Many small businesses are a one man band. At times this almost certainly results with incoming phone calls and customer interactions missed. It may even be as simple as not answering the call to meet a client or even just to have some personal time for lunch or a toilet break.

Sadly it shouldn’t be an expectation from your customers that someone will answer their call or should it? The truth is we all have a certain expectation that when we call a business we will be served immediately. Let’s face it we only call a business when we require their service or product and would find it incredibly frustrating if their phones just rung out or worse yet we were required to leave a voice mail with the hope our call would be returned.

For the business owner this can be equally frustrating, we hear our phones ring and know we can’t answer them. This could be that we are already with a client or about to step out, we then think to ourselves I hope that call now hasn’t resulted in business for someone else.

Perception is really everything especially in businesses, the last thing you want is for you customers to have the perception your calls are hardly answered because you are too busy or are not around. Worse yet when you work away from the office or go on holidays do you expect your customers to just leave a message? This is painful especially for the business owner. No one wants to spend a whole day returning messages that are old and no longer relevant. On the other scale I wonder how does it look to the customer that the businesses owner is always answering the phone, does this mean customers that are with you get annoyed with your lack of attention working as the office Receptionist. Surely answering your business calls can become counterproductive with time then lost actually doing the work you need to do to grow and succeed?