Always. Always. Always give the option for your caller to reach a live person. Make it easy. Don’t hide behind your phone system, forcing callers to do things the way YOU want them done.

I can guarantee you that at some point, a customer will call with some issue that doesn’t fit neatly into your pre-programmed options, and connecting them to a live person will resolve the issue with less frustration on their part.
You can do it as the standard “0” option, or by some other unique way. (“If you want to reach someone, ANYONE, just press 0, and we’ll be happy to talk to you!”)

Think about who should take those calls. It depends on your business structure, but consider NOT sending those calls to a receptionist or secretary. Think about it…what this caller needs hasn’t been addressed by any of the options in your Auto-Attendant. Do you think the secretary is qualified to handle their request? Likely not. That doesn’t mean route it to the business owner or president, but at least send those calls to a person (or group of people) or have the power to make things happen, answer in depth questions, or otherwise generally make customers happy (which IS the point of your business…isn’t it?)
Having said that, when calls come in that are simple, but will take more than a minute to answer, have someone designated to hand that call to. There may be calls that come in that CAN be handled by the secretary. Have a plan to simply say “Mrs Jones will be glad to help you with that…may I transfer you directly to her?”
Always give the option to reach a live person in some way. Your customers will thank you for it!

Sometimes you just have to laugh at the Auto-Attendant and On-Hold messages at some companies.

I mean, who are they kidding, is your call really “very important to us”?

by Frank Halliwell ..
Jimboomba, Australia
Public Domain

Monday I was looking at the features of a customer’s phone system at the manufacturer’s website, and they had this to say about their On-Hold message:

The InterStellar Phone System (name changed to protect the guilty. C.H.) gives you the opportunity to have music playing while a caller is on hold. Best of all you can insert interruptions during each recording in order to play a message.

You’ve experienced this. You’re On-Hold, listening to the music or messaging, when all the sudden “click”, the music is interuppted, and hope springs up within you that your call is going to be answered. Only to have your hopes dashed by the message: “Your call is important to us, please continue to hold”.

Can you say dissapointment?

I was On-Hold with a company last week that interrupted their On-Hold music every 10 seconds with this! Never do this to your callers.

Just because you use an Auto-Attendant doesn’t mean it has to be a poor caller experience.

Want to know what your caller experience is like? Why don’t you try our Caller Experience Evaluation? It’s like climbing inside your customer’s head, and hearing your business from their perspective. Very informative!

From a recent client of this:

Thanks for getting the report to me as fast as you did. I will be correcting a lot of the concerns you pointed out. Thanks again!

Don’t give your callers the run-around.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcTZHbNd8Gk[/youtube]

Sometimes it’s the little things that make all the difference for your Caller Experience. I’m talking about the order in which you present the options in your Auto-Attendant.

Recently we were asked to do a Caller Experience Evaluation for a client who told us that most of their callers to this phone number would be potential clients, as existing clients were given direct access phone numbers. When we evaluated their greeting, we found that the first two options given were:

• “If you have an active user account, please press 1”, and
• “If you are calling to re-activate your account, please press 2”

Both of these options were only of interest to EXISTING clients, not potential new clients. If a prospective client was calling in, they had to wait until Option 3 (“To learn more about our service…”) or Option 4 (“If you’re ready to purchase…). While some may hang on the phone long enough to get to those, the client was missing out on engaging those prospects right up front.

Be sure your phone system is speaking to the caller, in the language the caller speaks…and is giving them the options they are looking for right up front. Prospective customers are sometimes skittish…don’t give them any reason to hang up the phone!