A Little Reminder About Our Free Trial

The shops are already starting to get Christmas stock in (personally I think they should at least wait until after Halloween, but that's a whole other conversation!), and no doubt your staff are already trying to book time off around Christmas to see their families and friends. So we thought we would remind you about our 7 day free trial for our call answering service!

The trial gives you a chance to try out our service with no obligation, and if you then find yourself with lots of staff off around Christmas, you can be sure that at least your calls are being answered promptly and your customers are being handled professionally. While we may not be able to solve your clients' problems, we can make sure that their calls are transferred to someone who can help, or messages are taken and delivered to the right person.

Our 7 day free trial is easy to set up so you can quickly see the benefits you get from the service we offer. You can be online in minutes, and whether you only want calls diverted to us when the line is busy, or goes unanswered for too long, or you want to divert all your calls to us, you will still get those 7 days for free. 

Virtual Reception Services

A reception is the first point of contact that your customers will reach when they call your company, but many companies find they don't really need a full time receptionist to transfer their calls. Diverting your calls to a virtual reception service can give you a more professional image by stopping calls being answered by anyone in the office and then bouncing around until it reaches the right person. Calls can be answered within the first few rings the same as if you had your own team of receptionists rather than waiting until any member of staff is free. We all know customers don't like waiting!

It isn't just a helpful service for smaller companies - if you often find that calls are still coming in during busy periods when all your receptionists are on calls, you can use the Zoom virtual reception service as an overflow to ensure that all calls are answered promptly. Whether you have lots of employees, or just a few, we can manage the contact information for all of them and make sure that we transfer calls seamlessly to the right person, even if they are out of the office! If they are unavailable, we can send a message to them via email, SMS or fax, whichever they prefer.

It doesn't matter that you are miles away from Zoom, your calls can be transferred seamlessly just as if we were in the office next to you. Just like your own receptionist would, we answer calls in your company name and always make sure we represent your company to the highest possible standard.

Happy Staff Equals Happy Customers

Call answering services and call centres, as well as customer service roles in general, are an area in which the mood of the staff can easily affect the mood of your customers. This is why we work so hard to make sure our Zoomettes are happy and content in their jobs (which is why we have such a good staff retention rate!). So what can you do to keep your staff similarly happy?

• Front-line staff need to be empowered to make decisions where possible. It can be very frustrating if they need to refer too many things up the line to their manager. This will also lead to happy customers as no one likes being passed from pillar to post - it's much easier for them when they can sort everything out with one person.
• Breaks are important, particularly after difficult calls. Don't begrudge people needing to walk away from their desks so they can shake off the last call. Otherwise you run the risk of the stress from the last call affecting the next.
• Ensure your staff have access to food and drink - whether that's a vending machine or a kettle and some biscuits. Hunger or dehydration can easily make little issues feel big.
• Be an accessible manager - make sure your staff can come to you with any work issues they have.
• Give your staff the opportunity to share good and bad tips for dealing with customers. No one has a monopoly on the right way of doing things - we're constantly learning. Sharing things that have worked or things that haven't make life easier for the whole team.
• Have fun as a team - whether it's a special day out, a team lunch, or just 5 minutes silliness in the office.
• Make them a cup of tea! The little things all add up to help staff feel appreciated.

How To Make Customers Happy

At Zoom, not only do we answer the phone many (MANY!!) times a day in our virtual receptionist and call answering roles, we also offer a variety of call centre services. Often, people calling call centres are either already upset as they have a problem, or they do not expect anything other than adequate service. We like to prove them wrong! Here are a few tips to exceeding your customers' expectations.

