Phone Answering Tips For Small Business Owners

Do you publish your Phone Number on your Website, Brochures, and Business Cards?

If you do, then I would suppose it’s because you want prospective customers to CALL you.

But how do you handle your incoming calls?

The truth is, the way you answer your phone will form either a negative or positive impression of your Business.

Consider These 5 Essential Phone Answering Tips for your Small Business:

1. Answer your phone in a friendly manner – identifying you and your Business.

For instance a great way to start is, “Good Morning. ABC Business. Mary speaking. How may I help you”?

This way, it will be clear from the beginning that the caller is speaking to someone who is pleasant and ready to assist him/her – you!

2. If you are very busy and must route some of your calls to voice-mail, then make sure you return those calls as quickly as possible – and always within the same business day.

3. Make sure your Voice Mail Greeting is clear, professional, and to the point.

For instance, “Thank you for calling ABC Company. Please leave us your name, area code, and phone number – and we’ll phone you back as quickly as possible. Thank You!”

Call yourself. Listen to your message. Based on what you hear – would you do business with you?

4. If you think you might have to put someone on hold – ask them if it’s alright to do so. Many people welcome the offer of a return call rather than waiting endlessly on hold.

5. If you can’t always answer your phone during your regular business hours, then think about using an answering service – with human customer service reps.

Dealing with complicated computerized auto-attendants where you have to “press 1 for sales, press 2 for customer service”… is annoying for many people.

Help them out by letting them speak to a friendly human representative of your company.

Tip of the Day: Answer your Phone. Someone important is calling!

Tagged with: answering tips • phone answering • voice mail

Filed under: Biz Stuff

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