Own a Business? Answer Your Damn Phone

[amp0193]

I just wanted to share with you the head-banging frustration of this morning, which will show you just how much opportunity there is out there to destroy your competition... if you just answer the damn phone.


I have a product, and I need to get some required government testing done. The government website lists 20 labs that are certified to do this testing.

Of the 20 labs I called:

• 9 went to voicemail
  
• 3 said they would call me back (they didn't)
  
• 2 said to email them my inquiry, and they would email me back (they didn't)
• 1 said to email them my inquiry, and when they responded, they asked for the info that I already had included in the first email.
• 1 said to email them my inquiry, and someone responded 2 hours later saying that someone else would respond in 1-2 business days.
• 1 said to email them my inquiry, and someone would respond in 1-2 business days.
  
• 1 said to call back at a quarter past 1 because everyone was at lunch. (I didn't)
• 2 gave me a quote over the phone, and emailed me an application form within 5 minutes of phone call

Speed was my priority on this, and I was willing to throw $300-500 at any lab that would have just answered the phone, gave me a quote, and told me where to send my product. Only 2 out of 20 labs were able to do that.


This is the 80/20 principle in action.


Is your business in the 80% or the 20%?

 

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[Jonathan Polley]

You know, if there was one lesson above all else that anyone could take from the book. That seemingly very few businesses get right.

Make sure customer service is a priority.

It's not that hard is it?

I had pretty much exactly the same problem as you have had a few months back trying to get CD's pressed (non-fastlane venture) Most companies made the ordering process difficult, or didn't get back to me for quotes, or had hidden charges, or ridiculous turn around times.
In the end, I didn't go with the cheapest, but the company who gave the best customer service.

Have I recommended them since? YES.
Will I use them again? Yes.

Simply because they had their act together and offered great service.

 

[G-Man]

We picked up a 400 store chain 2 mos ago that contacted us through the "contact us" on our website. Answer.that.shit.

 

[becks22]

Customer service is my number one priority!

I live in an apartment, so my business phone line is technically residential. Because of that, I downloaded the app from the phone company and get can calls forwarded to my cell. If I am leaving during the day, I always turn on the app. It makes me feel so much better when if a customer calls, I can talk to them without being 'in my office'.

 

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[theag]

I'm using sexy sounding virtual assistants to answer the phone and gave them strict instructions to tell customers to not bother us over the phone and instead use the ticket system. Works fine.

 

[Azure]

I've emailed a literal ton of potential suppliers through their "contact us" forms on the website. I'm convinced no one actually looks at that inbox. I've begun tracking down actual names of people there and emailing them directly. I've had much better results.

 

[Andy Black]

Nice rant. I'll add mine...


Own a local service business?

Make your primary call-to-action to phone you.

And then answer the damn phone.

People don't want to download your whitepaper on how to choose a locksmith in exchange for their email address and autoresponder series where you try and warm them up so they contact you... ffs... they already want to contact you. Stop getting in the way.

They want to talk to someone.

Guess what else? You'll convert phone enquiries better anyway. The ones that call are more motivated, you get to talk to them the moment they want to talk to you, *and* you can make the sale better when you engage them on the phone compared to emailing back and forth.


All that money spent on advertising and branding... and you fall over at the last hurdle.

 

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[ZF Lee]

Nice rant. I'll add mine...


Own a local service business?

Make your primary call-to-action to phone you.

And the. answer the damn phone.

People don't want to download your whitepaper on how to choose a locksmith in exchange for their email address and autoresponder series to try and get them to contact you... ffs.

They want to talk to someone.

Guess what else? You'll convert phone enquiries better anyway. The ones that call are more motivated, you get to talk to them the moment they want to talk to you, *and* you can make the sale better when you engage them on the phone compared to emailing back and forth.


All that money spent on advertising and branding... and you fall over at the last hurdle.

