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4 Ways to Avoid the Hidden Cost of Missed Calls

Kristen BakerHead of Growth Content

Learn about the hidden cost of missed phone calls, four ways your business can avoid them, and how Podium can help.

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Aug 22, 2023

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There are over 33 million small businesses like yours–in the U.S. alone. These businesses receive a total of over 400 million calls daily. On average, that’s over a dozen daily calls per small business. Calls come from prospects and customers who want to book appointments, learn about products/services, place orders, inquire about inventory, and more. Additionally, about 85% of people whose calls go unanswered won’t try you again—plus you have 24 hours, at most, to return the prospect’s call before they decide to work with one of your competitors.

Answering phone calls is clearly important—but you might be wondering how much one missed call really impacts revenue.

The answer? It impacts a lot.

Say your business receives 100 phone calls per month and you answer 90 of them. How much are those 10 missed calls costing you? If you’re able to convert 50% of new leads to into $5k of revenue, then missing 10 calls is equivalent to missing out on $25k of revenue per month—or $300K per year.

Answering phone calls impacts not only your ability to convert new prospects into paying customers but also your likelihood of retaining those customers—which is even more critical because 65% of the average company’s business comes from existing customers. And by increasing retention by just 5%, you can increase your profits by 25-95%.

Our average job is about $12,000 so we were missing $22,000 out of every 10 calls. That’s $22,000 we were missing out on every week before Podium Phones.
–Joshua Jones – Office Operations Manager and Controller, Mountaineer Heating and Cooling

In this article, we’ll describe four actionable ways for your small business to avoid the hidden cost of missed phone calls. No matter which industry you’re in or how many locations you have, apply these quick strategies to bring your phone system into the modern age and drive the return on investment (ROI) your business needs.

4 Ways to Avoid the Hidden Cost of Missed Calls

1. Improve phone mobility and productivity.

As a small business owner, you have a busy schedule. But you also need to handle numerous daily tasks that require your attention. That means you likely won’t have time to manage incoming and/or missed calls. The problem? Missed calls mean missed sales.

That’s why 70% of small businesses say phone mobility—the ability to stay connected to your business phone system even when you’re not physically at work—is a major priority.

VoIP, or voice over internet protocol, allows you to handle phone calls via internet rather than traditional phone lines. VoIP ensures you and your team don’t have any barriers when accepting, handling, and returning phone calls.

Additionally, with VOIP, your team can keep their personal devices and phone numbers since all calls are directed to a central business number. Employees can receive business calls via their personal cell phones and speak with customers while on-the-go. This means no wasted money paying for separate business phones for all of your employees. Plus all of your valuable contacts stay in one place. You’ll never need to worry about an employee leaving your company with your contact and customer information.

These benefits of VoIP explain why businesses already using it report a 20% increase in productivity compared to traditional phone options.

Additionally, phone mobility is made even easier when your business uses a communications and conversion tool that has an effective mobile app, like Podium. With Podium’s mobile app, your VoIP phone system, text marketing, webchat, and more are all accessible at your finger tips.

2. Save more sales with missed call auto-response.

Imagine a world where missed calls don’t interfere with revenue.

To make this dream a reality, you’ll need a tool that offers missed call auto response.

If you’re on a job and a prospect gives you a call that you’re unable to answer, avoid having to wait several hours until your job is complete to give them a call back. Instead, allow missed call auto response to send that caller an automated text so they can schedule an appointment with you via SMS. They can also text you reasoning for their call and leave information about how to reach them once you have time to respond.

With missed call auto response and communication channels outside of calling— such as Text and Webchat—you can save sales and respond efficiently to prospects and customers in a way that fits into your workflows and their lifestyles.

This is especially true when your team can access all communications via a single Inbox, which makes follow up and customer profile record-keeping even easier. This type of quick, engaging, and proactive customer service keeps your business top of mind among your audience and drives conversions.

3. Answer calls with context to offer personalized customer experiences.

71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions and 76% get frustrated when it doesn’t happen. 33% of consumers say their top pain point when calling a business for support is having to repeat themselves.

Whether a customer is calling you for the second time or the tenth time, having background information on the individual you’re speaking with provides personalized conversations and experiences customers are looking for.

With a phone system that automatically offers caller ID, AI- powered phone call summaries, and records of conversations that happen on other channels including text and web chat, you can answer every phone call with confidence that you’ll offer a personalized experience.

Pro tip: Read call summaries and conversation records regularly to learn specific topics or themes your staff and customers discuss, better understand your market positioning, and offer training to your current and new staff.

4. Integrate your phone with other tools.

Nearly 80% of U.S. small businesses don’t take full advantage of digital tools. Additionally, it’s common for small businesses to rely on disparate systems for customer relationship management (CRM), email, text, phone, payment and billing, and web chat.

But when you aren’t using your tools to their full potential and your data is stored in several locations, it’s difficult to work efficiently and ensure you’re referencing and leveraging the most up-to-date information. Both of which are critical to work with customers and make strategic decisions.

Rather than unknowingly missing out on a variety of features and capabilities, spending time staying up to date on all of your apps and systems, or working to align data from several sources, use a phone system that integrates with other tools.

For example, use a phone system that integrates with your CRM and say goodbye to copy and paste. Instead, contacts in your CRM get automatically updated with all communications you’ve had with a given contact via phone, text, and web chat–in real-time.

With integrations, you can also ensure your phone system gets linked to your centralized communications Inbox which houses all conversations with prospects and customers—no matter which channel conversations start or end on.

The Value of an All-in-One Communication Platform

80% of today’s business communication happens via phone—that’s why it’s imperative that your small business has a modern and customizable phone and communication system that scales with you. Podium does just that.

Podium is the all-in-one customer communication platform built specifically for local businesses. Podium Phones makes it easy for your small business to call, text, and chat with all of your prospects and customers from one location. Connect all your communication channels to streamline communication and bring phone communication online to deliver excellent service from anywhere.

The best thing about Podium Phones is that everything is right there. Whether people are texting you, emailing you, or calling you—it’s all in one place and everyone sees what everyone is doing.
– Joshua Jones – Office Operations Manager and Controller, Mountaineer Heating and Cooling

With Podium Phones:

Lose fewer leads to missed calls.
Convert more leads with personalized and faster communication.
Answer calls with context.
End calls with a record of the interaction and a call summary.
Offer other communication channels including Text, Webchat, and more.
Access all customer communications in a single Inbox. Integrate your other business tools with your communication platform.