Within all the supply of food stores, restaurants, workshops and other commercial establishments in our city, how many of them have we ever used and decided not to step on our lives again?

There are many reasons to make that decision, such as a high price or a service or product of poor quality. Both factors allow us to catalog these places with the labels of “expensive/cheap” and “good/bad”. In addition, we can combine them without problems. If it is “expensive” but “good,” it becomes positive, as well as “cheap” but “bad,” if we are not too demanding.

However, there is a factor that has nothing to do neither with the cost nor with the quality that moves us to cross out or highlight the business: your attention. I do not know anyone who after being treated with contempt, cockiness or simply ignored has returned to that place in his life. He puts a big red X on his name, and we pass by looking for another alternative. Regardless of whether it is “cheap” and “good.”

 

Answer quickly with a warm and welcoming manner

Unfortunately, many companies do not consider that giving proper attention is an important value at work. That is, they do not think it is appropriate to respect the client. They treat them as numbers or incidences, paid meat instead of human beings. They forget that people who attend do so because they need to satisfy and, the more help they receive, the more satisfied they will leave, they will return and, most importantly, they will recommend our service or product to their friends, counterparts, and colleagues.

The same happens with telephone attention. Without proper management of business calls, many business opportunities and fixed customers are lost because they do not remember that maxim that says that we must take care of those who feed us. We have reached a point where the human touch has been robotized with automatic answering machines and automated response systems. With the first one, we leave our clients in limbo. The second, directly, force them to say what they want them to say. Psychologists define that feeling that these call attention systems cause as frustration, but in our country, that word is closer to the family of the goats.

 

Speak Clearly

For SMEs and freelancers, who do not have the means or the necessary training to take care of this essential detail of their work, the ideal would be to have a person in charge of performing this service competently. But hiring a secretary involves very high costs for your company, so they add one more task to the many lists of things to do that have nothing to do with their profession.

No longer. For professionals like these, there are virtual secretaries. From their office in the “cloud,” they watch over earthly matters, freeing workers from a task they are not prepared for or that arises at a certain moment when they can not do it properly. For example, they will not be able to answer a call during a meeting, responding to another call or after an unforeseen event that has left their character as that of the recurring goats and lose the necessary tact with which to attend an incoming call at that moment.

 

Ask before you put people on hold

What is, in short, adequate call management in the company? First, answer all calls. If we do not answer, 90% decide not to wait half an hour and mark the number of competitors. Once this step is taken, the client should listen to a kind, calm and fearless voice to the future of the business that gives him security. Correct and professional treatment is the first step to make a good impression. The last step is to pay attention. Listen and listen to the reason for the call. This is what people with experience in the sector know how to do because they know the necessary answers to satisfy the customer in a fast way. Nobody wants to spend the whole day stuck on the phone to solve a doubt effectively. If the person is available, the call passes after a short waiting period enlivened with music or the number is called to call later in case of not responding.

 

Take messages properly

Let’s go to the next step. Not all the calls our business receives will be related to labor issues. For this reason, it is necessary to have a filter that speeds up communication and frees the line of unnecessary calls like the great telephone spam. A part of the management of virtual secretaries is precisely to become a protective wall of the company and to reject unwanted calls as well as to open the appropriate doors of the same depending on who is calling. That is if they want information, either they give it to them, or they pass it on to the commercial department or if they are clients with the person they want to talk to. Knowing how to prioritize saves everyone time.

 

Make the most of those calls

The last step is the differentiating value of call management for companies because it deals with the organization of the task agenda. From any point where you are, the user of this service can access your weekly plan to check your appointments, modify some time – advising the secretary to the client in the best way possible – and see the call alerts that you have yet to attend, according to motive and urgency.

The treatment that one receives is, in the end, the reason that one returns to the same restaurant, make the purchase in the same store or takes the car to the same workshop. The optimal management of calls for companies by virtual secretaries offers this treatment not only to the company’s clients but also to the company itself.