Impact of Missed Customer Calls on Your Small Business

Unanswered or missed customer phone calls are a much bigger deal for your business than you might think. Upper management level employees may not bat an eye at a few missed calls, but the reality is that phone calls make up for about 80% of customer communications. Every missed call is a lost opportunity to acquire or retain a different customer. When you look at it through that lens, you start to realize just how important it is to value every single customer communication equally. As your business continues to grow, so will your potential for missed customer phone calls if you don’t take the time to expand your infrastructure and hire more personnel to accommodate the increasing demands of your customers. 

Professional answering services can offset the number of missed customer phone calls by a large margin. They have the manpower, advanced equipment, and access to resources to extend your existing customer service infrastructure if you have one and offer additional support where needed. 

How Missing Customer Phone Calls Is Hurting Your Business and What You Can Do about It

Think of every missed customer phone call as a missed opportunity to forge a personal connection with your customers and improve your business practices. Even customer interactions that start off on a negative note like a complaint, cancellation, or return has the potential to have a positive outcome if it’s handled appropriately. But missing the call altogether due to high call volumes and insufficient staffing, especially after the customer has been waiting on hold for a long time, can only make matters worse. 

Moreover, it’s extremely frustrating for customers when their calls go unanswered or they get sent directly to voicemail after navigating through an automated messaging system. The reason customers call your business in the first place is most likely because they want to be connected to a live agent who can answer their questions and resolve the problems they’re having quickly and in real time. 

Missed calls also have a massive snowball effect that can eat up a lot of time and money for your business. One missed call today just means that you’ll have to eventually return that phone call at a later time. By the time you’re able to return the call, the customer may have already moved on or maybe they’re the ones who are unavailable. Then, you’re stuck engaging in a long game of telephone tag until one of you becomes available. Chasing down one customer and trying to constantly get a hold of them is a waste of your time and theirs. The simple solution is to just have enough live customer service agents readily available at all times to answer each customer phone call immediately.

But how do you do that without drastically overextending your business expenditures? Outsourcing professional customer response services can help to lower your rate of dropped or missed calls and ensures that every interaction ends on a positive note. Moreover, it can save your business a lot of money because you won’t have to pay for expensive telecommunications equipment or hire full-time staff members yourself. Professional third-party answering services in Toronto have access to all of the latest telecommunications equipment and the expert resources to hire and train agents to accurately represent your business.

What Are the Most Common Causes of Missed Customer Calls?

Customer calls can go unanswered for a number of reasons. The most common one is having an insufficient in-house customer service department that’s constantly understaffed. Customer service jobs tend to have some of the highest turnover rates of any industry in the world. 

Finding good help in this industry can be difficult. According to the International Customer Service Institute, the turnover rate for customer service jobs is a staggering 33%. As a result, having an in-house customer phone call answering service can get very expensive to maintain long-term. There are a number of other reasons why your missed call rates could be climbing:

• Seasonal promotions and sales causing an influx of orders and customer communications
• Strictly prioritizing digital communications such as social media, live chat, and email
• Employees frequently leaving their workstations or desks and can’t answer the phone in time
• Frequently letting phone calls go to voicemail to handle other work matters
• Having an overwhelming workload
• Not having access to high-quality phone answering or telecommunications equipment and infrastructure

Professional answering services will provide your company with all of the additional support you need to reduce the amount of dropped or missed calls for your business. This includes a virtual receptionist in Toronto who’s trained to know the ins and outs of your business and can direct calls to the appropriate departments. 

How Missing Customer Calls Impacts Your Business

There’s no denying that missing customer phone calls can have a severely negative impact on your business’s reputation and bottom line. Every missed customer phone call equates to one more potentially disgruntled customer who’ll take their business elsewhere if they don’t feel appreciated. 

Customers don’t like being ignored, especially when they’ve invested a certain amount of time and money into your business. They want to be valued as more than just a source of revenue for your business—as they should be. Lack of sufficient customer service is almost just as detrimental to your business as outright bad or rude customer service. Here’s how it can impact your business. 

Calculating the Cost of Missed Customer Calls

Missed customer calls hurt your short-term and long-term revenue potential. Customers are unlikely to call back a second time as they feel it’s a waste of their time. To understand how this impacts your business numerically, multiply the average dollar amount of sales you get in a period of time by the number of daily missed calls. This should give you an idea of potential lost revenue. Consistently missing customer calls could increase churn rates up to 67%. 

Higher Customer Attrition Rates

Every customer has a lifetime value for your business. Customer lifetime value is the average amount of money each repeat customer is likely to spend on your products and services. If customers don’t feel like they’re being valued enough, then they’ll most likely take their business straight to your competitor who’ll gladly welcome them with open arms. 

How to Fix the Issues and Losses Caused By Missed Customer Calls

Make missed customer phone calls a thing of the past for your business. 3C Contact Services offers professional, reliable, and affordable phone answering and customer response services in Toronto. Contact us today to find out how we can help boost your bottom line and business reputation by managing high call volumes.