#increaseefficiency

But every rule is made to be broken occasionally, and this is one of them. There are times when it may be best for your business to let voice mail get the call. If you’re in an office-based business, those times are rare – unless there’s a flurry of calls coming in all at the same time, you should strive to have someone available to answer every call. Even in this day of email and texting, most companies do a significant portion of their business over the phone. Missing a call is always a gamble – the person on the other end may be a new client, and if they don’t leave a message then you may have lost them. But for home-based businesses, or those that operate on the road, the situation becomes a bit trickier. There are times when answering the phone right away could diminish your credibility rather than enhancing it.

The sounds around me Before answering the call, think first about the background noise. If you’re in the middle of looking after your children when the phone rings, the sound of them playing or chatting or crying immediately tells the caller that you are working out of your house, and that you may be juggling work and home. The first question they’re going to ask themselves is whether you are going to put their project first, or whether you’ll be distracted while working for them. It immediately puts you at a disadvantage compared to your competitors. (It almost shouldn’t need to be said that you should never take a call when you’re in the bathroom. And yet we still encounter people who do. The background noises are unmistakable and can create an unfortunate mental picture in the caller’s mind!)