• Empathise with the customer
• Putting yourself in the customer's shoes and treating them how you would like to be treated in the same situation is an easy way to keep the customer's interests in mind. If you manage to give the customer the impression that you truly understand, they are more likely to trust you. 
• Take ownership
• Customers hate being passed from pillar to post, so wherever possible you should aim to help them without transferring the call to several other people. If they have a problem you can solve, don't pass the buck just because it's easier for you.
• Don't follow a script
• Customers can tell when you are reading from a script rather than just using your own words, and they don't like it. It's not hard, just tell them what you will do and when you will do it (then make sure you do what you've promised!).
• Review things with your colleagues
• If you have had a difficult call, talk about it with your colleagues and manager. Perhaps you handled it really well, in which case other members of the team can learn from you, or perhaps other people could suggest different ways you could have dealt with it. Either way, learning from each other is good for the whole team, and the customer.
• Make things easy for the customer
• Whatever the reason for their call, the customer wants it dealt with as quickly as possible, and with as little effort required from them as possible. It's pointless to spend all your time trying to be the best call centre operator, delivering excellent customer service, if the customer gets frustrated at how long it takes for anything to get done.

Maintaining High Standards

We understand the importance of our Zoomettes' skills, and are continually investing in them, both in terms of call answering training and client specific training. Investing in our team is the best way for us to make sure that our clients get exceptional service - this is the reason our clients stay with us as they aren't locked into a contract.

As well as recruiting our operators from customer service backgrounds, we also put them through Customer service Levels 1, 2 and 3. Then we work hard to keep them part of our team - team spirit and loyalty are key traits of our Zoomettes. Every time a new client comes on board, all our operators are given client-specific training to prepare them to handle the incoming calls. Clients are welcome to assist us in this training process in our Cambridge office - they can get to know the team and put faces to the names and voices.

Any company trades on its reputation, and investing in training for your staff is a crucial part of maintaining high standards. We are proud of our team of Zoomettes, and hope that our clients are too!

Who Needs A Holiday?!

I don't know about you, but this heat is getting to be too much! If you are stuck in the office while the temperatures soar, it can be hard to concentrate. While most larger offices have air conditioning, many smaller businesses can't justify the expense when the weather in this country can be so erratic! The school summer holidays are often a time when the offices are a bit emptier than usual anyway as some people jet off on holiday, so along with a professional call answering service to pick up the slack, you want to make sure your employees are working as well as they can. So how can you keep them cool?

Drinking cold drinks and foods will help. Instead of doing coffee and tea rounds, make up some cold drinks and keep them in the fridge. You don't need to do anything fancy - a jug of water that is kept topped up is good for cooling people down and keeping them hydrated. As for lunch, salads and sandwiches may seem like the healthy, boring option, but who really wants a steaming mug of soup when it's 30 degrees Celsius outside?! If you have a cake or biscuit day each week, why not switch to an ice cream day instead?

Keeping the blinds closed on the windows, but with the windows open will help to keep the office cool, but unless you have big windows, you will probably also need to invest in some desk fans. The quieter the better as the noisy ones can be distracting, but when the sun is blazing, anything will do! If you have a dress code that requires people to wear warmer clothing such as suits, and you are struggling to keep the office cool, you may need to consider relaxing the dress code for a while. Unless your employees are customer facing, they should be able to do their job just as well in casual attire - better in fact if they aren't sweltering hot!

The Importance of Training

Whatever career you are in, you almost definitely needed training to start with. If your job is simple, that training may have been a supervisor walking you through things for an hour, while for more complex job requirements you may need to spend years at university (doctors certainly need more than an hour or so of training!). Surprisingly, many employers don't feel that call answering skills require any training. Naturally, we at Zoom would disagree strenuously with that!

As an employer perhaps you feel that offering training is too expensive, or unnecessary as it is 'just answering the phone'. Unfortunately, lack of training is often the reason why employees fail to deliver the expected level of customer service. Both customer service and call answering are skills that need to be taught and practised; all our Zoomettes have extensive training, covering Customer Service NVQ Levels 1, 2 & 3.

As well as training our own staff, we also offer coaching for either individuals or groups on Competency, Attitude and Impression with regards to telephony skills. These are important skills to learn if you want your staff to handle calls in the best way possible, leaving your customers satisfied and seeing your company in the best possible light.