Outsourced Call Handling

Verbatim provides outsourced call handling for Dragons’ Den success

How does a small but very ambitious start-up present a professional image to both its customers and its freelance sales agents without spending a fortune? As BinB correspondent Peter Jump discovered, for party plan-based nursery retail business, Truly Madly Baby , the answer is to use Verbatim, the phone answering service.co.uk. This ensures every call is answered and properly handled by a person, rather than a machine.

Truly Madly Baby made a triumphant appearance on the most recent series of the BBC’s Dragons’ Den. Following a polished and passionate presentation, its founder, Julie White, received an offer of £75,000 investment from high-profile businessman, Peter Jones. As regular viewers of the show will already know, this made her one of only a very select band of entrepreneurs to successful agree a deal with the ‘dragons’.

Regarding the use of Verbatim, Julie comments, “So many small businesses have an answer phone or let calls ring out which is very unprofessional, and they undoubtedly lose business because of that. I have someone to answer the telephone, but if that person is already busy the call automatically gets picked up by Verbatim. That makes us look bigger than we really are and gives us a professional appearance.”

But can ‘virtual’ receptionists really take the place of in-house staff? When I visited Verbatim’s call centre in Newbury recently I was left in no doubt as to the sophistication and the professionalism of the service it provides. When staff receive a call, their computer screen immediately tells them everything they need to know to handle it efficiently. This is thanks to software specially developed for Verbatim, which tells staff which company the caller was trying to contact, plus details about the company itself. The latter can include, for example, the address of the head office along with the names and the availability of key contacts. In just a few minutes, I saw staff efficiently pass on messages from callers, provide directions to a client’s shop and even handle a product order on behalf of a web-based retailer. (As etailers are increasingly discovering, not all consumers are happy to place orders through a website, preferring instead to purchase by telephone.)

The really good news is that using an in-bound call centre to answer the phone for you needn’t be an expensive option. Even one-man businesses, such as plumbers, can easily afford to use Verbatim, although the company also boasts some very major corporations as clients. As Julie says, “In my opinion Verbatim are very cost effective. Plus, if they take a call from someone wanting business, that’s business that I could easily have lost otherwise.”

For further information call Verbatim today on 01635 573 208.

Verbatim Call Centres is a registered trademark of PHD in Communications Ltd.