Zoom Answer Call is genuinely dedicated to providing the highest level of Customer Service in the industry, by employing quality personnel who are well trained, articulate and equipped with the latest technology.
Friday, 30 December 2011
Expanding Your Business In 2012?
Your time is best spent on the work your business does for its clients, and on growing your business, whether that's through networking or meetings with clients. Answering the phone, on the other hand, is not something that needs to be done by you personally, and by outsourcing to a telephone answering service like Zoom, you are freed up to do all the things that do need you. With our personal service, and highly trained team, your clients will never notice the difference. And you won't have to deal with any more annoying sales calls!
Zoom's Virtual Reception service is another option which enhances the image of your business and allows your calls to be put through to the right person, just as an in-house receptionist would. Even when you're out of the office, your clients' calls can be put through to you, as if you were still in the office, truly allowing you to get on with expanding your business without your current clients suffering.
Thursday, 15 December 2011
Winter - The Perfect Time To Use A Call Answering Service
As far as the staff are concerned, business may be winding down for the end of the year, but actually, most businesses will still have the same workload. Unfortunately the bank holidays, Christmas parties and staff illnesses mean there are less people available to do that work in less time! By outsourcing your telephone reception or your call centre services, you can make the most of the time you do have available.
Zoom offers an ad hoc service so that you can use our telephone answering service whenever you need it to cover staff illnesses, holidays or bank holidays. We can even cover your phones over the Christmas period if your business closes down. No matter how unexpected, the Zoomettes will be there to help!
Friday, 11 November 2011
The benefits of a telephone answering service company
A quality telephone answering service needs to be prompt, answering all calls within a few rings, even when the reception is busy; it needs to be professional, answering with the name of the company; and it needs to be friendly and helpful, with the receptionist asking how they may direct the call and quickly and effectively putting the caller through. Should the requested person at the company not be available, an accurate message taking service should be in place so that the caller receives a call-back.
All this may seem obvious, many of us have been put on hold for too long or have been put through to the wrong person or have never had a call back. Unfortunately this is a basic customer service that many companies still get wrong.
By employing a company such as Zoom to run a virtual reception service and act as your first point of contact, answering promptly with your company name, you will not have these problems ever again. Zoom can also transfer messages via email, SMS or fax instantly to the relevant person.
How to keep customer service on the agenda
A company may recruit a telephone answering service or hire a call centre, then expect customer service to run itself. And the fact is, it doesn’t. Without consistent review, interest and attention, the customer service experience will degrade until management action is required.
The key to good customer service is to carry out the following activities consistently, by making them ongoing priorities and habit forming.
Keep talking about customer service so that it becomes central to your company culture. The simplest way is to keep it on your meeting agendas, and then the mindset will spread through the ranks and lead to decisions that will make a difference.
As a company, you need to stay hands-on and monitor customer service activities personally; you may like to hire a manager to oversee customer satisfaction and service. Yet you, as a company leader, should stay hands-on too. A good idea would be to visit call centres to talk with reps, answer the phones yourself for an hour a week, or visit clients personally to discuss their satisfaction.
Distribute customer service surveys and develop measurable benchmarks that you can follow. If 90% of your customers said that they were "extremely satisfied" with your customer service two months ago and that number fell to 75% this month, that tells you that you need to act. If you weren’t measuring, you would never know.
Have processes in place to assure that customer service remains an outgoing process, not just an incoming one. Your company representatives should talk to customers who recently bought from you, not wait to hear from them when something goes wrong. That makes the process proactive, not reactive, and dramatically increases overall customer satisfaction.
All your employees should be aware that they are in the customer service business and they play a critical role in pleasing customers. Talk to them about it often, enthusiastically, and personally.
Monday, 17 October 2011
Body language matters, even when answering the telephone
When talking face to face, statistics indicate that only 7% of the message is conveyed and understood by the words used, 38% is conveyed by the way the words are spoken and 55% by body language. Of course when the conversation is over the telephone the body cannot be seen, making it easier for misunderstandings to occur.
Whether we are angry or happy, it is shown by our facial expression, and the movement of those muscles will affect the sound of the voice. When we smile our voice is lighter & when we feel anger the voice will be deeper, also the pace may be faster than normal.
When speaking on the telephone your body language still reflects your mood and feelings. The position of your body has a fundamental effect on how words sound, and breathing patterns play a major role in how words are spoken. Restriction happens as soon as you sit down due to our normal reaction of lowering our head and shoulders. Unfortunately, when your shoulders and chin are dropped the words are more muffled. Tone, pitch and pace of the voice are all affected by body language, which as a result can cause the words spoken to be interpreted wrongly.
