You know it from experience: when calling a company, the first contact is crucial. The voice of the receptionist will determine whether or not you will continue the call with a positive feeling or not. It is simple, a positive attitude will create positive impressions.

That is why your receptionists are, at that moment, the most important contact within your company. Your receptionists will be more relaxed if an attendant console helps them handle incoming calls. Therefore, calls will be managed in a very friendly and professional manner, ensuring a warm welcome to your customers.

Of course, everybody can have an off day but if in addition the attendant solution does not work, a friendly receptionist can soon get stressed out and your customers will most likely notice it - a bad first impression of your company. The fact is that every single call is an opportunity to enhance customer relationships and your image.

 Let’s have a look at some scenarios in detail:

• A caller would like to get put through to an employee. The receptionist cannot transfer the call as the current phone directory was not updated when the employee got transferred to a different department within the company. Nowadays, this must never happen again.

• A different caller gets put through to an employee who is currently on holidays. This means that the caller will either get the answer machine of that employee or will be transferred back to reception. If the receptionist had the presence status available, he or she would have realized that the employee is currently on holidays and would have informeded the caller immediately. 

• Another possibility is that you have ten calls queued up. Some callers will hang up as the waiting time is simply too long. If these calls had been automatically transferred to a free receptionist this could have been avoided and the caller would not be able to talk about a negative experience he or she had with your company.

• A caller would like to talk to an employee who is currently off work. How often do we get asked to call back later? It would be much friendlier if the receptionist simply asked the employee by email to return the call. A small but important service to the caller.

• As a last example, we look at the employee who always wants the receptionist to inform him/her about the caller before putting the call through. With today’s technology, this is very easy to manage and will, at the same time, improve internal cooperation.

Having looked at these examples, it is very clear that small technical innovations of an attendant console do provide great benefit to your receptionists and company. In addition to your receptionists enjoying their job more, your customer relationships and company image will be enhanced.

Talkbase is a web-based attendant console which helps you improve your call handling with features like fast search engines, status information, directories, reporting and analytics as well as WebRTC. Take a moment and check it out.