Does Sending Callers to Voicemail Hurt Your Plumbing Business?
No one can answer every call they get, especially as a contractor. If you’re a plumber and your current strategy is just to send callers to voicemail when you’re busy, then you may be surprised at how much this affects your business. It wastes your time and undermines your reputation and profitability. Here is how sending callers to voicemail hurts your business.
Customers Call Someone Else
Not all customers feel a loyalty to a particular plumber over another. Unless you have worked with this customer extensively in the past, they will likely call someone else if they do not reach you on their first call. These days customers are looking at a Google page where your competition is listed right next to you and is simple to call.
Emergency work is some of the most lucrative and you’ll miss it most often if it goes to voicemail, as even your most loyal customers will feel that they can’t wait for you to call them back during an emergency.
Customers Don’t Feel Heard
While it may be unreasonable to expect, customers do feel that when you don’t answer their call immediately, you aren’t taking them as seriously as you should. Even though their business is important to you, they often feel that it isn’t. This is especially true of Millennials who are used to instant responses. You want your business to give the impression that you care, so ensuring your calls are answered is important.
Your Voicemail is Hard to Manage
Voicemail is also a waste of time that pulls you away from other important tasks. You listen to your voicemail, typically where a customer explains their concerns. If you call them, you have to listen to those same problems again. Further, it’s likely that when you call them, they won’t answer the phone. Maybe they’ve found someone else, or maybe they are just busy now. Either way, you’re wasting time.
If you don’t put this time into managing your voicemail, it gets full and is then useless anyway. It’s better if customers can get in touch with you when they call the first time.
Choose a Digital Receptionist
It’s great to set the goal of answering all of your calls, but you’re unlikely to be able to do it yourself. Hiring a receptionist is expensive, from training to sick time and vacation. Instead, choose a digital receptionist to cover even more time and cost less.
Other Ways to Contact You
Even if you absolutely have to have a voicemail, it can help to also have other ways to contact your business that you may be able to be more responsive to. For example, giving customers a way to text their technician or a lead technician, is a great way to take some of the pressure off you without leaving your customer in the dark.
If you have a contact form on your website, then you may want to have an automated email response for off-hours and vacations so that people know when to expect your return message. Looking for a more professional way to handle missed calls? Get in touch with our team at Front Office Solutions for a free trial of our professional plumbing scheduling services today!
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