Call Management

[Free Team Meeting Slide Deck Included!]

Don’t wait until the phones are ringing off the hook to keep your heads above water in the office.

How many times have you repeated this same pattern?

You hire great employees, everyone seems to be doing well, and you go about your regular managerial duties and day-to-day operations.

Sometimes you have some fires to put out, but mostly you are on track and internal performance is going well. Since all seems to be running smoothly, you don’t proactively set aside time for any additional training or proactive duties for the future.

Busy periods present unique challenges – for you as an owner and for your team. It’s easy to look down the calendar or just be in an office where phones are ringing nonstop, and feel overwhelmed. Instead of just keeping your head above water, there are ways to prepare and maximize your efforts.

It should go without saying that taking the time to prepare for busy periods can help alleviate problems and improve performance. We understand as owners and leaders in your business, you are already wearing multiple hats. When it comes to managing day to day operations, you deal with the urgent and the important. So how do you cover both? Read on and see how you can prepare for your busy summer season that is fast approaching (or already here!) by:

• Identifying your business’ constraint points during peak season
• Utilizing your call tracking reporting to analyze phone traffic and outcomes
• Implementing actionable analytics to save time and improve performance

Identify your peak season(s)

As an HVAC company, you know that warmer months are one of your busy times. The heat comes around, and all of a sudden everyone needs work on their air conditioning, or wants new air conditioning installed in their house!

Summer is one cycle of a peak season in your industry, but the tips you can take away from this article can pertain to any of your other busy seasons as well. Do you truly know when all of the peak times throughout the year are for your company?

Start by reviewing reports provided to you by your call tracking provider. I can confidently say that CallSource reports provide transparency specifically on both your marketing and appointment conversion – both of which you’ll want to take a look at.

For example, if you have peak calls in May, but your conversion dropped, this may be an indication that you were at scheduling capacity or perhaps your team was not able to properly handle the increase in call volume. Additional research will be needed to identify what prevented you from converting appointments. This data will allow you to establish expectations for success for the upcoming peak season.

Plan ahead

The sooner you start to prepare for the influx of volume, the better equipped you’ll be to handle it. Peak season should be viewed as a mini organizational change and treated as such.

Operations are potentially different, and everyone’s attention should be focused on meeting peak demand and achieving success. A business that can understand how their operation and employees are performing against goals via real-time data can be extremely valuable at any time, but especially during peak periods when efficiency becomes so critical.

Talk to your employees about how your team could operate more effectively. It is important that you’re asking the team, “How can we be more efficient?” Contributing to the solution creates team buy-in. You may also uncover great ideas. Set specific KPI’s you’d like to stick to, just as you would during any other time of the year.

As the busy season starts, having the ability to monitor operations will ensure that projected goals are met or that necessary adjustments are made. Reporting and analytics tools (like with your call tracking provider) are essential during these peak periods. Proceeding through peak times without the proper visibility into call volumes, staffing needs, or appointment capacity doesn’t allow your organization to flex and proactively address concerns.

By reviewing metrics, you can identify improvement opportunities and set goals for success. It will be important to also listen to your calls to determine if your potential customers are receiving the ideal experience.

Examine staffing

After you’ve been able to examine data for your company for at least a year, it is important to gather and return to those metrics for the coming year. Organized data collection is essential to understanding results and learning from them.

When peak season has come and gone, it’s important to conduct a thorough review. – Repeat what worked, minimize what didn’t.

If you are not prepared, you may find that you’re short on staff or team members struggle with increased call volume or workloads during busy periods. When it comes to staffing up, don’t just add bodies. Create a plan. A wave of inexperienced staff arriving as volume goes up typically leads to mistakes, excessive demands on managers and potentially lost customers. You want staff to be effective, not just present, when pressure increases.

The best results come from closely evaluating the process to determine how it can be modified to streamline the work. CallSource reporting will provide an analysis of your business’ peak days and times for prospects to help you identify patterns in your call volume.

Calendar Blocking

Time stressors are some of the most universal sources of pressure in the workplace, and they happen as a result of having too much to do, in too little time. Your workload is already high, and you have many other urgent tasks on your To-Do List. Because of this, you’re anxious, you can’t concentrate, and everything seems to distract you.

You’re probably looking at your calendar and feeling like you couldn’t possibly add one more thing, but you should. Setting aside specific time in your schedule to work on certain tasks will help you manage your workload, especially during a peak season. Knowing exactly what to do and when will help you feel much more in control of your tasks.

Time management means being effective as well as efficient. By blocking time on your calendar, you can clear enough time to do what’s essential for your success. This will maximize your chances of keeping on track, and help you avoid the stress of work becoming more urgent than necessary. This is the way you move from “firefighting” into a position where you can maximize and grow your businesses.

Be sure to block out at least 30 minutes a week to login to CallSource, or your other call tracking provider, to review important metrics. Even with this small amount of time compared to your entire workweek, you are empowered to influence your appointment conversion rate during the course of each month by ensuring required changes are implemented.

(Tip: We also recommend you monitor the impact of your online reviews as a home service business).

It will be important to also invest in frequent team meetings, even during the busiest of times. It is very easy to fall into bad habits when everyone feels pressed for time. You do not want the goals you have set for your business and team to be disregarded because leadership is too busy to monitor and follow up on progress.

