Today’s businesses offer numerous outlets providing information and resources to their products and services. If you have a question or concern or simply want to stay up-to-date on product details, you can usually do so through a company’s website or social media outlets. The days of where is my order? or is this in stock? and how much does that cost? are no more. Now all it takes is a customer account, tracking number or a few clicks on a website to retrieve details and answer most questions. With resources at your finger tips, it begs the question why do we still have office phones?
If you are still using the phone as a main way for customers to request information you are wasting a lot of money. In truth, we are finding in a growing number of businesses that having phones on employee’s desks is actually becoming a huge time investment and time waster. While we can’t argue against the personal touch a phone call provides, especially as an alternative to a face-to-face meeting, we can vouch for the added time phones afford in an office. For the company’s that rely heavily on their company phones, there is usually an increase of customers calling to request basic information. Additionally, many offices rely too heavily on phones internally to communicate. Just think of the last time you were in the middle of a project and someone in your organization called your line to ask a simple question, this interrupted the efficiency in which you were completing a task. Many people think of phones as a quick way to acquire information but the people on the receiving end are usually staring at a report or agenda and simply relaying information. What if this information was accessible to those seeking an answer and how much time would that save?
When we meet with clients and start holding meetings with various members of an organization, we begin to see just how many small, micro phone calls people are handling which are nothing more than looking at a database and relaying information to a customer. This is just one of the ways we are able to work with our clients to provide business automation and business process management services and help find ways to reduce time wasting. We believe there is absolutely no reason anymore to waste your employees time dealing with phone calls from customers or vendors asking for basic information or internally reaching out to a co-worker before a staff meeting to update a company number. This is the type of problem that a company intranet or external facing company portal that is accessible to clients/customers would solve. These types of solutions pay themselves off in a matter of months as they provide the ability for people to self-serve, which becomes crucial for a young business to grow.
If you want to maximize your customer and employee’s time, throw away your company phone and look at ways you can make your website answer the questions for them..