How to increase sales with an Order Taking Service

May 10, 2023

This Is Why an Order-Taking Service Can Help Your Business Grow.

Businesses are constantly looking for opportunities to increase sales and deliver a better customer experience. Even with the advances in social networks and other online technologies, business owners are still relying heavily on the telephone as the main channel to communicate both with current customers and potential customers. According to a study by Verint, 24 percent of consumers prefer the telephone as their preferred channel of communication, while less than 5 percent opt for social media or live chat.

What Is an Order-Taking Service?

An order-taking service is typically provided by an answering service that offers the services of dedicated agents to manage the order-taking process. Customer service agents can answer questions, send information, take the order, and provide ongoing support. Working with a call center service allows your business to take advantage of specific benefits that are hard to reproduce on other customer service channels.

How Does a Call Center Service Provider Help Me Increase Sales?

When you hire a dedicated call center to manage your order taking, you gain access to a wide range of call center solutions to help your business and improve customer relationships. Order-taking is just a small part of what a virtual call center can do. People tend to think that an inbound call center only takes messages and forwards customer calls. An answering service can do much more than that. They are able to seamlessly integrate into a wide variety of processes within an organization. Sales and order-taking are perfect examples. Below we will explore how organizations are using an order-taking service to increase sales.

Scalable Sales Team

Growing a strong sales team can be a difficult and expensive endeavor. For many businesses, hiring new salespeople is not an option. An order-taking service immediately solves this dilemma by providing a team of live call center agents ready to support your sales efforts. Inbound call center agents eliminate the headaches related to hiring and maintaining quality sales personnel. When people call, they will get a professional live inbound agent to help them with their orders.

A specialty answering service is set up to deliver flawless customer care. This level of quality is possible due to the time dedicated to implementing your processes and the training provided to the virtual receptionists assigned to your company.

For instance, at Unicom, our customer service team goes through a multi-level training program, which on average can take 6 months to complete. Furthermore, all our agents are centrally located at our call center. This allows us to be directly in contact with our customer service professionals to ensure excellent customer service.

Expert Tip: Ask the answering service for the opportunity to hear their customer service representatives in a real call scenario.

Around-the-Clock Sales Team

Even outside business hours, your marketing dollars continue to work hard. While you enjoy your much-needed rest, an inbound call center service is working to make the most of every sales opportunity. Give your customers access to your products or services 24/7. Making your organization available around the clock will build trust with customers.

What if you don’t need 24-hour support? Some organizations choose to answer sales calls during their business hours and only forward calls during non-business hours.

Expert Tip: Not all telephone answering services are open 24/7, on holidays and weekends. Ensure your answering service solution is available when you need it. Avoid companies that want to charge you extra for weekends, holidays, and after-hours availability.

Immediate Accurate Responses

Delivering accurate responses to customers is vital for a positive experience. Professional order-taking service will work with you to understand every aspect of your service or product. When a new client’s account is being set up, it is always important for the call center to take the time to understand not only the business process but also what you’re offering. This knowledge allows agents to quickly provide relevant answers without having to rely on a script. Conversations with your customers should be fluid and natural, and not based on canned answers.

Expert Tip: Ask questions about the account setup process and understand the information you need to provide. Evaluate how thorough the setup process is.

Higher Levels of Engagement

Creating a positive customer experience is good for business. A key benefit of having live persons providing the inbound calling service is that your business will be able to create higher levels of engagement. Sales calls are typically very dynamic. They are not always straightforward, and it is normal for customers to have questions and concerns. A live person can assist with customer issues on the spot and ensure professional customer service. This type of engagement will decrease abandonment rates and increase your sales conversions.

Expert Tip: There are instances when incoming calls need to be escalated from the answering service to your organization. Verify the scenarios when the phone calls from customers should be escalated to you, versus being managed by the inbound call center team.

On-going Support

Following purchases, customers could have questions or require product support. It is common for answering services to provide post-sales support as they are familiar with the product or service. By hiring call center services, you’re gaining a sales team and a customer support team. This is simple to set up and requires you to provide pertinent details of the product or service.

Expert Tip: See how the entire team optimizes your account over time. Are your phone agents looking for opportunities to improve customer satisfaction and even save you money?

Ready to Hire the Best Order-Taking Service?

Whenever someone is looking to hire an answering service, I always give the following key points to help in their search:

Ask questions
Check out the key features
Discuss the call volume and average handling time
Avoid unnecessary contracts
Keep an eye on potential additional costs
Only Pay for Live Agent talk time
If there is a free trial – read the fine print
Take your time, and don’t feel pressured
Ask for references
Verify industry experience
Listen to their agents to verify they are professional

Unicom is a leading answering service based in Chicago, IL. For over 25 years we have been supporting organizations with our strong portfolio of services.

Request a custom plan with no obligations today. Learn how Unicom Teleservices increase your sales with our order-taking service.

Post Update: The article was updated on May 10th, 2023, originally published on April 25th, 2017. It has been completely revamped and updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.