Ensuring your employees are held responsible for answering company phone calls can feel like an uphill battle. “Oh, it’s not for me. It’s almost never for me,” and, “I’m too busy, someone else can get it this time,” and “I’m the only one who ever answers the phone. It’s someone else’s turn,” and, “Eh, the front desk will get it,” resound in offices everywhere. If only you had a dollar for every time you’ve heard one of those. Rather than waiting on Washingtons to magically fall from the sky, working to improve your company ring culture can make a significant difference in your business operations (and even result in more revenue too).
If you’ve listened to three rings, four rings, and five rings before the phones are answered (or worse yet, hit voicemail during business hours), we’ve got some advice for instilling a better ring culture at your business.
Eliminate the reasoning behind that remark. Set the standard that when an employee’s phone rings, it is in fact for them. A VoIP phone system can route calls using an auto-attendant or IVR to ensure callers are directed to the correct department or individual every time, even if you don’t have a full-time receptionist. Options include using different direct dial phone numbers, dial-by-name directories, or menus to get calls where they need to go. Prepending inbound calls based on the option selected shows your team exactly what department the call is intended for. Implementing a system like this means the person who answers the call is the right one and proper call routing means every department is held responsible for their own phone calls.
Time conditions allow for certain employees to be removed from call queues or ring groups for periods of time. That way, they can focus on other tasks at hand. These block out times are flexible and can be set by day of the week or a span of an hour. Then, if no one else really can answer the phones, calls can still roll over to these employees just in case.
Predetermine whose turn it is. Route calls to whomever has answered the fewest number of calls or spent the smallest amount of time on the phone. Or use round robin calling to ring employees in a particular order, then start again, skipping anyone who’s already on the phone.
Our system’s call stats make the happenings of your company’s ring culture completely transparent to management. Tracking Do-Not-Disturb usage, call frequency and duration, or sorting calls by queue make it easy to hold everyone accountable.
If this is true, route incoming calls only to the front desk (and don’t ring those who shouldn’t be answering calls anyhow). If the person responsible for taking incoming calls is on the line, choose to ring a backup person or several depending on your average call volume.
These kinds of call flow features are all custom built and fully managed by the TeleVoIPs team in order to help your business run more efficiently. Clients new and old are always able to consult with us for guidance on call flow and ring culture as a part of our regular, day-to-day phone services.
Let TeleVoIPs help your business accomplish more. Contact us today to get started.
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