'But I need to make my mommy and daddy, and my friends at the yuppie bar buy my products. I need funding. Besides, xxx newspaper told me to get funding from friends and family first to start a business.'

No, you shit! They only buy because they love your sad a$$. Use free stuff to get leads and paying customers like:
a) your voice
b) your brain
c) your email address
d) your skype (if online)
e) your cheap phone. even labourers in my country are getting samsungs and China phones at cutthroat prices. But then they just use them as entertainment and therefore, stay poor

Reminds me of this:

 

[jlwilliams]

Reminds me of trying to buy a house. You would think that when you call an agent and leave a message to the effect of "I'm trying to spend a couple hundred thousand dollars. Want some of it?" They would call back.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

I marked this GOLD because the lesson here is priceless -- not just to answer the damn phone, but to respond to your customer emails in a prompt manner.

Think of it this way...

Look at emails and phone calls like this: When someone contacts you, don't look at it like WORK, look at it like someone saying, "We're thinking about giving you money, can you help us make sure we really want to?"

Such a strategy improves your value profile to the customer.

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

Reminds me of trying to buy a house.

Yup, just had that happen yesterday. My agent called another agent because I wanted to see a house. Think they'd answer? Return the call within 2 hours?

Nope. No response.

This sadly isn't unusual. But it's great for us who know it gives us an advantage in business dealings.

 

[rollerskates]

I want to add something to this--if you use an answering service for your business, MAKE SURE THEY ARE NOT IDIOTS. I had to call an emergency repair company yesterday. They use an answering service at nights and on weekends. It is a small family owned business that I've used several times and they do a very good job. I will be calling tomorrow during business hours to complain about their answering service. It is not the answering service's job to judge whether you have an emergency and it is not their place to tell you "oh, I don't pass along all messages". Yes, yes you do. Because THAT is your job. I suppose it's good that particular lady does not work for a doctor's answering service. She did pass along my message and I got prompt service, but sheesh!

On the plus side, there is a winery out there that's just a little richer this weekend, because I decided wine was called for.

 

[G-Man]

This sadly isn't unusual. But it's great for us who know it gives us an advantage in business dealings.

Which is why you can eat your competitor's face if you don't do it that way. Even when people leave us love on social media, we have a system to make sure they get a personalized response from the founder of the company.

How many people you think get responses from the guy that designed the product and they've seen on Shark Tank? F-ing nobody, and it's really not that hard. You just need to pay a girl $11/hr to sift through the emails.

A lot of it's just have about having some damned respect for the folks that want to give you their hard earned dollar.

 

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[Jonathan Polley]

Which is why you can eat your competitor's face if you don't do it that way. Even when people leave us love on social media, we have a system to make sure they get a personalized response from the founder of the company.

How many people you think get responses from the guy that designed the product and they've seen on Shark Tank? F-ing nobody, and it's really not that hard. You just need to pay a girl $11/hr to sift through the emails.

A lot of it's just have about having some damned respect for the folks that want to give you their hard earned dollar.

Yeah, totally this. I always make sure that anyone who sends me an email gets a response within 9 hours (and it's only ever that long if they send me an email just after I have gone to bed) and that any interaction I get on social media gets a response, with the reply always starting "Thanks, NAME" and then thank them for their nice words. Or address an issue that they have.

Being very, very small at the moment. I am worried about what will happen when we start to increase in size (A nice problem to have!). Hopefully once that happens I won't need a slowlane job anymore so will have more time dedicated to dealing with social media and email etc.

But there will (hopefully) come a point where someone will need to be employed to do that for me.

 

[Jon L]

Sometimes, not answering the phone is part of their business model. Especially with companies that work for the government. Having someone 'throw $400 at them' for a single test may cost them more than that just in setting up the new customer in their system. They're looking for $4,000,000 contracts.

A few companies I've worked with in the past that are pains-in-the-butt to deal with:
Ingram Micro
Curtis Wright (yeah from Wright Brothers fame...they're still around, selling stuff to the government)
Raytheon
Rockwell Automation

There are countless more. They've all been in business for decades, and they're not likely to go away anytime soon.

