expect an instant and professional response to their enquiries. If their phone call is not taken live and handled professionally, or their internet lead is not responded to within 5 minutes, they are only one click or one call away from the next competitor. Additionally, today’s prospects are busy with many work and family commitments. If lead forms, completed on your web site, are not followed up within minutes, prospects can be difficult to connect with. Catching them while you are top of their mind is important, rather than playing phone tag with them later when they have moved on to the next activity, found an alternative supplier and are not reachable.

Consider this - Contact centre services are free!

We are all familiar with the age-old expression of being "penny wise and pound foolish". The reason this expression exists is that when taking a cost-conscious approach, we can often be tempted to cut costs in areas that ultimately result in much greater losses.

What most people don't realize is that contact centre services are not a cost to your business – they represent a profit centre. This is because they allow you to deploy your advertising services more efficiently. In fact, some internet marketing companies and PPC providers are beginning to bundle call centres with their services for this very reason.

When considering the cost of a contact centre to receive your inbound communications – web chat, form fills, telephone calls, social media – its vitally important to consider ‘Speed to Lead’. Allowing calls to go to voice mail, not responding to a form fill within 5 mins, not reacting to a web chat query within 60 secs, ignoring a social media query. ALL these common sales errors result in new enquiries being seven times less likely to qualify. Wait for more than 24 hours to respond and the ratio is more likely 60 times less likely to qualify! Imagine all those enquiries responded to immediately using a contact centre – the additional sales revenue and profit generated – it’s a no brainer

If you are not currently using a contact centre, ask yourself the following questions:

- Do you know exactly how many enquiries and calls you’re getting (through using a call tracking service)?

- Do you track your enquiries (phone, form fill and web chat) success rate?

If you answered no to either of these questions, you are likely to be handing money to your competitors and generating less profits than you could.

Are you ready to grow your business? Now is the time!

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