An answering service is a business that helps other companies manage their phone calls. Calls are forwarded to the answering service, which ensures that there is always someone on hand to respond to customers and clients.
Some businesses think that answering services are out of date. With different avenues of communication, such as e-mail and chatbots, plus the aversion most younger customers have to making phone calls, they don’t think that an answering service is still relevant.
Answering services are still useful for businesses and help your company provide professional levels of service. Here are a few reasons why your business should invest in a partnership with an answering service.
Manage High Volumes of Calls
If you founded your business with the goal of spending all day on the phone, then you don’t need an answering service. If you would rather focus on other things, such as growing your business, then an answering service is the partnership that you need. Answering services take over the business of handling incoming phone calls so that you can prioritize more important tasks.
Answering services are particularly useful if your business is experiencing a higher volume of calls than you can handle in-house. The experts at Always Answer explain that small businesses aren’t always prepared to handle many calls, for example, if you’re getting responses to a promotion. Even if you take some calls in-house, an answering service can relieve the burden during a busy time.
Working with an answering service stops your business from getting overwhelmed by phone calls, even if you only have a small team of employees.
Always Have a Response for Your Customers
Nobody likes to wait. That’s a reason why one of the most common frustrations people have when trying to contact a business is getting put on hold. Customers hate feeling as if they can’t get a response from a business they’re trying to contact.
While being on hold has never been a popular activity, today’s customers have even less patience for waiting for a response. They are used to instant communication from friends and businesses through social media and instant messaging. They don’t want to have to wait for business hours to get an answer to their question, and may not be able to if they are facing an urgent problem or are at work during your business hours.
That’s why it’s important to always have a response ready for your customers. People are used to getting an answer from businesses any time they need it. If your business makes them wait, they will turn to a competitor who can respond at any time. Answering services allow you to provide around-the-clock phone service, no matter what your business hours may be.
Working with an answering service also reduces hold times. Answering services have the capacity to increase their staff in response to busier times, reducing the time customers usually spend on hold.
Provide a Professional Welcome to Customers with Your Communications
Answering services do more than answer the phone on behalf of your business. They revamp your entire system of phone-based communication using trained manpower and new technologies. This makes it easier to manage communication with customers. It also shows potential customers that you are serious about providing good communication and presents a professional impression of your business.
Answering services use new technologies and automation to make even in-house phone communication easier to manage. An answering service can automate your voicemail so you are notified immediately when someone calls your business phone and the contacts of the message. This is crucial in ensuring prompt responses and filtering through spam calls.
Answering services can also create other automated systems, such as call menus, automated greetings, and custom responses, to make call management easier. While some customers dislike phone trees when they dial a number, when used the right way, they speed up the customer experience and make it easier to manage high volumes of calls.
Setting up these automated systems makes it easier to respond to customers promptly, even with limited manpower. They also make your business look more professional and accommodating.
Strengthening Your Business with an Answering Service
Even as new technologies are increasing the channels through which customers communicate with businesses, there’s still nothing that can replace the immediate response from a phone call. A professional answering service perfects your phone communications by providing professional service, new tools to manage high volumes of calls, and a guaranteed team of professional response agents.
If your growing business is facing a higher volume of calls than normal, you’re trying to save space or money by keeping the in-house team small, or you just have better things to do than spend all day on the phone, working with an answering service is the answer to your problems.
