Are You Making The Right First Impression?

Moneypenny, the outsourced reception specialist, has released new research through mystery shopping, ranking the FTSE 100 in terms of the first impression they give callers. The results were quite frightening with just one in four of the UK’s top companies having an ‘excellent’ reception service.

The actual call handling seems to be quite good with 74% of calls being picked up under 5 seconds. However things then seem to take a down turn once the call was actually answered with only 44% of calls being described as ‘very friendly’ and only 8% of receptionists actually being able to assist the caller.

It gets worse with, only a staggering 56% of receptionists knowing the CEO’s name.

I feel sure that this is not only prevalent in large organisations, in my experience, the SME market also suffers from this. Why would any business want the first impression of their company to be so negative, why is it so poor and what can you do about it?

Firstly, first impressions count both over the phone and face to face, you may be contacting a company as a customer, an interviewee or as a supplier, the welcome you receive really sets the tone for how you feel about the organisation. Being friendly is not just a ‘nice to have’ it gives the recipient an indication of how professional your business is.

So why is it so poor? Is it that the reception staff are not considered for customer service training? Is there a high turnover or a high number of temporary staff? Either way, they make or break the impression of your company.

So what can you do? Well firstly ensuring your people are aware of the impact they make through their body language, tone of voice together with the actual words they use. On the telephone, tone of voice is critical, as grumpy sounds really grumpy on the phone and face to face, body language is the biggest factor in how a message is communicated. Also the words that are used, are they what I call ‘tragic’ focusing on what you cannot do or ‘magic’ focusing on what you can do.

Clearly not knowing who the CEO is or the board is a communication issue, at a company I once worked in, the reception staff had an organisational chart behind reception together with photo’s of the senior management team – a simple yet effective way of ensuring that customers are confident you know who you work with!