Direct your Traffic to Save Time and Money
Here’s how to make handling customer enquiries easier.
It’s surprising how much time business owners spend doing tasks other than the one they set out to do.
Ask someone managing a team of plumbers how many hours they are on the tools each week versus how much time they spend on the phone or computer communicating with customers, quoting, and responding to enquiries. The ratio is probably not what they imagined when they started their business.
While a virtual assistant is a great solution to this problem, we believe that the best offense is a good defense. A few simple tweaks to your website and advertising channels can make your customer enquiries, quote requests, and any incoming communication more manageable.
Creating efficiency really floats our boat. Read on for some practical tips on redirecting your traffic to save time and money!
Hide your phone number
If taking phone calls—or having your VA take them—is your preferred method of interacting with clients, then just ignore this section.
For a lot of business owners, particularly those who work IN their business in addition to ON it, taking phone calls is a hassle. They are often tied up on the tools and unable to answer. A method of recording information is required but not always at hand, and there’s room for error when taking down details over the phone. It’s easy to forget to return a call. Often, people (on both sides of the call) will ramble and make the communication more time-consuming than necessary.
If you relate to the points outlined above, you might like to think about making your phone number a little harder to find. Put it in the footer of your website rather than at the top. Hide it away on the contact page below other preferred methods of communication. Highlight other options.
Decide on the most efficient communication method
What’s the best way your customers can ask you for a quote or other information? This should be easy and accessible for both parties.
For many businesses, this is a quote or contact request form on the “Contact” page of your website. This allows you to customise fields to capture exactly what you need to know before you reply to them, making the interaction smoother for both parties. It also allows trusted employees or assistants to manage communications easily.
If you do like to chat on the phone but can’t be available to answer it all the time, Calendly and similar platforms can be great tools. These give potential clients and customers the option to book a timeslot in which you will call them—perfect for discussing bigger projects. Here’s an example from Released.
You may simply prefer to keep all communication to email. If that’s the case, display your email address prominently and minimise any other contact methods.
Tailor your advertising
Once you have a preferred communication method in mind, you should direct incoming traffic there intentionally. Social media posts? Link to your preferred contact method! Paid Facebook ad? Make sure the call to action is your preferred contact method! Blog post? Include a link to your preferred method at the end! Email newsletter? Include a clear and obvious link to your preferred method!
The customer journey doesn’t start at your website—it’s all of the touchpoints a customer may encounter with your brand. Think of how you are directing them at every step of the way.
Take full advantage of your job management software
Any contact with a new or previous customer should migrate into your job management software as soon as possible. Whoever first reads the email, answers the phone, or views the contact request form should immediately get the information into the system where it is organised, easily accessible, and not going to get lost on a post-it note.
If you delve deep into the features of your job management software, you may be able to save even more time. For example, ServiceM8 also allows you to create a direct online booking form. Customers can get a live quote and book jobs straight into your schedule according to availability, reducing human resource required to almost zero for this initial contact. For trades with specific and standardised pricing, like heat pump installation, this is a great option.
Good customer service should make a customer’s journey with your company a smooth and enjoyable experience. However, there’s no reason it can’t work for you and your team, too! Finding an efficient and effective way to direct your traffic can save time, money, and hassle.
The Released team lives for creating efficiencies like this for our clients—even if it is doing ourselves out of a job in the short term! We fully believe that in the long term, everyone wins. We are also experts in the capabilities of the popular tradie job management platforms.
If you need help with customer communication or creating great systems within your operations, book a quick chat with Kellie!
PS. Do you see what we did there? She’d love to talk—at a planned and predetermined time that works for you both.
