In our last post, we announced three new features available through our client portal:

• Calls by Day of Week
• Calls by Hour of Day
• Call Length by Hour

These reports provide our clients with valuable information regarding their busiest days in terms of phone traffic, helping them to make informed business decisions to promote the success of their companies. To make all this a little bit less abstract, we’ve created a case study to show you just how valuable this call information can be!

Case Study

So we’re going to take a look at real data from all three reports for one of our actual clients. Let’s call them Flooring Company X.
To start, let’s take a peek at their calls by day of the week:

By looking at this graph, you can clearly see that Flooring Company X receives the majority of their phone calls Tuesday through Friday. They get the greatest number of calls on Thursday, with Friday being a close second.
Now let’s see what time of day the phone is ringing:

You can see that calls start coming in about 9 a.m. and don’t really die off until after 3 p.m. These are prime working hours when the company is most likely on the jobsite and unable to take calls.
Finally, let’s take a look at the number of calls that are being answered versus how many are going to voice mail. The Call Length by Hour report can do a pretty good job of illustrating that info.

This data illustrates that Flooring Company X is only answering their phone at 4 p.m. and catching a couple of calls during the lunch hour. Going back to the second graph, you can see that the bulk of their phone calls are actually coming in between 9 a.m. and noon. However, since this last graph indicates that their call lengths hover under two minutes in those morning hours, you can see that they’re, in fact, missing the majority of their calls.
Unfortunately, chances are that all of those callers who are being sent to voice mail are not leaving a message. Instead, they’re likely to hang up and call a competitor instead. So, it’s important to make sure you prevent that from happening to capture more leads and help your business succeed.

What You Can Do About It

Using the information from these call reports, we’ve developed a couple of recommendations for Flooring Company X that could help their business get ahead. For starters, we’d suggest hiring a part-time receptionist. This receptionist could work Wednesday through Friday, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., thus covering the company’s busiest call days during their peak calling hours. Having a receptionist on hand to handle the calls means the rest of the crew would be able to concentrate on their work at the job site without having to worry about who’s answering the phone.
However, realistically, we understand that it’s just not feasible for every business to bring in a receptionist. If that’s not a good option for you, setting designated office days and appointment/job site days might be a good alternative. Look at the days with the highest concentration of calls, which for Flooring Company X is Thursday and Friday. Leave those days open to be in the office to answer the phone. Then, since Saturday through Tuesday tend to have lower numbers of incoming calls, it makes the most sense to schedule appointments to do installs and service on those days.
Whatever solution you choose to help you catch more of your calls—one of our recommendations or a solution you devise on your own—your business will benefit. Every call that goes unanswered is a potential job lost, and each potential job that’s lost is a potential paycheck down the drain, too!

One Size Does NOT Fit All

Of course, each and every business is different. Perhaps your company receives the most incoming calls first thing on Monday. Maybe Wednesday afternoon is your busiest call time. Once you’ve checked out your reports in the client portal, you’ll know your business’s specific call patterns and you can create a plan to best accommodate your potential customers. From hiring a receptionist to scheduling strategic office hours to transferring calls to different employees throughout the week or even the day, you can use your company’s incoming call data to boost your business’s success.
Still not sure how to use these reports in the client portal or how to leverage your call data to your company’s best advantage? Just contact us today and we’ll walk you through it!