As a photographer, your days are likely to be out and about either with clients, on location or on the road driving, making it extremely difficult to manage calls from potential customers – resulting in possible lost business.
Your business image is of utmost importance to you, but if your potential or existing clients are not able to get through to you, and your current phone options don’t give you the flexibility you need for your business, are you compromising your professionalism?
There is a solution to help your business that many of your competitors are using already – Call Answering Services. Below are some of the reasons you should perhaps consider this for your business too.
1. Divided attention
There is nothing more frustrating from your point of view, of sitting down with a new or potential client, or even being out on location and either hearing your phone ring (if you have forgotten to put it on silent), or coming away from the appointment to find a list of missed calls.
During the appointment, the client is your sole focus, as they should be. By having a call handling team answering calls and taking messages for you, you will ensure that you don’t miss those important enquiry calls. Let the team handling your calls book appointments into your diary too – making sure you don’t miss potential business.
2. Your business reputation
By having a call handling team to take calls when you are unable improves your business image and therefore your reputation, as calls are always answered, and callers feel their enquiry is being dealt with. One of the most frustrating things for potential clients, especially when they could be entrusting you with something as important as their wedding photography, is poor customer service – particularly if they are being kept waiting if you are with clients for a long time, or if you have back to back meetings and can’t get back to them quickly.
If there are enquiries, questions or something that needs to be resolved, it needs to be dealt with quickly and efficiently and call handling staff are trained to assist with this.
3. Increased competition
With more and more advanced equipment these days, there is increased competition from photographers who have built on their hobby of taking photos rather than spending years at college or university learning the art of photography. These photographers are competing well in the current market place and are offering very cost-effective packages, which a lot of people are quite happy to pay for.
To ensure you never miss an opportunity and compete effectively you need to be responsive to any enquiries. By using a call handling service that understands your business, many initial questions can be answered by the team ensuring that a good first impression is made and that you don’t lose out to the competition – they can even book appointments into your diary should you have an online diary facility, leaving you to concentrate on the face to face meetings.
4. Plan your time more effectively
As a professional photographer, you will spend the majority of your time either on location with your clients, or editing the photos you have taken.
Typically, following a shoot you will spend hours, possibly several days, ensuring that the images you have taken are perfect for your client, and business interruptions such as answering calls from potential new clients, whilst essential for business continuity, take you away from the detail of the work you are focusing on.
By utilising a professional call answering service, they can answer the calls for you as if they work directly for your business, take down information and even look to answer any questions that may be asked, whilst you focus on the work in hand. With all information sent across to you in real-time, you can deal with all enquiries when you take a break from editing.
5. Stop avoiding that well deserved break!
Taking time off when you are self-employed is not only costly but daunting. Who is going to take care of things whilst you are away? It is typical that an enquiry comes through for a large wedding that you have been waiting to hear about during that long awaited two week break you have been promising yourself!
Employing a team like Pocket Receptionist will ensure that all your calls are answered during this time allowing you to relax and enjoy yourself! You can leave instructions to the call handling team before you go away so if you are waiting on some important calls you could even ask to have them transferred to you and then messages taken for everything else!
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Learn more about our telephone answering service now
