Why marketing fails when nobody answers the phone

Marketing fails when nobody answers the phone because the advertisement did its job and the business threw it away. A person who calls and gets no reply rings the next name on the list. Before you change the campaign, the agency or the budget, find out how many calls went unanswered, who was supposed to pick up, and how long a missed caller waited for a call back.

What does an unanswered call cost?

You paid for it, whichever channel it came from: the advertisement, the listing, the board, the cost of the person who recommended you. The caller has the problem now, and a caller who has not heard back often rings the next name.

You cannot recover a call you did not see. The log on the phone shows only some of them. So the first job is to count: take three days of missed and unreturned calls, and for each note the time, the number and whether anyone rang back. This takes ten minutes.

Our piece on how quickly your team should respond to a new lead covers the target time. This post is about the earlier question, who is there to pick up.

Where calls get lost

Calls are not lost randomly. They collect in a few places.

The number printed on the advertisement rings on the owner's personal phone, and the owner is in a meeting, on the shop floor or driving. The reception phone rings, and the person at the desk is helping someone in person. The call comes at lunch, or after closing, or on a Sunday when the advertisement is still showing. A call is answered, but the person who answers does not know the answer, says "I will ask sir", and the caller is never called back.

Each of these has a different fix, which is why a general instruction to "be quicker" does not work.

A test you can do this afternoon

Call your own number as a stranger, from a phone nobody knows, at three times: mid-morning, just after lunch and near closing. Write down:

1. How many rings before anyone answered, or whether it went to voicemail.
2. What the person said first.
3. Whether they asked your name and need.
4. Whether they said what happens next.
5. Whether anyone called back, and when.

Do the same through the WhatsApp number on your listing. Ask something a real buyer would ask. The answers tell you what the buyer meets.

A front-desk checklist for the call

Print this and keep it by the phone.

• Answer with the business name and your own name. "Sree Traders, Rekha speaking."
• Ask for the caller's name and a number to call back on, before anything else.
• Ask what they are looking for, in their words, and write it down.
• Ask the one qualifying question that matters in your trade: the quantity, the area, the date, the budget range.
• Give a real answer to the simple questions: price band, timings, location.
• If you cannot answer, say who will, and by when: "Mr Nair will call you on this number. Which time suits you?" Let the caller name the time, then keep it.
• Write the call in the register or sheet before you pick up the next one.
• Before closing, check the register for calls with no outcome.

The seventh line matters most, because a call that is not written down cannot be followed up.

Who owns the phone?

Name a person for each hour of opening time, and a second person for when the first is busy. Write it on the wall, not in your head. If the owner takes calls, set aside the hours when they are free to do so and send the rest to someone else.

When a call comes after hours, decide what the caller hears. A short recorded line giving your hours and saying when someone will ring back is enough, provided someone does it. A recorded line that promises and does not deliver is worse than a ring tone. Click-to-call buttons on your listing and pages send more calls your way, so see our note on click-to-call and WhatsApp buttons after you have fixed the answering.

Calls that rang out: a borewell contractor in Junagadh

This is an invented case. A borewell contractor in Junagadh starts search advertising and sees calls rise. Orders do not. The owner suspects the agency and wants to change it.

A test call tells a different story. At eleven in the morning the number rings six times and ends as a missed call. It is the owner's number, and the owner is standing beside a rig forty minutes out with the compressor running. The office landline is not on the advertisement. Farmers who do get through hear "sir will call you", and the call comes at night, if at all.

The change is small. The advertisement carries the office clerk's number. The clerk keeps a register, answers within a few rings, and notes the village, the farmer's land and when he is free to meet. The owner rings the notes between rig moves and marks them done. Calls in the register now end in a site visit, a quotation or a "not interested", where before they ended in nothing. The clerk misses some calls too, mostly at lunch, so the owner keeps the personal number as a fallback for the ones that ring out.

When the phone is not the leak

If your register shows calls answered and returned within a reasonable time, and orders still do not come, look elsewhere: the price, the quote, the follow-up after the quote. This post covers the first stage only. If many callers are wrong for your product, see our note on getting the wrong kind of enquiries.

Put a name against every hour

Count the missed calls, run the test call and write a name beside each hour the shop is open. Then agree who counts a call as a lead and who picks it up, as set out in our guide to a marketing-to-sales handover agreement. The marketing section covers what comes before the call, and inbound lead conversion is the service for what happens after it. Once the phone is covered, tell us what you need.