Voice Maill is not new, and with the advent of increasing email and website usage, phone traffic is on the decline. The telephone still remains, however, a viable means for our customers to connect with us, and , now, when customers call, they have something important to state, or an important question to ask.
If you, or a reliable person in your office, is not available to respond, the customer may become frustrated, or worse yet, angry and disappointed. I have found in the three offices which I operate as a Massachusetts title attorney that putting the customer through an endless series of prompts and instructions will, in the long run, lose business for me and my firm.
Think of it this way. You are the professional. You know your business better than the customer. The customer is often looking for reassurance or the answer to a simple question. When the customer hears your voice, the customer almost always calms down. The customer has asked for servioe, and you are providing service.
What if the customer is calling to ask you a question that you don't know the answer to, although you have been researching the matter? What if the customer is asking to see his or her HUD-1 Settlement Statement although you have not received "final numbers" from the Lender? My experience has told me that there is no harm in telling the customer that you do not have the answer or the HUD-1, but you are "working on it". Isn't that better than having the customer call 4 or 5 times and then decide that you reallty don't care enough to even speak with him or her?
I try to stress upon every person in my firm the necessity of actually speaking with the customer, not putting the customer off. There is nothing any of us does that is so unique that another person cannot replace us. Letting the customer know how important we think he or she is, by trying as hard as we can to speak with them when they call, can make the difference between our success, or failure, as real estate professionals.
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Great points. People call to talk to people not phone trees. The worst is when it says to press 1 for ________, 2 for ________ and so on. Yet when it gets to the end you still don't know which number to press because the department you called on wasn't listed.