Don’t lose sales to the voicemail black hole

 26 May 2017  251 Views

 

Customers really dislike leaving voicemail messages. This may not be surprising, there may be many times when you have been faced with the tone of a voicemail greeting and hung up instead of leaving a message.

We found out that 69% of people will do the same. In a survey of 300 small businesses and an examination of its own call data from 10,000 businesses, Moneypenny also found that a third of the businesses surveyed failed to answer their incoming calls.

But the implications of letting these clients and potential customers fall into the black hole of voicemail could be far-reaching for estate agents. Even an estate agent with a healthy sales book cannot afford to let their standards slip and lose customers.

Really, relying on voicemail is akin to letting a customer walk into your branch and not be ready to greet them. With no one there that person will simply walk straight back out again. And if no one answers the phone, the caller will assume that their enquiry isn’t important to the agent and will take their business elsewhere.

Having a system in place to capture every call, even if it’s to arrange a call-back at a more suitable time, is always preferable than the black hole of voicemail.

These days, people will do their ‘window shopping’ online using websites and social media, so when they’re calling a branch, they are one step closer to having made a decision. This means that the value of that call is much higher than it has ever been previously.

Those initial calls help establish relationships with potential customers and any call with an existing client nurtures that connection with them. But of course, this can only happen if the call is answered, so it pays to avoid the voicemail black hole.