Thinking big, acting small

When we first started our accounting firm we hired a marketing agency.

They were far too expensive and too much of a luxury for our little start up so the relationship only lasted a year or two. We did learn some lessons though. Firstly the importance of having regular and consistent marketing activities and secondly setting ourselves up as being different from our competitors and ‘acting small’.

One example that sticks in my head is our process for answering the phone. If we were in the office, we always answered the phone and if we were free we spoke to the caller, whoever it was. No filtering, no screening - if someone asked for us by name, if we were in and available, we would be happy to take the call.

We’ve grown a bit in the intervening years but our process is pretty much the same, although I confess we do screen out obvious sales calls.

We’ve all been on the other end of more difficult calls, ‘Is he expecting your call?’, ‘Will he know what it’s about?’, ‘I’ll just check for you...no, he’s tied up at the moment I’m afraid, would you like to leave a message?’

Our clunky analogue phone system has just about had its day though.

We’ve expanded a bit recently so the team is spread in different rooms throughout a large building. If someone calls on the main phone we don’t have the wherewithal to transfer them to some of the more remote outreaches of our office. It’s not quite working.

So we think its time for a more modern system with Direct Dial numbers for the various teams and wait for it...an automated switchboard. The challenge is how can we continue to give a courteous and friendly reception to callers whilst making the system practical and effective?

We’ll be working on this. 

I think avoiding too many layers on the call answering options is critical and we definitely don’t want callers to get stuck in a queue listening to something like, ‘Money for nothing’ by Dire Straits for an indeterminate period of time or worse still, giving them a choice of hip hop, pop or chill out music. We want the technology to help not hinder.

So if you call us in a month or two and an automated message says, ‘Press 1 if you are an existing client...’, please don’t hang up. Stick with it and we promise you will very quickly be able to speak to a real person.

It’s progress we think and we will be doing our best to keep acting small and giving you a personalised service.

www.base52.co.uk