Like it or not when it snows here in the UK it does seem to have a paralysing effect and businesses can struggle to function as workers stay home and the forecast always seems bleak.

Indeed if the Daily Mail is to be believed we are only ever a few minutes away from the worst snow storms since time began! However, here at Verbatim, The Phone Answering Service, we have yet to be troubled by snow – although during that last bad spell we did have someone trek in on skis!

We have always had a can do and get it done attitude and that means we know how to help businesses blighted by a white out. If your calls are diverted to us we can connect them to the relevant member of staff wherever they are stranded courtesy of the British weather.

We have kept the home phones ringing with work calls for clients who cannot get into the office through to simply answering overflow calls when a business is short staffed due to the weather.

Some of the best feedback we have had comes from businesses who have told us their clients had no idea the snow had closed their physical office as they never had a problem getting through on the telephone.

Here’s what Gary Perkins, MD of MAS in Worcestershire said:

“This service has been of tremendous benefit to us, particularly a few years ago when we experienced a lightning strike in 2009 and all calls to MAS were quickly diverted by BT to Verbatim, The Phone Answering Service, whilst we had to source and install a new telephone system.

Then again in the severe winter of 2010/2011, this service proved enormously beneficial as even getting into the office sometimes took longer than normal. I am sure that having the team at Verbatim, whom we know well, helped to ensure that our ability to service our customers and giving them the knowledge we were operating (almost) normally created confidence to our overall level of service.”

The same approach that allows businesses to use The Phone Answering Service to cover holiday absences or other pinch points that can be anticipated and planned for, so can it be used when snow, or indeed any severe weather, frustrates running a business.

So, before your business struggles, why not explore how using the professional phone answering approach of Verbatim can stop you being frozen out of the marketplace when the snow does eventually fall on Berkshire and beyond.

Please contact Graham Hill at Verbatim Call Centres on 0800 656 9590 or learn more about its Business Continuity services

The Daily Telegraph reported a story on 24th August 2011 about, Devonian Brian Evans’s experience of phone technology when booking a hospital appointment. They covered it in their third item on their Comments section. This is the complete item.

“Speak after the tone…

“When Brian Evans rang his hospital in Devon for an appointment, he found himself talking to a machine. End of article

It is a sadly normal experience.

The machine asked which department he wanted. On requesting the eye clinic, he was put through to a strange woman called Sheila in a department of quite a different kind.

Mr Evans blames his rich Devonian accent, but he need not, for it is the common lot of phone-plagued mankind.

Try to buy a cinema ticket, and the machine asks: ” Which cinema would you like to book ?”

“Wimbledon”

“You would like to book a ticket in (pause) Chelsea.”

Once it is convinced you want two tickets, not nine, in Row H, not Row A, and you have logged your card number, on the third attempt, one fence remains to be jumped: your name.

There you fail, to be cheerily transferred to a permanent queue for the unheard-of real person.”

Are you letting your customers down?

So many organisations are seduced by technology and the savings it supposedly it brings to their business.

What they forget to consider in their cost calculations is the patient, client or customer.

If you need the health service then there is no choice but if they call your business… guess what?

Lost calls mean lost business and permanent damage to your reputation and brand.

For business owners there is a solution and help at hand to deliver the service that people want.

Our customers and clients want to be treated like sentient human beings and speak to real people.

By outsourcing call handling to a live telephone answering service for about the cost of a gallon of petrol (4.5 litres) a day you can avoid the accidental death of your business.

Keeping your business open

My firm Verbatim is supporting Workspace Plc and Homefinders of Hackney with a call answering and overflow telephone answering service. They can send staff home early knowing that their business can remain “open” because their calls are routed to my dedicated team of telephone receptionists in Newbury.

Let me know if you or any of your friends need support to keep their business going.

 Verbatim the telephone answering service will be delighted to support them during this period just to keep them up and running until sanity on the streets return!

Indian Call Centres driving down costs by employing Jail birds!

We kid you not! We are flabbergasted having just read an article quoting the Indian call centre, Radiant Infosystems, who are planning to implement this bizarre idea to staff a telephone answering service. This Indian call centre has plans to help rehabilitate criminals and offer them employment while getting dirt cheap labour by employing them to staff an inbound call answering service at the Hyderabad Cherlapally Central Jail.