Need help deciding what metrics to review during team meetings? Download our team meeting slide deck!

Get out there and make this your most successful busy season yet – by staying consistent and monitoring your analytics, you are bound to achieve all of the goals you’ve set out, even when things seem nonstop in the office.

Reach out to a CallSource representative today to see how we can help you get through a peak season, and improve in your slow times, too.

[PLUS: Free Missed Opportunity Follow-Up Spreadsheet!]

Stop letting callers’ excuses prohibit you from gaining their commitment to your business.

The phone rings.

You are ready to answer a call from a person who needs something from your business.

They chose you! That’s why the phone is ringing in your office!

So why don’t you always set the appointment?

There are many reasons that someone may call into your business but end up dodging an appointment with you by the end of the call. Sorry, but it is inevitable.

The good news is – although you most likely won’t be able to book 100% of these people into appointments, you can increase the number of callers that will become a customer with you with just a bit more effort.

Below are top excuses or reasons that callers may have to not book an appointment with you during the initial phone call. By overcoming these reasons, you will be well on your way to increasing your appointment conversion rate and earning more lifetime customers instead of potentially losing them to your competition.

1. They need to check with their spouse/significant other/someone.

Sure, maybe the caller does need to check or verify with someone else – but that doesn’t mean that you can’t still get them on the calendar.

Suggest in a non-pushy way that you can still get them set up with an appointment for the time being and if they need to change anything they can always call back. Use scarcity as a tactic by letting them know that an appointment day has opened up and may get booked quickly; it is better to set the appointment now rather than having to call back and risking losing that appointment time slot.

2. They are looking for a price quote.

It’s tricky to get a caller to commit to your business for their home services needs without a price in mind – but this is where your call handling skills, business and industry knowledge come into play. As the employee, you are the expert. It is your job to demonstrate to the caller that you are the expert as well.

Mention value statements about your company and why it is that you cannot give a price estimate without first coming to the house to see what is needed to do the job correctly. Let the caller know that you do not want to misquote and that no prices are given on the phone to ensure that each customer gets the best service possible since every job is different.

You may even note that this is also because you don’t want to over-quote them. Some less reputable companies may give a higher price quote on the phone, then when the technician arrives at the home, they find out the job is easier than expected and still stick to the higher quote original price given. You want to make sure that the value of your service matches the service(s) needed.

3. They need to check their schedule or have scheduling issues.

This is a situation where it might be more difficult to gain the caller’s commitment since they may have trouble knowing a time that can work for them or their schedule does not align with available appointment times that you have.

Still, getting a solid appointment on the calendar is vital to ensure you capture that commitment from the caller and they do not forget about you or try to call another company after you. Offer two different time slots that may work and let them call you back after they are already both on the calendar to see which appointment time they officially want. Or – try to rework your schedule to fit theirs. Could you move some of the technicians’ routes or move someone else’s appointment that has more flexibility in their schedule?

4. They do not want to pay a service trip fee or the price you have laid out.

Explaining the reasoning for your service trip fee (if you have one) or your pricing is important when overcoming this opposition. But it is even more important to start explaining the value of your company and the services you provide to derail the caller from focusing so much on price.

You pay for what you get, so make sure that the caller truly understands the value that your company will deliver, and how your pricing works – including the service trip fee and if that rolls into the work they end up getting done. If they really don’t budge, you can always offer to waive the service trip fee if the job sounds like it is worth the time and money for your efforts to acquire them as a customer.

5. Call Handler didn’t ask the caller for an appointment.

This is the worst reason for a missed appointment opportunity of all!

Although the prospect called into you for a service, the call handler must still stay in control of the conversation, and that includes asking questions that the caller may not think to ask themselves.

Perhaps the caller wanted further information from you – but who is to say that if you ask when they’d like to schedule an appointment that they would say no? Sure, they wanted information on something, but if you ask to schedule an appointment to come out and help them further, it shows that you are the right company to help them with the job. Don’t let them move on to call the next company to ask the same questions and then have your competitor scoop up your caller as their customer.

In Summary:

• Try to get the caller to agree to a time on the calendar, even tentatively, when they say that they must check with someone else before scheduling an appointment.
• Use value statements about your company when overcoming price objections or an objection to setting the appointment because you cannot disclose an exact price quote.
• Give wiggle room to allow for scheduling one or two appointments on the calendar for those who are unsure of their calendar – getting them on makes it less likely that they will call a competitor afterwards.
• Explaining the value of your company is also imperative when it comes to objections to any service trip fee. Explain the necessity of the fee and if that cost gets absorbed into any work done.
• ASK FOR THE APPOINTMENT! If the call handler doesn’t ask, why is it up to the caller to do so?

Want to work on recapturing potential customers that still fell through the cracks despite your best efforts? We applaud you and are here to help! With our Missed Opportunity Follow Up Spreadsheet, you can track your outbound efforts to help determine what works best when attempting to gain a lead’s commitment the second time around.

DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE FOLLOW-UP WORKSHEET!

In this spreadsheet, you will be able to:

• Track how many missed opportunities you consistently follow up on
• See which employee is most successful at gaining the appointment on that second call
• Figure out which outbound calling tactics work best when regaining a caller’s appointment
• Make decisions to improve based on data that you are collecting, instead of assumptions