Businesses are not created equally. That’s not a slight to any sort of business, but the fact is that some businesses have relatively simple needs from those who answer their phones and others need their receptionists and answering services to have some degree of specialized knowledge.
That doesn’t mean that your telephone answering service needs to – or could possibly be capable of – giving detailed instructions to clients if you’re in the medical, legal or other fields in which clients might have very specific questions, of course. It does mean, however, that you should be able to expect those who answer your phones to be able to answer the simpler questions, to be able to accurately transmit the tougher questions, and to know which is which.
Medical Answering Services
Medical problems don’t always follow a timetable. If you’re in the medical field and one of your patients has a need, they need to be able to speak with a real live human being, regardless of when they call. That person should, ideally, have at least a basic working knowledge of your practice and how you want patient calls and inquiries to be handled.
Obviously, that requires some training that the average telephone answering service doesn’t provide. So, what are your options? You could just leave the answering machine on, of course, but that means patients won’t be able to reach anyone outside of office hours. It goes without saying that this can create problems. You could hire people to man the phones around the clock, but for most medical practices, using actual employees for this is impractical. You would be paying someone to do nothing most nights.
The better option, by far, is to use medical answering services. A call answering service whose operators have been trained in dealing with the calls of your medical clients – much as you would train your own receptionists – can give your patients the peace of mind of knowing they can reach your office at any time. What’s more, the cost is generally a fraction of hiring an employee.
Another field that should avoid using answering services that haven’t had some industry-specific training is the legal field. Obviously, you don’t want your answering service (or even the receptionists you’ve trained personally) handing out legal advice, but you do want people fielding your calls who have been trained and who have experience in dealing with the types of questions legal clients ask.
Having a legal answering service on call 24/7 can help you obtain and save clients.
Let’s face it: those who are seeking legal assistance are often calling during a time of duress and being able to talk to a real human being rather than an answering machine can make or break their decision about which lawyer or legal firm to hire.
Answering Service Care is a family owned and operated answering service company.
We offer general telephone answering service and specialized answering service across many fields, including medical answering services, legal answering service and real estate answering service.
