Tennessee Answering Service Has Area Guitar Business Hitting High Note
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by: jacob.smith
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Date: Mon, 24 Aug 2009 Time: 11:53 AM
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The company in question was a guitar manufacturer right in the heart of the Country capitol of the world. They weren’t any guitar maker, though. They often catered to agents and musicians who needed custom designs and rush orders. In other words, this company could not afford to miss a call.
At a unique company like this that specializes in custom work, run-of-the-mill cost-cutting rarely applies. Certainly, I consulted on how to streamline their supply chain so that filling these custom orders with a day turn-around became more possible.
But, to me, the most obvious move I suggested was signing on with a Tennessee answering service that would ensure a live person answered all calls. From there messages would be relayed quickly and in great detail to the company. One way to keep costs down at a small business like this is to avoid hiring employees. The owners and handful of employees there were jack-of-all-trades so to speak. That meant they were not always around the phone, though. And in Nashville, missing an urgent guitar call (and believe me, there are plenty of those there) can mean losing a potential customer to another company that answers the call.
It turns out that even though I was able to help them implement many cost-cutting and efficiency-elevating measures, they would have been more than happy if all I had done was get them on board with a Tennessee answering service. In the first week of service with the call center, the owners realized the value in a qualitative way. After four weeks, they realized the quantitative value. Of course, previously they did not have a system in place for tracking incoming calls, but it was estimated that messages increased by 20 percent over their previous voice mail system. Then, at six months into the new systems, revenue had increased 13 percent and profits 6 percent from the same period the previous year. About half of that increased revenue was attributed to the answering service, which used custom scripts and provided immediate answers to common questions and recorded all relevant information from callers. That’s one of those details you come to understand after utilizing an answering service. The messages received are much more complete and timely. When a caller has to construct his or her own message on the spur of the moment for a voice mail prompt, often important contact details or requests will be left out. However, with trained agents set to gather all relevant information, messages from call centers come back as extremely qualified leads or ready-to-go orders.
Most would expect answering services to pay dividends for large companies, just due to extreme call volume. However, many small businesses do not realize what they are missing when it comes to effectively handling incoming calls. I know one custom guitar maker in Nashville who has a good idea, though.
About the Author
Jared Kitchell is an operations consultant specializing in corporate communications structure. He writes articles for many print and online publications. His articles feature relevant information about Tennessee answering service solutions and operator answering service best practices.
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