Be aware of your body language, the way you sit or stand when on the telephone, and your breathing patterns. They all affect how you speak. Body language does matter on the telephone if we want to send messages that are correctly understood. This is why our Zoomettes always smile when we answer.
Thursday, 13 October 2011
First impressions
Telephone answering services cover some of the following services: inbound call centres; mail forwarding; virtual offices and virtual receptionists. The benefits are many fold, using this type of service, your client gets to speak to a real human being & you avoid the cost of office rental, thereby reducing overheads.
Telephone answering services such as Zoom’s call answering services can take some of the administrative burden off staff & thereby show a professional approach to potential clients. Our services can be tailored to the needs of your business. Some may only need to outsource out of hours and weekend calls or calls covered during meetings, staff holidays or cover for staff sickness. We can help with whatever you need.
After all, no one wants to be put on hold during a phone call.
Tuesday, 20 September 2011
Common Telephone Answering Myths
One common myth about delivering good customer service over the phone is that it has been achieved if everyone understands what has been decided and what will happen next. In actual fact, this is not effective communication. Good communication involves discussion rather than simply informing. Discussion helps build understanding on both sides, as well as comfort and commitment from the customer.
Another frequent mistake is to think that being frank is always the best policy. The difficulty is that what one person feels is frank, another person may find insulting. It is important to consider how you come across to other people.
Little changes to your telephone answering skills can make big changes to how your customers see you. At Zoom UK we are always striving to improve our telephone answering service and customer service skills.
Saturday, 10 September 2011
More Than Just Call Answering
If you know that many of your calls are requests for information such as brochures, rather than forwarding these requests on to you for you to deal with, we can send out the brochures for you. The brochures will be sent out with your preferred letter and stationery, ready stamped with either first or second class postage.
By taking over this task, we can ensure that potential customers' requests for information are always dealt with promptly, even when you are out on the road all day.
Monday, 22 August 2011
The Benefits of a Call Answering Service
Outsourcing your phone answering has many advantages, including:
- providing a consistently professional face to your company
- answering each call with a smile!
- allowing staff to get on with other tasks
- ensuring you never miss a call or message
- covering busy periods, holidays, leave or difficult times
- the choice between call centre services, virtual reception, call answering, telemarketing, diary management and brochure sending
Using a call answering service is a simple and valuable decision - but if you are still unsure, then take advantage of our 7 day FREE trial and let us change your mind!
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Wednesday, 3 August 2011
The Importance of Customer Service
Today's business world relies on the positive word of mouth and recommendation of customers - the rise of social media and the internet has made this ever more relevant, since customers can easily broadcast their good (or bad) experiences via Twitter, Facebook, review sites and forums.
When new customers research your company and products, they will ultimately discover these opinions and views, and are far more likely to trust peer reviews and recommendations than the salestalk of your website. And what's the biggest element in keeping your customers happy? Quality, quick, attentive and knowledgeable customer service.
Your job - or should we say, OUR job - is to ensure that your customer service is top notch. Most customers still prefer to speak to a real person when they have a query, complaint, question or problem. Our call answering operators are highly trained to act as the face of your company, providing helpful and efficient advice and service to your valued clients and customers. Having a call answering service means that your customers will not be left waiting for their call to be answered, or get lost in a maze of "please press 1..." automated responses, or never get through to anyone at all!
Our Zoomettes answer each call with a smile, and are capable and professional call handlers, who can take on any aspect of your customer service as required. Improve your customer service, increase the amount of good word of mouth about your company and watch new customers roll in...
Thursday, 21 July 2011
Give Your Customers the Service You Would Like
A telephone answering service can help with the first three points by making sure that every time a client or a potential client calls they hear a happy, friendly voice. The Zoomettes always smile when we answer a call, and we are always eager to help the caller. We never take a caller for granted just because they are already a client – every caller is treated as we would treat our own customers. You can test us on this just by calling!
Even your last contact with a client should leave them thinking positively of you. It is always a good idea to ask them what they thought of their whole experience with you, whether it was positive or negative. Feedback is useful in improving your service – if you don’t know what’s wrong, you can’t fix it.
Thursday, 7 July 2011
The Crucial Moment - First Contact
The way you answer the telephone tells someone how much you value their business, and what sort of company you are. If you or your receptionists answer the telephone grumpily and are generally unhelpful or uncommunicative, that reflects negatively on the company as a whole. While you may get away with it on subsequent calls, that first call is a crucial factor in determining whether or not you close the deal with that caller.
Using a telephone answering service like Zoom UK ensures that every call is answered politely and with a friendly voice. No caller needs to hear an engaged tone or go to voicemail, so you need never miss out on a potential deal or upset a current client.
