One approach if there’s an excess of telephone calls is either to use voicemail which callers don’t like or to use a telephone response service. This seems to be 'let's be pleasant, take a message and call them back, promptly.' Unfortunately this method does not answer the callers' need in a timely manner and it’s difficult to guarantee that the calls are actually returned. Sometimes even the wrong message is passed through to you.

Our approach looks at why people are calling you.

Some will be calls from prospects but many will be from customers or suppliers who need a particular piece of information. (This information is important to their business or otherwise they wouldn't be calling you.) Some calls will be sales calls which, like them or not, might be useful to your business.

We acknowledge that solving the problem is much more difficult than providing a seemingly glossy service.

The process is to take a sample of calls and find out what the callers actually wanted. The usual Who, What, Why, When, type of questions.

The primary needs relate to more precise, more relevant, more useful information being provided to your 'stakeholders' in order to reduce the number of incoming phone calls.

Improvements in this area can also be achieved by better outgoing communications whether via emails, newsletters, project reports, confirmations, websites, FAQs, downloadable information sheets, online pre-recorded training, video or podcasts, or whatever you can devise.

It may be that a range of automated emails can also be set up to eliminate the needs for the calls in the first place or it may be that your team members are not using emails as effectively as they might.

The biggest benefit that the 'public style' communications brings is that it will be read or seen by many more people than just the one person on the phone.

Where the incoming calls are internal then Yoolaa helps by ensuring the information they need is easy to find within the Yoolaa business management solution.

Some callers will still want to speak to a member of your team, As there are fewer incoming calls to be dealt with as you will have syphoned off most of the easier ones, the ones that do come through you do really need and you really want to deal with.

The details of the call are then entered into the Yoolaa business management system so that everyone can be up-to-date and he contact and company audit trail of communications is kept complete.