 

[G-Man]

Sometimes, not answering the phone is part of their business model. Especially with companies that work for the government. Having someone 'throw $400 at them' for a single test may cost them more than that just in setting up the new customer in their system. They're looking for $4,000,000 contracts.

A few companies I've worked with in the past that are pains-in-the-butt to deal with:
Ingram Micro
Curtis Wright (yeah from Wright Brothers fame...they're still around, selling stuff to the government)
Raytheon
Rockwell Automation

There are countless more. They've all been in business for decades, and they're not likely to go away anytime soon.

Very true, but I think this is aimed more at people with a new/young business.... given that that's most of us.

Ingram Micro has some of the worst exception handling for shipping/receiving errors I've ever experienced. The things you can do when you have a virtual monopoly on the supply of in-demand parts....

You get a mental toughness award for dealing with those guys and staying sane.

 

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[Jon L]

Very true, but I think this is aimed more at people with a new/young business.... given that that's most of us.

Ingram Micro has some of the worst exception handling for shipping/receiving errors I've ever experienced. The things you can do when you have a virtual monopoly on the supply of in-demand parts....

You get a mental toughness award for dealing with those guys and staying sane.

An interesting note on the mental toughness part of dealing with those companies. My job was to track down hard to find items from these companies. I was able to mark up an item by quite a bit when it was hard to find, so I actually relished wading through the morass of idiots, jerks and lazy people to find the part I was looking for.

 

[ZF Lee]

Not only the phone is useful for customer engagement.
I spend a bit of time on Quora discussing, asking and answering questions on my niche. Quora's like an Q&A online, with every topic from wealth to poverty, businesses to careers and politics to science. Quora's excellent because

1. It's much cleaner than Reddit. Seriously. Of course there are some people coming in who want spoonfeeding or value-stealing, but they pretty much get downvoted or dissed off by real experts on the concerned fields.
2. REAL MILLIONAIRE founders sometimes get it to answer questions. I've seen vice-presidents of companies, startup veterans from India (they have a lot of work there and their answers are quite good), and even icons like Altucher, the founder of Wikipedia (I forgot his name....), authors like John Green and all the lot.

Upon half an hour worth of interaction, I found a bunch of startup enthusiasts (who do more work than I do!), a young kid who's making a hobby networking website (and he's not even 16!) and lots of trends to monitor! Quora's a good place to show that you are an expert in your field....expert enough to help solve their problems and bring their worries to rest. Building trust and showing them the way is an effective way to win people over for those sales!

Reminds me of Jordan Belfort. He may have been a crook, but he sold his 'products' way better than even legal salespeople today! Shame, really. I got hold of his Straight Line materials and here's two things that really stood out:
1. Position yourself as an expert.

2.Salespeople must be educators. Yes, @MJ DeMarco 's right. It's not just about the phone. It's about quality time, where you not only fulfill needs, but educate people so that they know THEY need you.

It's like dating a girl. I meet the girl and talk to her to educate to her that I know what she needs, and I will be there to provide for her.

Now to think of it, business isn't that inhumane and cutthroat after all.

 

[JAJT]

I'm hunting for a factory right now on a new product idea.

Reached out a ton of different places over the last few days - almost all were not responded to. The only real good response I got was from someone who told me they weren't setup for it but would ask around for me anyway. That guy probably does good business.

On a related note. The most successful company I ever worked for as an employee siphoned market share like a fire hose from their major competitor because we answered the phone. We kept them because the product also worked but we SOLD them because we answered the phones.

Quit literally half the calls I answered went like this:

Me: "Hey there how are you? How can I help?"
Them: "Are you a real person?"
Me: "... yes"
Them: "Does this service work like (competitor)?"
Me: "Yup"
Them: "Sign me up".