Jail Bird

The plan is to hire 250 of the inmates, who can earn up to £1.50 per day,( note upto £1.50 per day,) to do things like handle bank account applications and insurance claim forms.

The plan is raising interesting questions among those who handle inbound telephone answering services for things like lead generation, and handling bank forms and insurance claims. No doubt.

Data protection is becoming the new oxymoron. Would you trust your business or your bank’s calls to a bunch of convicted criminals? We expect some of them will be serving sentences for fraud, maybe even telephone fraud!

The company claims that prisoners won’t have access to any sensitive data or information about the callers. Ho Ho pull the other one. There is already so much fraud and identity theft to worry about without a bunch of criminals being paid getting their hands on our data.

Meet some of our inmates!

Rest assured our telephone answering service is based in Newbury, Berkshire in the heart of the Thames Valley and all of our ‘inmates’ are free to come and go as they please and earn much more than £1.50 per day to professionally handle calls!

Indeed many have been working here for ten years or more and we celebrate their tenth year with an early release scheme and parole!

Ann, one of our superstars, keeps on re-offending and is on a long stretch having already served thirteen years in our call answering service for small businesses.

According to a new survey published by American Express, across the pond 7 out of 10 people are willing to spend an average of 13% more for excellent customer service.

Just after I read this blog I popped into my local town, Faringdon, Oxfordshire, to shop at our local butchers, Pat Thomas, where the service is just brilliant, as is the quality of their meat and poultry. I then had a coffee at Sadlers the most comfortable coffee shop in England; the coffee is always served hot and brought to your table with a smile. One of my Saturday pleasures is reading Mike Southon’s column for Entrepreneurs  in the Saturday FT at Sadlers in Faringdon.

I’m not sure I paid any extra for the excellent customer service I received on my Saturday morning trip into Faringdon, but might that be the point? People do not necessarily consciously compare what they are paying if the service is good?

I’m now feeling pretty good and then pop into Budgens to pick up a few groceries; get to the check-out and my feeling of ‘all is great with the world’ is brought to a juddering halt by the indifference of the checkout assistant. No eye contact, no smile, no engagement, no offer to pack my bags just total indifference! When Tesco’s & Waitrose set- up in town guess where I will shop?

All these events occurred just over an hour of me reading and answering a question on the aforementioned blog ‘How do you deliver outstanding service?’

We have a more difficult job in our telephone answering service business because we don’t have face to face contact. The first thing is to smile on the phone because it can be heard. Try it next time you answer the phone and gauge the caller’s reaction.

We try hard to build rapport on the phone using a range of simple and common sense telephone skills that engender politeness and a professional style. At the phone answering service we train our staff in “Building Rapport on The Phone” using ten key basic skills, such as giving our name, using the caller’s name, asking if it is ok before putting the caller on hold, using please and thank you, confirming telephone numbers and thanking them at the end of the call using their name. It is amazing how many companies answer their phones so badly yet spend tens of thousands of £s on their image and brand.

Interestingly when I go shopping, and the checkout assistant or the fast food server has a name badge I make a point using their name. The reaction I get is brilliant- a smile, eye contact and a more engaged experience which makes me feel better and hopefully lightens their day.

If you, like me, want better customer service standards seek out businesses that train staff. Next time you are served with a badge holder use their name and see what happens?

It’s a two way street and so much more fun. Let me know how you get on and comment here or come and tell me on Twitter: @GrahamOnCall 

Once upon a time back in the dark old days of the last century The Viscount Leverhulme of Lever Bros, fame said

“50% of my advertising is wasted but I don’t know which 50% it is!”

This was so true for all businesses large or small; those with the deepest pockets could take the 50% punt, but for business owners like you and me the odds were stacked against us.

In the 21st Century that’s all changed with the advent of a liberal telecoms market.

Now you can save a fortune on your marketing budget by using cost effective Marketing / Call Tracking Numbers.

Nigel Botterill, one of UK’s most respected entrepreneurs and Founder and Director of Bestof UK , advocates separate 01( not 08 they cost mobile phone users too much to call ) Call Tracking Numbers for every piece of marketing material that you produce.

Nigel recommends unique numbers for your website, brochures, leaflets, every publication you advertise in, even your business cards.

Why would you want to do this I hear you asking?

By tracking each marketing channel you’ll know exactly what it is that’s making your phone ring, and that’s hugely valuable information that can save you a fortune with your marketing budget..

