Real estate agents are married to their phones! We don’t blame them really – a realtor’s cellphone is their connection to clients, prospects, and suppliers. Without that connection, they wouldn’t be able to make a living. For agents who have never used a live call answering service like TOUCH Communications, they might wonder whether they can really trust those precious calls to a third party – but there are many reasons why realtors should use TOUCH for this type of service.

Here are some of the main reasons:

Reason #1 – TOUCH is 24/7.

Let’s face it, even if you sleep with your cellphone on your pillow, it is simply not possible for you to answer it every hour of every day. While a client might leave a message on your voicemail, there is a good chance that a prospect will not.

With an answering service like TOUCH, you can be sure that no matter who is calling, no matter the time, they will be answered by a real human being that will give them the same professional service that you would.

Reason #2: It lets you be in two (or more!) places at once.

Have you ever been showing a home and faced constant interruptions from your ringing phone? Even if you have your phone on vibrate, it can be very distracting and it might even make you appear to be rude to the potential customers to whom you are showing the home.

With TOUCH taking your calls for you – you can turn your phone off and focus on the face-to-face interaction with homebuyers, giving you a better chance of making a great impression and closing the sale. And you can be confident that whoever might be calling in is getting quality service as well.

Reason #3: It makes you appear more successful.

It’s human nature that we like to do business with people who are already successful.  It is no different with real estate agents. In the absence of a direct referral from friends or family members, prospective buyers and sellers will often give their business to the agents who already appear to be doing well in their business. (After all, they must be better right?).

If a prospective client calls your number and gets an automated voicemail, they may or may not leave a message. And if they call multiple times without getting through to a real person, it may give the impression that you are too small an operation for them to trust with the buying or selling of their home.

However, when you team up with TOUCH, your future customers will always get through – either to you or to one of “your assistants”. This projects an image of success and it may be the difference between a prospect becoming one of your customers – or one of your competition’s.

Reason #4: It gives you a break

Even the most devoted realtor needs to take time for themselves, their family and their friends. But that is hard to do when your ability to pay your bills is tied to your ability to answer your phone! Perhaps you’ve noticed the looks of exasperation from your friends when your phone lights up in the restaurant or on the golf course. You may even feel bad about answering – but you have to make a living.

Having TOUCH take care of your calls allows you to block out time for a healthy social life. You can have the peace of mind that when a caller is trying to reach you, they will be greeted by a friendly professional who will make the appropriate arrangements for you to get in touch with them at a later time.

As a realtor, there are many types of investments that you can make in your business. TOUCH Communications as your live call answering service is an investment that pays off in many ways!  Contact TOUCH Communications to take the next step.

Businesses have to make spending decisions every day. Whether it’s about buying a new piece of equipment, or hiring an additional employee, business owners want to know that they are going to get a reasonable rate of return on their investment. So how do you calculate whether investing in a call answering service like TOUCH will give you a good return? One way to do this is to calculate the opportunity cost of a missed call.

Why do missed calls matter?

Even the most diligent of companies cannot answer every call, every time. In most cases, when all lines are busy, the caller will get transferred to a voicemail. But to think that a voicemail system is a way to catch missed calls is, for the most part, wishful thinking. That’s because 80% of callers won’t bother to leave a message. A few might call back at a later time, but most will just call someone else – they’ll call your competition. That means lost sales and lost opportunity.

What do missed calls cost your business?

There are a couple different ways to calculate the cost of a missed call.

First, let’s consider the fact that many businesses nowadays actually pay for incoming calls from potential customers. How is this so? They pay web marketing campaigns for SEO and PPC services to drive potential customers to websites and landing pages. Say a business spends $20,000 each month on web marketing which results in 1,000 incoming calls. That means that each of those calls is costing $20. Missing a mere 10% of those calls is like throwing $2,000 out the window.

