Get a 100% call answer rate (and a life): How modern small businesses can work every lead without working 24/7

If you run a small business, you might feel like you’re constantly performing a juggling act. You need to attract an ongoing stream of quality leads and convert them, all while motivating your team and doing a great job for your existing customers. Except, there are only so many hours in the day.

Small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) need to work hard to attract their leads’ and customers’ attention – but that shouldn’t mean working 24/7. Fortunately, there’s a solution in Lead Center by CallRail. Continue reading to learn how Lead Center — the business phone system that helps you win more business — allows your team to work smarter, not harder, so you can manage every interaction without burning out.

Balance the load among your team

Small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) these days are adapting to new ways of working, such as decentralized teams, hybrid (on-site and work from home) teams, and flexible schedules. Not to mention the occasional sick day and scheduled vacations. With so much variability, it’s crucial that team members have the tools they need to work collaboratively to ensure leads’ and customers’ calls don’t slip through the cracks.

For this, use Call Routing to divert incoming calls to available agents. Never again miss a call because a rep is away from their desk. With Lead Center, the team member that takes the call immediately sees the caller’s entire interaction history, instantly bringing them up to speed. They also have notes and tags at their disposal – so they can see their teammates’ notes and add their own too.

Imagine you’re out for the afternoon when a prospect you had been speaking to gets in touch to seal the deal. No need to jump online immediately. With Lead Center, the prospect’s call is routed to your available team member who can help out right away. With full access to all of your previous interactions, your teammates have the context they need to button things up — without sounding the alarm while you’re OOO.

Prioritize incoming calls based on lead quality and engage high-quality leads first

While every prospect deserves outstanding customer service, let’s face it, not all leads are equal. Hot leads for your highest-value products and services warrant your immediate attention — while cooler leads should be prioritized accordingly in the queue.

Lead Center helps SMBs prioritize incoming calls based on lead quality. It does this by documenting the interaction history for each lead, plus which ad, keyword, or other promotional source inspired a lead to reach out. With this information, you can have smarter conversations, improve customer service, and win more, better customers.

Create engaging call queues

In an ideal world, callers would immediately be put through to your next available customer service agent. Unfortunately, sometimes there’s nobody free at the time — so callers need to wait in a call queue.

Despite traditionally having a bad rap, call queues don’t have to be boring. In fact, you can even use call queues to engage customers before they get through to an agent. Lead Center enables you to customize your call queues in just a few clicks. Consider adding custom messaging related to the campaign that drove them in, along with your latest promotions.

For example, if the campaign that drove a particular lead to your home services company was related to your garage door repair services, consider recording custom messaging about your seasonal 20% off promotion and play that messaging for all callers that reach out as a result of that campaign. And don’t forget to use the estimated wait time feature to let callers know you’ll be right with them.

Stay up-to-date while on the go

It’s difficult for agents to juggle office-based admin with client projects and communications — not to mention personal life. They might feel like they’re being pulled in several different directions at once — and that there’s no way to stay on top of everything.

This is where Lead Center Mobileʼs cross-device response system comes in. As a softphone, Lead Center ensures your team can login remotely to access detailed interaction timelines for each prospect and customer – giving them the context they need to do their job from anywhere. With the mobile app, team members have access to that same information, along with the ability to take and make calls on the go from their mobile phone – via the same business numbers their prospects and customers are used to – whether they’re on-site, in the park, or at home.

Analyze team performance

A team is only as good as its weakest link. While some employees might be technical experts, they may not be so adept when it comes to customer service — at least, not yet.

Lead Center allows businesses to analyze each team member’s performance, identifying what top performers do and sharing these insights with the rest of the team. Dive into agent-level insights to see which agents take the most calls, how long they typically last, and you can even use Conversation Intelligence to identify the exact language they use when speaking to prospects and customers. Conversely, use these insights to identify low-performing team members – and train and coach them up accordingly.

Larger organizations can also use Lead Center Team View to group team members into custom groups, whether franchises or different teams that handle calls throughout the organization. Spot which teams are performing well and, more importantly, which might require further training or support. Use these insights to develop best practices and coach all of your teams to greatness.

Cut to the chase

There’s nothing more frustrating than having to repeat yourself multiple times to different agents. 33% of customers cite this as their biggest customer experience pet peeve and more than 70% want businesses to collaborate internally to ensure they never have to deal with this inconvenience.

Don’t waste valuable time — or your customers’ patience — asking them to rehash the same information over and over. Lead Center’s complete interaction timeline means team members instantly know who’s calling, why, and what they spoke about in the past. Improve efficiency and show that your company listens when leads and customers speak.

Improve your company’s answer rate with the business phone that helps you win more business

When you have the tools in place that help you get to every call – and know who’s calling and why when you pick up – your team can be a lot more helpful in satisfying your leads’ and customers’ needs.

Lead Center helps your team handle incoming calls, texts and chats effectively, and ties your marketing campaigns to those incoming messages so you can have better conversations that convert.

To see what impact Lead Center could have on your business, sign up for a free trial today.