One: Answering your calls and providing valuable information

The easiest and most simple use of an auto-attendant is to answer your calls – so you don’t have to. By setting a customized greeting you can give your customers the information they need right-away without ever having to speak with them (if you don’t want).

For example, an auto-attendant greeting could contain:

Store hours, location and direction

You may think that everyone looks these things up online, which they do, however many times there is conflicting information spread across Yelp, Google Local, Facebook and anywhere else someone may have posted your store hours and locations. When people are confused they fall back on calling the store to check – make sure your auto-attendant is there to answer.

“Hi, you’ve reached Ultra Transmission Repair, we’re open 7:30-3:00PM Monday through Friday. Please note that Google maps does not show the correct location – we are behind the Big Lot’s on Main Street all the way at the back of the parking lot.”

Important updates

Sometimes you just need to get the word out and changing your auto-attendant can be an effortless way of doing this.

“Thanks for calling Le Salon, due to the recent flooding we’re closed for the remainder of the week and will reopen again Monday. Stay Safe!”

Redirect to a more appropriate medium

Just because you have a business number doesn’t mean that that is the first way you want to interact with a potential customer, use your greeting to redirect a caller to the more appropriate method.

“Thanks for calling Pro Party Planners. Please check out our videos and find out where we’ll be hosting next on our Facebook page at Facebook.com slash Pro Planners."

Now once your greeting has been setup through your auto-attendant you need to choose what the system does next, which takes us to the next level…