Closing the sales office at 5 - quite a saving

[DSLiverpool]

Looking at battening down the hatches and one thing on the radar is closing at 5 not 5.30 (and the wage saving it ensues). It makes no difference to shipping orders and we will do a 2 week study of what happens after 5 sales call wise.

We still have a message service that is answered out of hours

We are not a shop but do get callers and of course we would stay on occasion for a collector if required.

Any thoughts?

[jammy_basturd]

Could you have a remote worker do a few hours in the early evening? So you'd get most of the benefits of closing the office early, but also have someone available to answer sales questions into the early evening once people start getting home from work.

[DSLiverpool]

After checking what happens after 5 I may well divert calls to someone (me) - the live help goes to one of us when we are shut anyway.

[Jasandjules]

Just try a call forward to your business mobile for those 30 mins just to make sure.

[DUMBO100]

It depends on the type of Business, I called an estate agent this morning (Saturday) to arrange a viewing and was met with a recorded message saying they were closed untill Monday and no option to leave a message. I don't think they'll sell many houses

[northwest monkey]

It depends on your customer base really. I've run telesales places for both B2B and B2C. The one B2B we used to close at 5 (2 on Fridays), but we did open at 8.30. The B2C we used to open at 10.30 but stay open until 7pm, and 10 until 4 on weekends.

[maffski]

Don't you already have the information in your sales system to check this historically? Even if there's no front end to it the information should be in the database.

Edit: You should be able to get call logs out of the phone system as well, to at least check how many callers you get after 5.

[DSLiverpool]

maffski said:

Don't you already have the information in your sales system to check this historically? Even if there's no front end to it the information should be in the database.

Edit: You should be able to get call logs out of the phone system as well, to at least check how many callers you get after 5.

Call logs yes - its call quality we need to define - we may get lots of calls asking why the bloody carrier didn't deliver today its the "I need 20 headsets for yesterday" calls I particularly don't want to miss.

[jamescodriver]

We had a trial with these guys www.callmissjones.co.uk very good service, might be worth looking at as you can advertise longer hours as well?

[LordHaveMurci]

We have done it, you do get the odd call but they are mainly loq quality or PPI etc.

If you do any repeat business (most of ours is) then regualar clients soon learn. We divert to a mobile number & return any calls that may be important, it happens rarely though.

[andy-xr]

DSLiverpool said:

Call logs yes - its call quality we need to define - we may get lots of calls asking why the bloody carrier didn't deliver today .

Whatever your opening hours might end up being, I'd say you should definitely take those calls rather than bin them. People want to know whats gone wrong, they dont need to know exactly what you're going to do about it, but they do want to let you know and ignoring them lessens the repeat business.

For me, all incoming calls other than people touting their stuff are important ones to take

You were making mention a while ago that you couldnt find a good sales person, and I guess if you're battening down the hatches a bit you might not have found them? Might it now be a good idea to look at remote sales people who dont need to be in an office til either 5 or 5.30, but instead can crack on from whaerever they are. I find remote working makes me more productive, I can leave some things til later in the day after hours if necessary and do them when I want, making better use of office hours to get hold of people rather than be tied to my inbox.

Dont forget you may have a knock on effect, if you're paying salaries by the hour and people start earning less, they may start looking at their options elsewhere

Edited by andy-xr on Tuesday 21st April 12:30

[DSLiverpool]

andy-xr said:

DSLiverpool said:

Call logs yes - its call quality we need to define - we may get lots of calls asking why the bloody carrier didn't deliver today .

Whatever your opening hours might end up being, I'd say you should definitely take those calls rather than bin them. People want to know whats gone wrong, they dont need to know exactly what you're going to do about it, but they do want to let you know and ignoring them lessens the repeat business.

For me, all incoming calls other than people touting their stuff are important ones to take

You were making mention a while ago that you couldnt find a good sales person, and I guess if you're battening down the hatches a bit you might not have found them? Might it now be a good idea to look at remote sales people who dont need to be in an office til either 5 or 5.30, but instead can crack on from whaerever they are. I find remote working makes me more productive, I can leave some things til later in the day after hours if necessary and do them when I want, making better use of office hours to get hold of people rather than be tied to my inbox.

I found a great sales guy but we didn't see eye to eye unfortunately and in all honesty I think I should train one up as I am only happy "my way". Typically its been crazy last few days.
On calls we are the only company in our sector that answers the phone and doesn't use an auto attendant, however yesterday from 5 to 5.30 we had 2 invoice requests and a couple of "how do I " calls which an out of hours message service could handle I guess.

[red_slr]

IME (we do a lot of phone sales) most calls after 430pm are either time wasters or non conversions.
My advice is have a good website as a fall back so customers who really do need to order can do so on the website.

We use voipfone to monitor our calls after hours. We actually vary our opening hours by upto 2 hours depending on demand.
Our shortest day is 08-00 to 16:00 and our longest is 07:30 to 17:30.

The main thing is when we close we set our business ours on the PBX and the customers get the message that we are closed but they can still order on our website.
Works fine for us.