From the small business to online retailers, there is nothing like the seasonal summer rush to get people in the store and drive revenue. With this season quickly approaching, many businesses are getting their ducks in a row. The unfortunate fact of seasonality is that it is the one point where customer loyalty goes out the window, and no matter what your relationship with your customers is like, they will go elsewhere if you can't meet their needs. If this is a situation that you're familiar with, you may be interested in exploring what an order-taking service could do for you.
Despite the staggering revenue per year in online sales, many customers would prefer a live voice, or run in to issues during the online purchase and need assistance to complete the sale.
Order-taking is a service offered by most call answering and call centre service providers. While a call answering service answers all calls and helps the caller with whatever they may need, order-taking service revolves around just that - taking the order for the caller, over the phone, and passing that order along to those responsible for fulfilling it. An order-taking service is an absolute necessity if a business were going to receive a high amount of call volume, as they might during the holiday season. While order-taking is primarily used for goods and products, there is the potential for the inclusion of services, whether through a physical item like a gift certificate or more directly.
An order-taking service may be contracted out full time, or just seasonally to help alleviate high traffic volumes. Some companies choose to take their orders in house, with their own employees throughout the year and hire a call answering service to augment their team during seasonal highs. Most call centres will take short term contracts for seasonal work, not just full time, year round contracts. Using a call centre to take your orders means you can deal with unexpected increases - for example, an ad that runs that produces results much better than you had forecasted ( we all wish ) and conversely prevents one from having to staff an order taking line full time, when the volume is just not there to support it.
In short, the implementation of order-taking service is an inexpensive investment to ensure happy customers as well as ensuring you never miss an order. Whether you need additional team members or just one, a call answering service can help with those orders.
For over 50 years, Telelink has been helping SME's grow by providing award winning customer service and call answering solutions. To learn more about our answering solutions, please visit our services page.