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.

Are You Watching The Olympics?

The Olympic Games being held in your home country is one of those experiences that may well be once in a lifetime. As such, many people will want to take time to watch it, whether live at one of the venues or just making sure to catch their favourite sports on TV. This means that as an employer, you may find that you have multiple members of staff wanting to have time off. Zoom's call answering service can help provide the extra support you need when your staff are away from the office.

Obviously, the people who are attending the Olympics live will not be able to get any work done while they are there, but for those people booking time off to watch it on the television, why not suggest they can work from home for the duration. They have the benefit that they can fit their work in around the one sport they really want to watch while still getting their work done. For you, the benefit is that you don't have to find someone else to do their work, or risk falling behind on deadlines. Using a call answering service, any calls can be diverted to their home, or their mobile numbers.

Tone of Voice is Crucial

When you are talking to someone face to face, you pick up all sorts of clues about their mood and meaning from their body language and facial expression as well as their tone of voice and choice of words. Unfortunately, you have much less to go on when you are answering the telephone. Tone of voice becomes much more important, which is one of the reasons why all our call answering operatives are trained to smile before they even answer the phone.

It is very easy to give the wrong impression over the phone, simply by sounding slightly distracted (perhaps when you are typing the message, or taking the caller's details). You can come across as bored and uninterested. It is worthwhile over-compensating slightly so that you sound lively, interested and friendly. But don't go too far the other way or you could give the impression that you are being sarcastic, which will quickly irritate the caller.

Whatever your role in your business, if you are talking to a client on the phone they are building an impression of the business as a whole from the way they perceive you. If you aren't sure how you come across on the phone, ask someone to listen in and give you an honest opinion.

Risky Business

Running your own business requires taking a few risks but finding a call answering service doesn't need to be one of them. Starting a business is itself a massive risk, but if you are running your own business, you know it is a risk well worth taking! Even when your business is up and running, you will still find yourself taking risks. As the economy is still recovering, there is always the risk that it will all unravel somehow.

Using a call answering service can save you both time and money by freeing up you and your staff to focus on the profit-making part of your business. However, it does require a certain degree of trust. When someone answers your calls for you, they become the first point of contact for many of your clients and potential clients. As such, you want someone who is professional, friendly, and understands your company.

How can you find a service like this without risking your money trialling different call answering companies until you find one that suits you? Well, with Zoom there is no risk! You can have a 7 day free trial at no risk to yourself. You can set up your trial in a matter of minutes, just by calling Zoom. We are confident that if you try before you buy, we can convince you to choose us!

Need To Save Some Money?

Many companies are finding they need to streamline their processes to save time and money, and enable them to focus on growing their business in the current economic climate. As a business owner it is well worth spending a bit of time considering which parts of your business really need to be carried out by yourself or your employees and which parts could be outsourced. Often you will find that you and your staff spend an inordinate amount of time answering telephone calls, many of which are not productive (the ever present sales calls in particular). This can be disruptive when you are in the middle of a project and have to pause to answer the telephone and deal with the call. Outsourcing to a call answering service lets you focus on your work when you need to, and deal with phone calls at a time that is convenient to you.

Giving your staff the opportunity to spend more of their time on the high value work that you actually get paid for has multiple benefits. The biggest is that they will be able to be more productive in the time they have available. A side benefit you may not think of straight away is that your calls will still be answered promptly and professionally, even when you have unexpected absences due to sickness. As your telephone answering service would already be set up, you wouldn't need to worry about that aspect of an absence and could instead focus on sharing out the work you do for your clients.

Successful businesses are those which respond well to change and come out of adversity stronger and even more successful. As such, downsizing is an opportunity to focus your efforts on keeping your business strong and growing within today's economic conditions.

Almost Summer Holiday Time!

The season of summer holidays is almost on us again! Many of us are planning our holidays abroad (although some exceptionally organised people have had theirs booked for months!), and no doubt it is the same in companies up and down the country. Suddenly everyone wants to book time off for the same brief period and managers find themselves trying to work out when everyone can have holiday without affecting the smooth running of the business. This is where a call answering service can help.

Whether you have already got the Zoomettes working for you, or you just want to be able to use Zoom as an ad hoc back up for those times when you need cover and you need it now, we can help! So if you find that all your reception staff want to go away at the same time, their holidays overlap, or someone falls sick while they are the only one covering the telephones, one phone call to Zoom and you can be covered until your employees return.

All you need to do is sign up to our ad hoc service now, and you will be a member forever, so whatever unexpected situation you find yourself dealing with you will be able to turn on your call answering service with just one phone call.