There's another local company doing something similar and they are killing it in the independent Internet provider space. The two major reasons I love them:

1. When I call tech support they tell me outages BEFORE I talk to a person. No phone queue. No bullshit. No advertisement. Right out of the gate "oh hey, if you are in (area), (area) or (area) we're working on an issue". Shit. Well that saved me 30 minutes on hold. Love it.

2. If I want to speak with someone I can get someone quickly and they don't "script read". They talk to you like a human being. I've had them say things like "Wow, well clearly you know what you're doing here so I'll skip over the obvious stuff and we can try something different". Wait, what? I'm sorry... was that... discretion and independent thought? Holy shit.

Amp is 100% correct. The phone is money.

 

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[Under-Dog]

You need to answer the phone every time! I've had many clients tell me they called other companies before calling mine, they ended up going with me since we answered the phone. Now time to get them calling me before contacting others...

 

[OldFaithful]

I have a product, and I need to get some required government testing done. The government website lists 20 labs that are certified to do this testing.

The key words in this situation are "required", "government" and "certified".

The labs listed don't have to do anything to get customers and as a result they don't care about the customer. The government has required that this work be done and lists these labs as the only approved suppliers. It's no surprise that they don't bother answering the phone.

As another example, in my state the phone number for the local license branch is unlisted and they will not give it you even if you drive there and ask for it. The number they give is a centralized robo phone system at the state capital. It required a FOIA lawsuit by a resident to get the phone number for his local license branch...

 

[JAJT]

Just called what looked like a major USA factory.

Forget answering the phone - their phone was in fact OUT OF SERVICE. Which would be fine if they responded by email. Which they also haven't done.

I think some companies just hate money.

 

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[Under-Dog]

I think some companies just hate money.

I've noticed with contacting new suppliers. Some of these companies are comfortable with their current clients and don't wish to get any new ones. Why you wouldn't want to expand your business is beyond me

 

[PaulRobert]

I marked this GOLD because the lesson here is priceless -- not just to answer the damn phone, but to respond to your customer emails in a prompt manner.

I don't care if it's 10 PM on Saturday night, I answer the email or message. The response is always WOW that was quick, your customer service is golden, etc.. This leads on to a great review, or even better... more business through word of mouth and referrals.

 

[Frans]

One of my clients closes 3K packages over WhatsApp.

It's that last bit of reassurance if your marketing tell the full story already.

 

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[Johnson504]

Wow! I seriously would have thought that answering the phone and customer service would be any businesses #1 priority. I guess we have all dealt with horrible customer service. I will make sure to keep this in mind when I "make it big" so that I don't forget who really pays my bills, the customers!

 

[amp0193]

Sometimes, not answering the phone is part of their business model. Especially with companies that work for the government. Having someone 'throw $400 at them' for a single test may cost them more than that just in setting up the new customer in their system. They're looking for $4,000,000 contracts.

Yeah, I thought about this too, and maybe should've said as much in the OP.

But, TBH, they didn't know what I needed or how big of a customer I was, because they DIDN'T ANSWER THE DAMN PHONE.

 

[amp0193]

I'm using sexy sounding virtual assistants to answer the phone and gave them strict instructions to tell customers to not bother us over the phone and instead use the ticket system. Works fine.

Ahh, the Tim Ferriss phone method. I actually like this a bunch, and need to set up something similar for my business.

It's not that customers necessarily need to speak to you on the phone, they just need a response of some kind to answer their question. Even if that response is to contact us via another method and we'll get back to you right away.

As much as I HATE the auto-responders I get back from site contact forms using Zendesk and the like, it does reassure me that they will get back to me.

You should never allow a customer to have a question in their mind as to what happens next.

 

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[BigRomeDawg]

So true. We land clients lots with last minute service requests "Hey can you repair this machine overnight". We gladly do so at double our regular rate, they gladly pay it, and we land a client for life for saving their a$$.

 

[daivey]

I've said it before and I'll say it again:
Answering your phone = win.

You will be the best.