Phone diversion, also often called “call forwarding” is a must have for any business operating right now. We live in a hustle and bustle world where you and your various team members aren’t available to pick up the phone at a moment’s notice, yet current and potential clients and customers expect just that.
- Miss a call and you’ve got less than a 25 percent chance of ever hearing back from that person.
- Send your calls to voicemail and 85 percent will hang up after the beep.
Human interaction is still important to the majority of consumers who call. Just like most online consumers prefer live chat over email support. This is because you can ask a human being questions and get an immediate response.
Voicemail may allow you to pass on a canned message to a caller, but it can’t really assure them when you’re going to call back. It certainly can’t put an important call on hold for a few minutes while you’re on another equally important phone call.
Call diversion takes the robotic voicemail message out of the equation and puts your callers on the line with a human being, each and every time. This kind of service is still sadly underrated because it’s taking the business world (too much) time to catch on to the needs of the modern consumer.
Advantages of call diversion
24/7 availability
You’re always available for your customers when using a phone diversion service. You and your team can register as many numbers as you like with a forwarding service.
This means that when a customer calls with a pertinent query, the operator or queue software can blast calls out to anyone and everyone on the team until they get a human voice on the phone. This makes the company available 24/7 while eliminating the frustrating need for a client to call numerous numbers during a crisis.
No more voicemail
It’s already been stated, but deserves a repeat. Customers hate voicemail. A loyal customer may put up with the occasional occurrence. Busy customers will cut bait and find more attentive, on-demand service. Same goes for prospective customers, as stated in the opening.
The majority of prospects who call will have made up their mind never to use your service the minute they hear the dreaded “beep.” A call diversion service will make sure that no call is ever missed, as they’ll always have a series of backup numbers to contact you and your team at.
Take your business with you
The modern business owner and sales professional needs to be hyper-mobile in order to be competitive. From the need to travel to find and service clients, to charting out new and more lucrative territories; business travel is a necessity faced by many business owners in 2018 and beyond.
If you’re stuck to a desk, even chained to a mobile phone, it’s impossible to travel efficiently from one place to the next. Important calls will inevitably get missed and the business will always suffer.
National and global presence for your business
In the old days, international calling rates and restrictions made it very difficult for let’s say, a business owner in Italy to call another business owner in New York to inquire about a product or business relationship. This problem goes double for someone interested in your product who lives abroad and doesn’t make a huge income: Is the cost of calling you really worth it for the return they’ll get from your product or service?
Call diversion services make long distance and international calls easy by providing the caller with a local or toll-free number, managed through a VOIP connection that they can call you from without incurring costly fees.
Call diversion includes call management features
The more calls a business gets, the harder and more time-consuming it becomes to track, trace, and figure out where calls need to go. In the old days, this was handled by a dutiful receptionist who kept meticulous logs of past callers and knew exactly what extension to send them on through to. Modern day businesses receive many more calls than they did in the past, making call routing technology a must.
A call routing system is intuitive, as in it can be programmed to recognize incoming calls and know exactly where they need to go. If the first number doesn’t answer, the system proceeds down the list until it gets an answer. As a backup a virtual receptionist can be left on standby to ensure the best service and solutions possible to the caller.
How to choose a phone diversion service?
The never-ending increase in technology has made it easier for call diversion services to set up shop. In contrast, years ago such a service would require expensive infrastructure and physical staff in order to handle incoming calls.
Any business who seeks out this type of service needs to be very careful in choosing a service to plunk their money down on. Make a bad choice, and there’s no telling how bad a “bad” service can impact your business before irreparable damage is done.
Tips for choosing the right call forwarding service:
Google is your obvious friend
But also your enemy if you don’t spend some time. Look for good and bad reviews. Avoid website that offer roundups or shameless reviews of a given service with referral links pointing directly at the recommended services.
Find trusted sources for recommendations
This goes beyond Googling the service and actual seeking out bloggers and other influencers you know to only make recommendations for services they’ve used and trust. Unlike the majority of review sites, influencers are staking their reputation every time they praise a brand online.
Look for free trials
Any company that doesn’t offer a free trial or 60 — 90 day, no hassle money back guarantee isn’t worth your time. A confident business knows they can offer these incentives to new customers because they have the means to divert and manage your calls with minimal issues. Those who don’t will take your money and “too bad, so sad” when things go wrong.