By Suzanne Yates

Sunday – A day of rest, or a day of missed opportunity? As more and more businesses are choosing to open on a Sunday, are you potentially damaging your business by not answering inbound calls?

For some, as soon as 5pm comes around their work mobile switches off and the working day is over. However, this pattern may not reflect the demand of your customers. If you’re working 9-5, but your customers are also working 9-5, that only leaves a small break on their lunch hour to call you. If you then take into consideration all those people trying to get through on their lunch hour at a similar time, you’ll soon see that this is not an efficient system for handling inbound calls.

You need to take your customer’s needs into account when operating a larger scale inbound call service. When a customer has a query or complaint to make, any hold up in resolving the issue only makes the problem worse. Especially in times of emergency, your customers may need essential maintenance or advice regarding your product when you’re not around to help. This block in communication will only irritate your customers. As a small business, it’s imperative to uphold a high standard of customer service as many new customers will come from referrals.

Any new customers looking to make contact won’t stick around to pursue their enquiries if they can’t get through straight away. This missed opportunity is only going to benefit your competitors who allow inbound calls on a Sunday.

If you’re totally reluctant or unable to opening your phone lines on a Sunday, even if only for emergencies or peak hours, there are services available to outsource your workload to. Outsourcing can be a cost effective way of dealing with Sunday calling issues, whilst you relax and enjoy your weekend.

Being available on a Sunday will also boost efficiency on a Monday. Spending your time chasing the voicemails left whilst lines were down on Sunday only keeps you away from more important tasks. By the time you get through to customers who tried to call you on a Sunday, they might not be free to talk, their issue may have subsided, or they may have turned to your rivals.

So what means more to you, a lazy Sunday morning or your company’s reputation?

Suzanne Yates writes for alldayPA, a telephone answering service, specializing in bespoke packages to suit any size business, offering relief to those who have their private life disturbed by an ever ringing phone.