If you’re just getting your landscape business off the ground, it’s common for all business calls to come directly to your cell phone. However, if you are unable to answer these calls, you can miss out on work opportunities.
“People have a short attention span these days, and they expect immediate gratification and immediate answers,” says John Marin, co-founder and CMO of Gozango, a lead-generating marketing platform. “I feel like more than ever historically, if someone calls a company, gets an answering machine they’re going to go, ‘Okay, well, I didn’t speak to anyone, so I’m now going to just call literally the next company on the list and then whoever I get to actually speak with might sell me on the service, and then anyone else that I didn’t even talk to has now already lost the opportunity to get my business.’”
Even if you’re a larger operation, if your office number is left to go straight to voicemail, you can lose business due to consumers’ desire to have their needs met instantaneously. Martin says when callers don’t leave a voicemail, this doesn’t mean missed calls are just spam. This can be homeowners who are simply moving on to the next option.
“A missed call that you try and contact and they don’t pick up that does not automatically mean that with spam,” Martin says. “If you’re missing calls or you got voicemails for potential leads, you should at least start looking at what are my options for call answering.”
Pricing of Call Answering Services
The cost of your call answering service can vary greatly depending on whether you want them to be available 24/7 or just during normal business hours. Martin says your availability will probably hinge on who your clientele is.
“If you primarily mow lawns, and you either don’t offer or hardly ever do hardscaping or tree services, Iit might not be worth having a 24/7 answering service,” Martin says. “If you do offer the higher-cost ticket items like emergency tree services and hardscaping, you’re going to want to want to be available 24/7.”
Martin advises talking to at least three different call answering companies because pricing structures can differ wildly. Some charge a flat rate or per minutes each month. Others charge for the features they are providing.
“They can range from $50 to $500 plus per month based on what you need or just what they charge for their baseline packages or tiered packages of service,” Martin says.
He says for those that charge by minutes, they typically include a line item for any minutes that go over your package so look into what those extra minute charges will be.
“You don’t need to necessarily go overboard and just get the big package because three months out of the year you’re going to be getting a bunch of minutes,” Martin says. “It’s probably not worth it, so unfortunately, there’s some math involved here. You should look at the numbers and ask detailed questions.”
Also, check to see if there is a contract minimum to get out of the agreement or if there are any cancellation fees. Pricing may look great but it could also lock you in for 12 months.
“The service could turn out terrible and you can’t break that contract, or if you want to break it and the cancelation fee is six months’ worth of the price, be real careful about that kind of stuff,” Martin says.
How to Choose the Right Call Answering Services
Take your time reviewing your options and ask the salespeople detailed questions on how they would handle specific scenarios. As you research the different call answering companies available, Martin stresses the importance of quality control and the call answering company understanding your services.
“Even if they answer a phone 24/7, and they seem really affordable, none of that matters if as soon as they get on a call with a potential lead, they lose them because they don’t even understand the product or service,” Martin says.
Martin says there are some call answering services that will work with any business, regardless of the field. He recommends finding a company specializing in a niche of industries as their employees are more likely to have answered calls for other companies in the same industry.
“They understand what a customer is going to ask for,” Martin says. “They understand what the business is going to ask of them, and they know your industry in and out. So that’s super important.”
Martin recommends looking at the call answering companies that focus on home services as they will be more familiar with your type of work.
Another quality control feature to consider is if the call answering service will have access to your calendar system so they can schedule customers during the call.
“The faster you can get from the lead calls, and they book on that same call, the better,” Martin says. “There is a much, much higher close rate.”
You also need to consider the call answering company’s location. If they are unfamiliar with your service area, it can drive customers away.
“If they call a company and they say, ‘Oh, do you service…’ and they name like a neighborhood or a street and if that call answering service is located in another state or another country, and they have no idea what that person’s talking about, that person called in immediately knows they don’t know my location,” Martin says. “They’re not from here. I don’t want to speak to someone who’s not from my area for a local service call.”
Martin says you can mitigate this by working with your call answering service so they have a cheat sheet of official names and general regional names so they know where a person is referring to when they call.
If the individuals answering the phone have an unfamiliar accent, it can also impact customers’ trust and perception of your company.
“At the very least, you want someone on the phone that is easy to comprehend,” Martin says. “So no matter where you are in the United States, if someone answers the phone and the typical person who speaks English in the United States wouldn’t immediately understand or has to keep asking what they said, that’s a deal breaker.”
Another feature Martin suggests looking into is if the call answering service can respond to text messages as well.
Measuring Effectiveness
Time is money, but it is best if you coach your call answering service on some of the regional nuances of your business and your services to make sure they’re able to handle calls competently.
Martin highly recommends using call recording software and listening to those calls on a regular basis.
“You need to do quality checks on how it’s going and not just take their word for it,” Martin says.
You should also monitor metrics to see if conversions are increasing or decreasing after adding a call answering service.
“When you actually pull out a spreadsheet here’s every unique phone number that called me,” Martin says. “Here’s how many booked an appointment versus didn’t. If there’s a steep drop off compared to what you were getting before, that’s a really bad sign.”
He suggests giving a service at least two weeks to a month to see how they perform before moving on if there are issues.
