Are Clients Going Elsewhere Because You Don’t Answer Your Phone?
“There just aren’t enough hours in the day”. Have you ever uttered these words or heard someone else saying them? The key to getting it all done – prioritisation! But what do you place at the top of this (very long) list? For property agents, surely it’s making sure the properties on their books are being sold or let. So how can agents ensure this happens?
NovaLoca has analysed property enquiry data over a three month period and found that 55% of potential occupiers made their enquiry to the agent by email and 45% made their enquiry by telephone. Evidently, being able to actually speak to someone at the agency is still highly valued by the occupier when they are looking to buy or rent a property. After all, isn’t “People buy from people” a truism?
With this in mind, how much time in your daily schedule is allocated to answering the telephone and talking to potential occupiers? To give an idea of the answer to this question, we continued our analysis of enquiry data on NovaLoca to evaluate the occupiers experiences as they contacted property agents by telephone;
· 41% of calls lasted less than 30 seconds
· 1.3% of callers got an engaged tone
· 6% of callers gave up waiting for the phone to be answered
So what does this mean for your agency?
41% of enquirers (calls less than 30 seconds) are almost certainly being put through to an answer phone, where they may or may not leave a message. Either way they don’t get to speak to a real person. Alternatively they are being told the agent is not available. Although they get to speak to someone it’s not the ‘right’ person so they are not able to be immediately helped.
More than one in 100 enquirers got an engaged tone so again they go away without actually speaking to anybody. Surely they could be passed to a colleague, entered into a queue for their call to be taken as soon as someone becomes available or at the very least put through to voicemail.
1 in 16 potential customers are lost because the call is not answered within a reasonable period of time. These people are left with a very poor view of the agent and company – surely this should be eliminated in any professional organisation?
However, it does suggest that the companies and agents that get these simple things “right” can really positively differentiate themselves versus their competition. The good news is that there are relatively simple steps that can address these issues.
How can you improve the telephone customer experience?
· Automatic Call Redirection – enables you to have one telephone number that can redirect a caller to a mobile number if the call is not answered in the office. This would ensure that you can take important client calls wherever you are, or you can have the calls routed to your colleagues if you are busy.
· Hunt Groups – allow you to route calls to multiple telephone numbers at the same time, the first person to answer the phone has the call connected to them.
· Call Queuing – allows you to setup call queues ensuring you do not loose potential clients if your line is engaged.
The most important point is that no matter what, potential occupiers should be able to speak to a human being if at all possible, rather than leaving a message or not being given the opportunity to do either. However, asking the enquirer to leave a voicemail should be used as a last resort (although this is far better than having no option to do so if there is really is no-one available who could answer the call) as the enquirer may go elsewhere whilst they are waiting for you to get back to them. Therefore, messages must be checked throughout the day and replied to immediately to minimise the chances of this happening.
There are a number of companies offering these services. We would strongly suggest investing the time in finding one which works for you and see an improvement in the number of conversions of telephone enquirers to people buying or letting your property. If you want a little help in where to start, please call one of our customer services team at NovaLoca on 01767 313380
