Small business phone matters

Calling a small or micro business can tell you a lot about how the business is run. This morning, I had the pleasure of speaking to a business owner's teenage daughter. While she tried her best on the phone, she had to ask her mum, who obviously was standing in the same room, to confirm some of the details I was after. How much were they charging? "Mum, how much is it?" What quantities I could order? "Mum, what size does it come in?" Can your dad give me a call? "Sure, what was your name again?"

Allowing kids to answer the phone is often a home-based business hazard, and it's a particular gripe of mine. Call me old fashioned, but it just sends the wrong professional message to potential clients.

However, dodgy phone etiquette isn't just a home-based business problem. Small business owners often forget to train their staff to answer the phone professionally because they're never on the other side of the phone. How often have you called a business to hear: "Hi. Can I help you?"; "I just need to find a pen"; "It's really busy here at the moment, can I put you on hold? Beep, beep, beep..."

Some things to remember:
* The phone is your company's front line, no matter how big or small your business is.
* If a customer gets a poor first impression because of the way your work phone is answered, they get a poor impression of your business.
* Take the time to train every staff member, and yourself, in answering the phone in a professional, pleasant and helpful way.

I outline more tips in The Small Business Success Guide, and you can also find some good tips from companies such as Vodafone. In fact, there's a heap of information online about business telephone etiquette. There's really no excuse.
Make every call count!

Margie

How familiar are you with your customers?

A small business in tough times is one thing: a small business owner who happily shares their woes with customers is entirely another.

Today, a chapter from my book, The Small Business Success Guide, literally sprang to life. I'd just stepped inside a small business to have a casual browse of their wares when the owner introduced herself and gave me a quick rundown of her shop. I walked around for a few minutes (without my author hat on), and then she came over and offered this: "Business isn't great thanks to my partner."

Okay. "We've been in business together for a couple of years and for the last six months we've been doing it his way," she continued. "And it's not working!"

Had I asked for this rundown of her fortunes? No. Could I empathise? Absolutely. But as a potential customer, should I have had to?

There's a fine line between you and your customers, and I go into this in my book. The idiom "familiarity breeds contempt" was created for a reason: the more people know about you, the more likely they are to make a judgement call.

And their judgement could impact on their purchasing. It did for me today: I hightailed it out of the shop. It was my day off!

My tip is to keep it professional at all times. If this means keeping things to yourself, no matter how bad a day you're having, then do it.

Your customers will thank you.

Margie