As Nigel says, “Call tracking is a no-brainer for any business owner who wants to be super-successful. It’s a must’. It allows you to know for certain how many calls each piece of your advertising/marketing generates for your business.”

Putting you back in control of your marketing will save you £ thousands a year.

Here’s our story…

We binned Yellow Pages and saved £1,800 pa, using the money elsewhere!

In the days when Verbatim, the phone answering service, advertised call answering in Yellow Pages we were persuaded to take three ads under different categories. The YP rep designed the ad, suggested headlines to pull, which got us really excited about the promises of lots of new enquiries. We supplied three different tracking numbers, unique for each ad.

The next year the YP rep called in to rebook our three entries with talk of increasing our enquiries if we took bigger and better ads. As always the pitch was very persuasive with talk of increasing the 30 to 40 new enquiries a month that our listings normally generate.

We declined the offer to continue advertising and you can imagine the reps reaction when we told her that our ads generated a grand total of 7 calls for the year, and three were test calls from us!

Now You Can Measure Your Marketing ROI…

…for less than the price of a coffee in Starbucks.

If someone had given me this tool when we first started Verbatim back in the dark old days in 1997 I would have bitten their hand off and had more time to enjoy a coffee with my clients.

For information on Marketing and Call Tracking numbers please call me, Graham Hill, on 01635 813280 or leave a comment here or via twitter.com/GrahamOnCall

Tip 1.

How to get rid of unsolicited sales calls – in a few seconds!

Register for free at the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) by using this link http://www.tpsonline.org.uk/ctps/number_type.html and simply click on register, you can add any business or home phone number, so why not take the opportunity of stopping those unwanted calls at home at the same time! Our company has been using the Telephone Preference Service (TPS)for about three years and in our experience we have found that this has saved us both time and money as our staff no longer have to waste their valuable time answering so many unwanted, often intrusive, sales calls.

The TPS service is a central opt out register designed to stop unwanted sales calls and once registered it becomes an offence to make unsolicited sales calls to your number(s). Registration is simple and takes seconds and is completely free of charge, it usually becomes effective within 28 days.

Since this service is governed by legislation (the Privacy and Electronic (ED Directive) Regulation 2003), callers using numbers registered with the TPS can be fined up to £50,000 for cold calling. Also for those companies that buy lists and don’t amend their databases to void TPS registered numbers, if you mention that you are registered with the TPS they will very quickly remove you from their calling lists!

Tip 2.

When registering at the TPS remember it’s not only your business that can benefit you can also add your

• mobile number
• any direct dial numbers
• home number

Tip 3.

If your business uses a fax machine and you find that your paper and toner ink is constantly being used up by random marketing information that companies continually send through? If this is the case there is a solution as the FPS online registration service offers you the same protection as the TPS Service, so why not register using this link https://secure.dma.org.uk/cgi-bin/session.pl?reg_option=fps at the same time as registering your business and home phones.

Tip 4.

Ask Verbatim -The phone answering service to be your virtual receptionist. Our virtual reception package provides a fully outsourced phone answering service that can provide your business with many benefits including call screening; our receptionists are pretty good at sniffing out sales calls and filtering them to avoid wasting your staffs’ valuable time.

Tip 5.

Remember to brief us about any special deals you might have done because….

a client of ours had negotiated a “deal” with a national newspaper group for 12 months of advertising without changing his standing instructions, which were…

“Under no circumstances are you to take messages for advertising – tell them to go away (politely)”.

You have guessed it!

A call came in from the newspaper ad sales department for the client, at which point our receptionist (politely!) told them to go away.

As a result the £50,000DISCOUNT was lost.

Tip 6.

Register with TPS and listen to what Roger Hick, of RHD Office Limited, has to say on the subject:

“It has been said that people would not want to pay for the privilege of answering incoming sales calls. Quite the contrary, for a nominal amount it costs me I prefer not to take the call and have to explain yet again that I don’t need to save 15p a month on one of our utilities bills. I would recommend your service without hesitation.”

As The Newbury Sound Apprentice, Chris Wright joined Jackie on the ‘shop floor’ to shadow her work. Jackie has been at Verbatim for over 11 years so Chris was able to pick up plenty of tips on how to successfully receive calls, deal with any messages and pass them on to the company concerned.

