Who's Answering the Phone?

“Identify the personality of the company,” Hines suggests. “Are they going for an intimate model or a tremendously efficient model?” An efficiency-oriented business—Wal-Mart is one example—can often automate a great deal of their telephone system without alienating customers.

A business that thrives on intimate connections with its clients—a wealth management firm, for example—needs to be much more careful about automating its telephone answering system. Automation might not fit the company’s image, or the product a company sells might be expensive enough that callers expect to receive white-glove service.

Other companies might want intimate connections with their most important customers, but more efficient relationships with other callers. Such a business might have a two-tiered answering protocol: an automated system for callers who dial the firm’s main number, and a person answering when selected clients call a second, more private number. “I’ve seen companies put in call centers of five people to serve three customers, because they want customer intimacy,” Hines says.

Kathy Veldboom, chief operating officer at Amcom Software Inc., suggests that companies also consider what other firms in their industries are doing. If many other car dealerships or insurance companies have automated systems, for example, your customers are likely to accept yours more readily.

Some companies automate everything they can, in an effort to save money. Lawson says that strategy ignores customer needs and desires. “Consider what the callers want to hear, and whether they’ll be happy that you’ve automated something,” he says. “The system might save you money, but you need to sell it as making the customer’s life easier and more efficient.”

Ask the people who currently answer your telephones what types of calls they handle most often. “You’ll frequently find that 70 to 80 percent of your calls are repetitive,” Hixon says. Those calls, whether they’re requests for information or simply transferred to the sales department, are candidates for automation.