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Recent surveys show: 25 percent of all calls received by businesses are being dispatched into nirvana – up to 63 percent of customers immediately look for alternatives

Vienna, April 20th 2010 – Most of today’s companies understand that being on the phone with a potential customer is probably the simplest, most direct and most efficient marketing tool. One would at least think so. Studies, conducted by ICM Research, a British market research firm, and adaffix, a caller recognition service, showed significant „black holes“ on the business telephonic side. 25 percent of all calling customers are not able to speak to an actual person. Blocked extensions, answering machines, nonexistent numbers or simply a slightly displaced handset are some of the many reasons that lead to these circumstances.

Non-answered calls mean a loss of customers and revenue. More than 63 percent of customers trying to call a business in vain, claim to be willing to switch to another company – as long as there are other options available. This is where adaffix comes into play, offering its customers a plethora of relevant businesses, which are geographically located nearby. Even for established and existing customers the willingness to switch to another company is still at a staggering 38 percent.

“When customers call a company, in most cases they need something urgently. Thus they are often rather disappointed when their calls are not being answered properly. adaffix offers a simple solution that enables the customers to turn to other adequate businesses in one‘s neighbourhood”, says Claudia Poepperl, CEO of adaffix.

Germany and Austria: the top non-reachable businesses
The adaffix statistics of misleading and unsuccessful customer calls indicate the leading branches of businesses that are disappointing their customers. In Austria, calls to taxi companies are the most unsatisfactory, in Germany, gastronomy is (mis)leading the way.

Germany: Calling for a restaurant reservation? Stay hungry instead!
The adaffix statistics also shows that there are country-related differences in terms of which type of business customers are calling. The more phone calls are being processed, the higher the chances that the calls are not being answered properly and therefore ranked in the statistics top rank.

The “top five of non-reachable businesses” in Germany during workdays are clearly restaurants, leading the way with 18 percent failed phone pick-up rate, followed by lawyers at 10 percent, family physicians, internal medicine specialists and hotels at 9 percent and dentists at 4 percent. The rest is distributed among a wide variety of other business types. On weekends the figures turn out to be different: restaurants, cafés, governmental institutions for health and social work, pizza delivery services and intensive-care units are ranked among the top 5.

Austria: Taxi services are called frequently – and frequently do not pick up their phone
A similar situation has been shown in Austria, however in slightly different genres. From Monday to Friday adaffix has proven the following: taxi services lead the score with 5 percent of unanswered phone calls, followed by insurance companies with 4 percent, banks at 3 percent, physicians at 2 percent and car dealers at 1 percent. The remaining percentages are divided among other business types. On weekends the statistics looks different: taxi services take to top spot in the ranking yet the other four spots are being made up of various gastronomy areas, such as pizza places, pizza delivery services, traditional restaurants and Chinese restaurants.

Helping customers who are trying to get in touch with a business
For calls that are not being answered, adaffix suggests a variety of nearby businesses, shops or contractors. A call is then being done with a single click. In Austria, adaffix has partnered with the leading directory players HEROLD.at and auskunft.at, and in Germany DasTelefonbuch data has been integrated into the service. Directory players in other countries offer online and mobile search, but lack the functionalities of adaffix. These directory players include e.g. De Gule Sider, Lokaldelen, Truvo, Opplysingen 1881, 118218, Pages Jaunes, 118712, Yell, 118118, BT The Phone Book, Touchlocal, Thomson Directories, Pagine Gialle, Telecom Italia 1254, Yellow Pages Group, European Directories, Publicar, Turkey Yellow Pages, Latvijas Talrunis, Paginas Amarelas, Golden Pages, KGB, Trudon, MTT, PKT, Mediatel, Sensis or Telelistas. The downloadable mobile app, which has received the prestigious GMSA Global Mobile Award 2010, is entirely free of charge for consumers and works on all smartphones that support Symbian S60, Android, Blackberry RIM or Windows Mobile.

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About adaffix
adaffix (adaffix GmbH) was founded in 2009 in Vienna. The start-up, with a clear international emphasis, focuses on the development of mobile telecommunications services. adaffix is a „Call 3.0 company“ primarily dealing with “calling” and “being called” in all daily circumstances. Calls are being enriched with real-time information. In Austria the application can be operated within the networks of A1 Mobilkom, T-Mobile, Drei and Telering. In Germany it can be run using one the following networks: Vodafone, T-Mobile, O2/Telefonica, Eplus, Base, blau.de, simyo, vybemobile or AY YILDIZ. The adaffix application runs on BlackBerry, HTC, LG, Nokia, Motorola, Palm, Samsung and on SonyEricsson devices, which support one of these operation systems: Android, RIM BlackBerry, Symbian S60 oder Windows Mobile. There is a special application for the iphone available. Learn more about adaffix at https://adaffix.com/company.

PR Contact
I5comm c/o adaffix:
Bernhard Lehner
bernhard@i5comm.com
Phone: +43 664 439 86 09
www.twitter.com/adaffix