Apart from cutting a caller off as Chris got to grips with the technology, apparently he made a good impression on the managers at Verbatim and was HIRED!

Scroll down to see the photos and click play to hear some of the audio highlights.

If you’d like Chris to come to your workplace, click on the related item below.

Many thanks to Jackie, Nick, Graham, Gavin and the team at Verbatim.

This Apprentice took Chris to Venture West on New Greenham Park….

…to Verbatim Call Centres

After an introduction with Graham, Chris meets Jackie one of the senior reception advisors

The giant screen shows the status of each receptionist in the room

After initial “training”, Chris Wright was logged onto the system

The Green Screen shows Chris has put a caller on hold!

Here’s the on screen prompt.

Jackie helps Chris out with the technology

Chris, tries to direct someone’s call but accidently cuts off the call!

Nick East from Verbatim offers Chris a little bit of advice

This is a call that Chris is taking on behalf of Verbatim

After all that hard work, Chris makes tea for the office!

After a brief appraisal of his performance, Chris was hired at Verbatim Call Centres! (From left to right, Nick East, Graham Hill, Jackie, Gavin Peck with Chris)

The Newbury Sound Apprentice is sponsored by West Berkshire Training Consortium Apprenticeships. Click on the logo below to find out more.

Typical time stealers can be a knock on the door, an email popping up on screen or perhaps a voicemail or text notification, but one of the main culprits are telephone calls which can eat into our protected time at an alarming rate!

Imagine the following scenario in your office – you have an important document to prepare for a client. This should take about an hour or so to complete. You start work at 9:00am and need to finish it by lunchtime. Whilst working on it, you answer a dozen phone calls.

If the average incoming call takes five minutes (including the associated outcomes and actions), and your re-immersion period is fifteen minutes, that call has cost you 20 minutes in terms of productive writing time. The result is half a day lost and the document is late and rushed, leading to lost productivity and increased frustration.

The flip side is that we also need to be available – calls can bring lots of positives, new business opportunities being one of the most obvious and we certainly can’t afford to pass up those when they come along. So therefore we have a dilemma – how to keep our protected time but at the same time make sure that customers and prospects alike realise they are hugely important to us and are responded to in a professional and inclusive way.

One way is to use an outsourced telephone reception service such as we offer at Verbatim. By diverting your calls to Verbatim, you get the chance to work in peace and be considerably more productive – however, you also have the peace of mind that your calls are being answered by human beings at a professional reception service and so your clients and potential prospects are receiving the level of courtesy and attention that you’d want to give them yourself!

So with your calls answered professionally, you can get on with the key work at hand – and of course making sure that those other time stealers don’t creep up on you as well!

The way through this is to maximise every opportunity that is available. Gone are the days that you can sit any wait, just get out there and make some noise. The opportunities to promote your business are endless and at low cost. Nigel Temple of the Marketing Compass has a whole host of low cost marketing tips for you to generate business leads. There are great opportunities to meet new customers and suppliers with on line and face to face networking groups.

The phone answering service from Verbatim is in business to help you maximise every opportunity by answering calls that will be lost when you are out of the office drumming up sales, your telephone lines are engaged or are just not answered within 3- 4 rings.

Business owners recognise that they want to create a professional image and by not answering the phone in a timely and professional manner can create more unintended problems:-

1. Fewer Business Opportunities
2. An impression of not caring; a direct reflection on your service
3. Costly and hard to re-build reputation
4. Lost business, lost money
5. Free advertising for your competition

Small companies also find themselves with “spinning plates” syndrome, rushing hither and thither all day, without achieving anything constructive -. But I suppose staying in bed is one option!

Trying to work without interruptions and actually achieving anything would be great!

Help is at hand – there is a solution, get your phones answered professionally and well.

By letting Verbatim’s telephone answering service take the strain, your life will change so that you will find the problems we hear often quoted by business owners will be a thing of the past

1. I hate all my plans for the day ruined
2. I need more sales
3. I get so stressed when the phone interrupts me – personal stress
4. It damages the relationship with person calling – they sense it
5. Missing deadlines
6. Rushed work — mistakes!
7. It breaks my concentration — “I lose the plot”
8. It causes me to work longer hours

There is always a solution to every problem and some are easier to solve than others.

I hope that you have found this interesting, if not thought provoking, for every cloud DOES have a silver lining and staying in bed is not an option.!