The second way to calculate the cost of a missed call is in terms of lost revenue. If every call is a potential sale, the price of missed calls adds up very quickly. Say for example, that one in ten calls results in a sale and the average sale is $10,000. Of the 100 calls that your business misses, 10 would have resulted in sales had they been answered. That equals $100,000 in lost revenue.

When you consider what percentage of those callers might have been repeat customers or might have referred your business to someone else, the numbers can climb even higher. While each company’s number of calls, conversion rate and average sale will be different, one thing is clear – missed calls are bad for business.

Impact on company image

There is one more way in which missed calls can impact a business – and this one is not quite as easy to calculate in financial terms (even though it does have an impact). Not being able to answer the calls of your customers and prospects, is bad for your business’s image and its brand.

We’ve all had that experience, where we tried to reach a company and simply couldn’t get through. Do you remember the impression that you had of that business at the time? Chances are it wasn’t very good. Perhaps it was enough to prevent you from doing business with them – or maybe you were so frustrated that you spoke negatively about the company to others.

On the other hand, when you call a business and get a friendly and professional person on the phone right away, it gives a very good impression.

The opportunity cost of a missed call is obviously going to be different for every business. But make no mistake, there is a cost. Take some time to figure out what these lost opportunities are costing your business, and then invest in measures to gain them back.

Remember when you were a teenager and you went on those first early road trips to another city with your friends? Remember your Mom telling you to call her when you got there? She asked you to do that because she wanted to know that you were safe. Employee Check-ins with In TOUCH Communications are a little like that. When you operate a business that requires employees to work alone or in remote locations, it is important for you to know that your people are well and safe.

Working alone

Many businesses have employees that work in solitude or in remote locations. These positions may include security guards, gas bar attendants, mining industry workers, and others. There is a line from Chuck Norris in The Expendables in which he says that he prefers to work alone… but your employees are not Chuck Norris.

While working alone may be a necessity in some fields, it definitely comes with its drawbacks. What would happen if a solitary employee had a medical emergency or an accident? Or what if they were a victim of violence? How long would it be before anyone would notice? Would they have to wait until another employee arrives for the next shift? And what would the consequences be?

Employee Check-in

One simple solution for helping to keep your employees safe is using an Employee Check-in line through TOUCH Communications. This simple network is available 24/7. If an employee fails to check-in when they should, someone can be notified to go and check on them. This can dramatically reduce the time that they will have to wait for help should they happen to be in distress.

The system works by providing a dedicated line with no hold times for your employees to call or text at set intervals. Every call is documented with the time that the employee called and the content of their message.

Your Employee Check-in program is fully customizable based on the nature and the needs of your business.

What businesses can benefit?

Companies with employees who work in isolation can obviously benefit from this type of program, but there are several other circumstances in which a business might find the Employee Check-in system beneficial. These include businesses with employees who:

• Work where there is potential for violence
• Work offsite or in isolated locations
• Work with patients
• Work in hazardous areas or with hazardous materials
• Work with dangerous equipment

Experience the benefits of Employee Check-in

Employee Check-in is an important service that we at In TOUCH Communications are proud to be able to offer to our clients. And while we hope that your employees never find themselves in a situation where they require emergency help, it’s good to know that there is a system in place to provide that assistance.

Having Employee Check-in, shows your employees that you care about their well-being. And looking out for their safety is your responsibility as an employer.

Keeping tabs on your employees who are working alone just makes sense when their safety and security might be at risk. Your Mom kept tabs on you by telling you to call her when you arrived at your destination. We think that was pretty good advice!

Contact us for more information on our Employee Check-in service.

For certain types of businesses, such as a busy auto repair shop or medical practice, their bottom line is driven almost exclusively by customers booking and keeping their appointments. Frustration can occur for the customer if the business accidentally overbooks itself, same goes for the business owner as well when the customer is a no-show and precious time and productivity is lost.

