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First impressions matter, and even if someone is familiar enough with your business to get on the phone and reach out, that first call can have a big impact on how they perceive your business. Your company greeting should be created with that in mind. A strong company greeting will start the call off right,…
Answering services get dismissed by business owners due to the initial cost. Yet, partnering with one is an investment that will pay for itself repeatedly. One huge benefit of answering services: they provide all your customers with a live person on every call. But there’s more. Answering service agents help with tasks like event registration,…
As your business grows, however, it’s not possible to be on call 24/7; it’s not really possible even if you’re a single-member business. If you and your key employees spend all your time fielding customer calls, you won’t be able to actually do the work or run the business. Too many business owners know the…
Every small business owner has spent hours thinking of ways to save their business money. Have you considered what you could save by switching from an in-house receptionist to a 24/7 live answering service? The low monthly fee you’ll pay to have your phone calls answered 24/7 by a team of experts pales in comparison…
At first glance, trusting another company with your phone calls might seem risky, if not straight-up absurd. We get it! No one knows your business like you do — yet. How can you be sure that another service will capture exactly what makes your business special and communicate that to every caller? I sit well…
A few weeks ago, we asked a bunch of consultants and marketers from lots of different industries to weigh in on the most useful advice they could think to give a small business. (You can check that out here.) We’re back today with a few more gleaming nuggets of customer service gold, just for you. …
That’s right! Here’s a treasure trove of customer service knowledge from 17 leading consultants, from accounting wizards to content-creating wordsmiths. We asked each of them to weigh-in on the topic of customer service and communication, and each of them delivered with a unique perspective. Topics range from clever branding to enhancing responsiveness across channels of…
You might’ve heard the term “virtual receptionist” before, and it’s not immediately clear what exactly they are or what purpose they serve. Are they robots? Do they sit in the corner of your office, beeping like the Jetsons’ robot maid? (We’ll get that one out of the way now—no.) If you don’t know what a…
Customer service and experience expert, Shep Hyken, is doling out tons of actionable (and free) advice right on Twitter. I’ll admit that when I accepted my position at PATLive, I knew very little about customer service. Beyond the niceties that are practically baked-into my southern upbringing, I had never really considered service as anything beyond…
There’s no stopping it: bad customer service is everywhere. Even worse is that customers have a very low bar for what equates good service; a scant one percent of customers feel that their expectations of good customer service are always met. And yet businesses still miss the mark.We all know that a great customer experience…