Savvy Business Tips: Why New Customer Intake Is More Important Than Ever

Welcome to the inaugural edition of our Savvy Business Tips column. In these posts we’ll clue you in on what’s new with the Ring Savvy company, and share some advice on how to make the most of our many phone answering service features.

This month we’ll be spotlighting an often overlooked part of any company’s customer acquisition process—new customer intake. For those unfamiliar with the term, new customer intake is the procedure in which a business collects information from its new leads and begins onboarding them as customers.

Why Dedicate A Whole Column To Something As Simple As Customer Intake?

Because the truth is a lot of companies aren’t very good at it. All too often we see businesses fail to reach their maximum growth potential because their intake process is sloppy or incomplete. This problem has only gotten worse over the past year, as companies have been more distracted and unorganized than ever while dealing with the effects of COVID-19.

One of the places where companies seem to struggle most with customer intake is over the phone. A lot of new customers end up being lost simply because there isn’t a live person ready to field their call and begin collecting their information in real time. Having someone who is not properly trained on performing the intake process (which is a lot harder than you think) can also lead to new customers being lost.

So what can companies do to make sure customer intake mistakes don’t cost them new business? While training (or even re-training) your phone answering staff on new customer intake protocols is a great thing to do in Q1, you’ll also want to invest in some additional phone answering help.

Here’s How Ring Savvy Handles New Customer Intake

Many of our readers probably already know that Ring Savvy provides 24/7 phone answering coverage for businesses. What you might not know is that our receptionist staff is available to perform new customer intakes 24/7 as well. Anytime your company gets a call from a potential customer, and your staff can’t get to the phone, one of our virtual receptionists will be there to collect the caller’s information. You’ll get the chance to customize the intake information we collect too.

Why does your business need 24/7 new customer intake coverage?

• Because when modern day consumers call your company for the first time, they expect to speak with a real person right away. Having Ring Savvy in place will ensure you can always give new leads immediate support, and won’t have to send them to your much-dreaded voicemail.
• Because you and your staff probably don’t have a ton of time to perform customer intakes yourself during the work day. With Ring Savvy in place, you can continue day-to-day tasks completely uninterrupted, knowing that our virtual receptionist staff will always be available to make your new leads feel at home.
• Because new customers are probably reaching out to your business outside of your normal office hours, and you probably don’t want to be stuck on call during the middle of the night or weekends. Ring Savvy can allow your company to onboard new customers at any time without you having to immediately get on the phone.

While availability is a major part of our success as a new customer intake service, it’s not the only part. Our company is also one of the most skilled at performing the new customer intake process. This is largely because all of our new receptionist hires have to go through months of training on how to properly execute new customer intakes, and aren’t allowed to handle calls on behalf of real businesses until we feel they are 100% ready.

Those who decide to use our service will also likely be comforted to know that they get to choose the intake questions our virtual receptionists ask to their callers. When signing up for your free 7-day trial of Ring Savvy, you’ll get the chance to speak with one of our account executives and help form the perfect new customer intake script for our receptionists to follow.

What types of questions can be included in your customized intake script?

• You can choose questions that are specific to your industry. For example, an auto repair shop may have us ask, “What is the make and model of the car you are looking to bring in today?”
• You can choose questions that help give you more information on the type of task the caller needs help with. For example, an HVAC company may have us ask, “Are you in need of an installation or repair?”
• You can choose questions that relate to how quickly the customer needs help. For example, a plumbing company may have us ask, “Are you in need of emergency assistance or looking to schedule a future appointment?”

Once our virtual receptionist is finished collecting intake information from your caller, they’ll send it over to you in message form. Shortly after the call concludes, you’ll get a text and email message detailing all of the customer’s information that was gathered during the call. With this information in hand, you’ll be able to make an informed decision about how quickly the caller requires a call back and who on your staff should handle their request.

Final Thoughts

Did you know that according to Zendesk, 95% of customers tell others about a bad experience with a company, while 87% share good experiences? Statistics like this remind us that a single experience with a potential or existing customer can have a massive impact on the future of your business.

By always having a live trained receptionist available for your callers to speak with and by not making first-time callers wait to start getting onboarded with your company, you’ll be doing something very important. You’ll be showing people that your business actually cares and values their time. And during an age in which over the phone customer service seems to be becoming more and more impersonal and rude, that will mean a lot to your callers.

If you’re ready to see our new customer intake service in action for your business, fill out this form to get started with a 7-day free trial, or give us a call at 631-250-2794 with any questions. That’s all for this month’s Savvy Business Tips column. We’ll see you in February for another inside look at our company.