Why do SMB owners want more calls as a result of SEO, but don't answer 62% of them?

[411Locals]

Working mostly with SMBs for 8 years now, we have gradually developed the notion that small business owners are hard to reach by phone. Our Customer Service agents spend hours unsuccessfully trying to reach business owners. If a potential customer calls the business, they'll have to face the same outcome. This means missed opportunities for both parties. Needless to say, one of the most important KPIs in local SEO is the number of generated phone calls...but no one's there to answer.

We wanted to dig deeper into the matter, so we did a small study with 85 businesses. Results show that:

• 37.8% of calls are answered by a person.
• 37.8% of calls are answered by an answering machine, where no actual conversation (nor conversion) is possible, so we treat these calls as unanswered.
• 24.3% of calls are unanswered.

We also gathered a list of possible solutions to the problem, but what we really need to know is WHY do business owners neglect such an important part of their business? And what resolutions can you think of?

[Mobilio]

Link here is nofollow FYI.

[EGOL]

This is Q&A, not a signpost for articles.

It looks pretty interesting.  Why don't you write it up and submit it to YouMoz.

[Christy-Correll]

Hi there! I have removed the link in your original post, and left it published here in the forum as a discussion question. For details, please refer to the email I just sent you.

Christy

[411Locals]

We are totally aware of that, thanks.

[411Locals]

Sorry about that. I understand it has already been moved to the right section by another user.

The article was submitted to YouMoz before it was published but unfortunately it was rejected. However, we still wanted to discuss the issue with other professionals, so we started this thread.

Do you think we should add a short list of the possible solutions now that the link to the full article is gone?

[411Locals]

Thanks, Christy! Sorry if we caused any trouble.

[Christy-Correll]

Okay, thanks for that.