In the ultra-competitive marketing and advertising world, agencies must focus on being the most creative, results-oriented, and customer-driven. It’s not easy to be those things when you’re constantly distracted by a ringing phone, which is why many marketing and advertising agencies opt to partner with an answering service.
Answering services help marketing and advertising agencies of all sizes increase productivity, deliver better customer service, and adapt to the new normal. Here are some of the ways that marketing and advertising agencies can benefit by partnering with a live answering service.
Increased productivity and better customer service
While some larger marketing agencies employ in-house receptionists, many smaller companies just have their staff take turns answering the phone. This is problematic for several reasons:
- A constantly ringing phone distracts employees all day long. Each time the phone rings, everyone must pause for a moment to remember whose turn it is to pick up. The person who does end up answering must completely stop what they were working on for at least a few minutes. Over time, these interruptions can add up to hours of lost productivity.
- Marketing professionals are not customer service and phone experts. Although marketing is a customer service-based industry, your SEO specialists, graphic designers, and computer programmers are probably not going to be as well-versed as a full-time receptionist.
When you partner with a live answering service, your calls will quietly forward to a virtual receptionist who works remotely. This trained, educated, U.S.-based individual will warmly greet callers, answer general questions, schedule appointments, take messages, and transfer calls to the appropriate extension. A quieter office means fewer distractions, increased productivity, and happier employees and customers.
Answering services have been working remotely for years
Most marketing professionals have been working from home for over a year now, and it appears that this trend is here to stay. Even after the vaccine is widely adopted, 90% of human resources leaders said they plan to let employees work remotely at least part of the time. With that said, now is the perfect time to partner with an answering service. Here are some reasons why:
- Virtual receptionists have years of experience working remotely. The pandemic came as a sudden shock to everyone. Most receptionists have worked in-house for their entire career, and they were forced to suddenly change the way they do their jobs. The virtual receptionists at leading answering services have been delivering amazing customer service remotely for many years. Here at Answering Service Care, we have live agents who have worked with us for 5, 10, even 15 years! The pandemic changed very little about how they do their jobs, and they haven’t missed a beat.
- An answering service is typically cheaper than a full-time employee. Partnering with an answering service eliminates the need to pay for training, additional office space, equipment, benefits and more. Instead, you will only be charged for the calls that your live agent handles.
- Live answering services offer features that a single employee cannot, such as after-hours coverage, seasonal coverage, disaster recovery, and bilingual operators.
