Putting a phone number on your site is a great way to increase conversion but if it's not handled right it can be a big detriment to your store. We've all had bad experiences calling customer service and you know how you feel when it happens. You don't want your customers deciding they will never come back to you because they had a bad customer service experience on the phone.

When you're just starting out you probably have better things to spend money on than a third-party answering service or hiring an employee to handle customer service. So, you put your own phone number up and field the calls yourself. This is a great way to start but there are a couple of important considerations. First, is your number toll free? Not only will customers be more likely to use a toll free number, they will expect a phone number on a professional site to be toll free. If you put up a regular number people may assume you're a small company they can't rely on or worse they might think you're a sham. RingCentral is a great place to get a toll free number.

The second consideration is will you be able to field all the calls and what will happen when you're not around. The first part you may not be able to judge until the number is up and you see what your call volume is. The second should be dealt with before you put the number up. All you need to do is make sure you leave a detailed after hours voicemail message that includes your company name, hours of operation, and an assurance that messages will be returned. Then just make sure you check your messages every morning. You don't want customer's to be unsure who they are leaving a message for and you need to make sure you address messages that have been left otherwise you will lose customers.

Let's assume now that you've moved beyond the point where you can handle the calls yourself, you have a couple of options. You can personally hire someone to deal with the calls or you can hire a third-party answering service. There are pros and cons to each. Hiring a person is a big responsibility and if you're a work from home small business owner it might not be the best option. Some of the pros are: you can personally train them and teach them about your products; you can watch over them while they work; a good customer service rep will integrate themselves into your company and do more to try and further it.

But if paying a full-time employee isn't feasible or your call volume is so high you need more people than you want to hire, a third-party answering service is a good solution. But you should choose your service carefully, just answering the phone isn't good enough. You are allowing these people to represent your business to potential customers so they'd better know something about it. There are services out there that have their operators learn your website so that they can speak intelligently about it when on the phone. They will also take orders over the phone and place them through your website. That's a big deal, you don't want customers to have to call a different number to order or not be able to place a phone order at all.

There are also services available that are more adept at handling multiple stores than others. I use the same service for my discount sports merchandise store as I do for my billiard supplies and bars stools store. They allow me to write custom scripts for each of the stores that the operators use. I can do this under one account which saves me money, look for deals like this when choosing an answering service provider. Accurate Communications is my recommendation.

I think at least one of these options will work for any store owner. Adding a phone number to your site is a great way to build customer trust and get more orders. Figure out what will work best with your business and make sure everything is in place before you put it out there and you'll be taking a big step toward higher conversion.