Demanding Customers and Need for Human Reassurance Prompt Increase in Calls

Accountancy practices look set to benefit as a new report finds customers are much more likely to call than they were five years ago.

Commissioned by leading outsourced communications provider Moneypenny, the research surveyed a variety of accountants and other financial service businesses and revealed they now receive 31% more calls.

48% of financial businesses say most callers want an urgent response to an enquiry, followed by 40% who say most calls are to verify details from customers’ online research and 39% who say calls are seeking reassurance from speaking to someone. 

Moneypenny attributes the increase in calls to changing consumer demands and behaviours.  Louise Wilson, Business Manager – Finance at Moneypenny said:  “The data shows that even in an online world, we still seek the reassurance of human interaction.  Trust is critical in this sector and the phone is one of the easiest ways for customers to seek answers, clarify information and build rapport.

“More and more customers are researching and comparing accountants and other financial service providers online, and then using the ‘click to call’ button directly from Google’s search results once they know what they want.  All of this results in more calls to businesses and calls of far greater value.” 

Shoaib Aslam, CEO and founder of Pearl Accountants said: “Our call volumes have increased significantly over the last year so it’s imperative that we handle them well, particularly if we want to grow the practice and ensure we’re offering the very best service to clients. Live chat and telephone answering services have become critical to our growth plans.  We want to ensure we’re always responsive, regardless of how or when our clients contact us.  We have to be accessible to meet changing customer demand.”

The research revealed that 35% of financial services business’ inbound calls are new business calls and have an average value of £2,022. With financial businesses receiving an average of 910 calls per month, the telephone is a very lucrative channel for the sector.

Louise added: “69% of callers don’t leave voicemail messages so it’s very important to answer every call, particularly when the average value is in excess of £2,000.  Plus, as 97%_ of consumers give more business to companies who respond quickly, there’s real commercial incentive to ensure that all calls are answered. 

“The sector is focused on using new digital solutions to drive sustainable growth but answering the phone and doing it well remains a financial business’ fundamental secret weapon.”

For 54% of financial businesses, the phone remains one of the most popular ways for customers to get in touch. Email is the only day-to-day channel to beat phone calls, at 56%.

The research also highlighted that lucrative new business conversations don’t just take place over the phone.  23% of the financial services sector has embraced live chat technology thus far, making it more digitally progressive than healthcare (18%) and legal (17%) but still behind marketing (29%) and property (26%).

Moneypenny provides telephone answering and live chat services to hundreds of financial services businesses and is trusted by the UK’s top accounting firms, including five of the top 30. 

Established in 2000, Moneypenny is the world's market leader for telephone answering, live chat, outsourced switchboard and customer contact solutions. In total, more than 13,000 businesses across the UK benefit from Moneypenny’s mix of extraordinary people and ground-breaking technology.

For more information about Moneypenny’s work in the financial sector visit:

https://www.moneypenny.com/uk/accountancy-answering-services/ 

You can download the report here: https://www.moneypenny.com/uk/resources/blog/free-resource-financial-bus...