Some companies choose to dedicate employees to the task of setting up appointments with customers, then calling to remind and confirm the appointments. This is often not the best use of the time and talent of the employees. Outsourcing these tasks to a company like TOUCH Communications can help to ensure that all important appointments are scheduled and kept while allowing your team to focus more on what they do best – running the operations of your business.

Scheduling appointments

When your customers call in to arrange an appointment, our service works by having calls transferred to one of our friendly and professional attendants. Using a web based booking calendar, we find a time slot that works best for both you and the client.

This will provide you and your staff with more time to attend to actual appointments and less time spent booking them.

Confirming appointments

When appointments are booked weeks or even months in advance, such as a medical practice, it is understandable how a customer might forget. If the customer misses the appointment, that is a loss of revenue for the business, not to mention how upsetting it will be for the customer if they have to wait several more months to get another appointment.

Appointment handling from TOUCH Communications includes a verification service whereby your customers can receive a friendly telephone reminder of their appointment. Your customers will appreciate this added level of service, it will also mean less appointment no-shows for your business.

Cancelling or rescheduling appointments

Let’s face it, as much as you would love every customer to keep every appointment, the fact is that plans change, people get ill, and jury duties happen. When a customer needs to cancel or reschedule their appointments, having a professional on your side who can help keep everything straight is a real bonus.

When you are using TOUCH Communication’s appointment handling service, customers who call in to change their appointments will be directed to one of our friendly staff who will remove that customer from their time slot, arrange a new time with them if they wish, and replace their old time slot with another booking. This helps you to avoid downtime in your business.

A personalized touch

One of the main concerns that most business owners have when using a service like ours is that the interactions will be cold, impersonal or generic. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. When we answer calls from your customers, we are representing your business and your brand.

Before we take our first call for you, we take the time to get to know your company and customize our approach specifically to your business. In appointment handling we ensure that we understand your business enough to book the appropriate amount of time for your clients; what questions we should be asking, etc. Our goal is to make sure that we handle your calls with the same care and brand consistency that you would for your business.

Being approachable and available is a huge part of what goes into creating a successful business. In today’s world, your website should answer a broad range of questions, but this never negates the importance of being able to pick up the phone, and speak to a real human being.

At TOUCH Communications, that is exactly what we specialize in: being human. You could say that we even make a living at it. We support businesses across the country, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with premium call answering services.

How TOUCH Communications Works

Here’s how it works. By enrolling your business with TOUCH, one of our experienced professionals will customize a program that responds to the unique requirements of your company. We will formulate a plan that takes into account the number of staff members on your team, and what their telephone rolls are. Our sophisticated software system allows us to quickly and easily track who is available at what time of day, who is off for the day, and who is on vacation, and redirect calls as necessary.

In the many cases when we take a message, we make sure you can access your messages using a variety of platforms. For example, text message, email, page, and web access. By taking advantage of TOUCH Communications’ call answering services, your clients receive the best customer service possible, and you don’t miss a beat. A lead will never slip through the cracks.

The Advantages of Live Call Transfers

In addition to our Message service, TOUCH offers Live Call Transfer. This means that your phone calls follow you! Your caller will be greeted by a human, asked the reason for their call, and briefly put on hold while they get transferred to your location, whether you’re lounging on the beach, waiting to board your flight, or simply on your way to the office. You’ll never miss a call, making both your bottom line, and the boardroom very happy.

We should mention though, that you don’t always have to be on call. Before each and every transfer we’ll ask you if you’re available to take a call. If you’re not, just say so, and we’ll take down the details and make them available to you at your convenience. If you are headed on vacation (you lucky duck) we will transfer your calls to a staff member of your choosing for the duration of your trip.

Customize Your Own Call Answering Service

TOUCH’s customizable plans can be tailored to suit your business. You may pick and choose from our long list of services and add ons to find the best fit for your needs. Our top priority is providing quality customer service not only to our clients, but to your clients as well. If you would like to discuss how TOUCH Communications can benefit your business, get in TOUCH with one of our representatives today!