Tuesday, 28 June 2011
Behind the Scenes of a Telephone Answering Service
Our Zoomettes have all been recruited from customer service backgrounds, and are used to delivering the highest quality service before they even start working for us. Once they start, we invest heavily in their personal development and training, putting them through customer service NVQs levels 1, 2 and 3. After all that training we don't want them to go anywhere else - and we must be doing something right as we have one of the highest rates of staff retention in the industry.
One of our selling points is that we always answer the phone with a smile, but a smile that can be heard in your voice is about more than just exercising the right muscles. We work hard to foster a happy, friendly atmosphere within the team and firmly believe that it makes a difference to how we sound on the telephone. And it benefits us too! When work is a fun environment everyone is keen to start work every day, and is always motivated deliver the best customer service.
It's not all about work though...building team spirit is also about having fun together! The Zoomettes have played practical jokes on each other, celebrated births and weddings together, dressed up in fancy dress at work, and even sky-dived together for charity. It all helps ensure we sound happy and friendly on the telephone - because that's how we are!
Save Time. Save Money. Use A Telephone Answering Service
A telephone answering service like Zoom will take over the handling of calls, leaving your staff free to concentrate on the high value work so that they can be more productive. We can even go further than just answering and directing the calls - we can be your sales and enquiry line or your first level technical support, gathering information about the enquiry or problem and sending it to you instantly.
Not only will outsourcing to us save time on normal working days, but we will continue answering your calls even when members of staff are off sick or on holiday. As we work as a team, there is always someone available to answer the telephone so you never have to worry about missing important calls. Your clients need never even hear an engaged tone!
Wednesday, 11 May 2011
Need The Skills Not The Telephone Answering Service?
The way your customers perceive you and your staff on the telephone directly affects how they view your company. Improving your telephone operators skills in three key areas – Competency, Attitude & Impression not only makes their lives easier, but also enhances the image of your business.
More generally, if you can adapt your behaviour so that you are in tune with each of your customers’ differing needs, you are more likely to win their business. Zoom can teach you the skills you need to manage your customers' expectations and deliver excellent customer service. And happy customers are more likely to tell everyone else about you!
Not Sure You Need A Telephone Answering Service?
Wednesday, 30 March 2011
Professional Call Answering Services
"Answering the phone badly is like saying 'I don't want your business' to callers," says Zoom founder Chella Heyes.
Zoom Answer Call, set up in 1998 was her solution to this, providing professional call answering services to businesses of all sizes. From virtual receptions, call centre services, sales lines, support services and customer helplines, Zoom ensures you never miss a call again, and all calls are handled in the right way.
The 'Zoomettes' are fully trained in telephone techniques and given client-specific training so that they are perfectly prepared to respond to customer enquiries, without callers even realising they are talking to an answering service.
Zoom Answer Call reduces customer frustration, increases leads and sales and above all, puts a professional face (or should that be voice?) to your company at all times.
Wednesday, 23 March 2011
Who answers your calls when you can't?
What do you do when your business has grown beyond your staff's means? When it's time to increase your operations you don't necessarily need to take on new staff, or a call centre - Zoom Answer Call can provide these for you so that you never miss a sale again.
Our Zoom Sales Agents can help you to manage campaigns, orders and customer support, increasing leads and sales for your business.
We can can process orders, take billing details and work with your website's ordering facility. We can provide technical support for customers and manage enquiries so that they are matched with relevant and available engineers. We can provide 0800, 0845 and 0870 numbers to set up advertising campaigns with, as well as help to promote your products and services on each call.
And of course we can provide you with a customised report of the response and activities for each service with our professional Call Centre services.
Friday, 18 February 2011
Test Your Phone Answering Skills
That's why our Zoomettes are the best in the business - you can hear their smiles when they answer the phone.
Take the Zoom Answer Call quiz to test your own skills. Do you know the best thing to do if you can't answer a customer's question? Or whether silence always means agreement? Or how to assist understanding and clear communication?
Give our quiz a try and see how well you compare to our Zoomettes!
Friday, 11 February 2011
Reduce Costs and Increase Productivity
At Zoom UK, we specialise in making things easy for our clients - no matter the size of business, and no matter the extent of our responsibility. By investing in outsourcing your phone answering, you can dramatically increase productivity of your staff, who will be free to work on their primary jobs rather than stopping to answer calls and field off telemarketers.
We also provide a virtual receptionist service, to seamlessly manage calls and transfers - once again, freeing up your business time and effort and making sure your work day runs as smoothly as possible.
You'll never miss a call again with Zoom Answer Call.
Try our FREE 7 day trial and see for yourself.