Whether you work in sales, IT, real estate, or the medical field, one of the most important things to your customers is a fast response time. In today’s fast-paced digital world, customers have come to expect almost immediate gratification. When they reach out to your business because they need assistance, they don’t want to have to wait very long for it. The faster you can respond to them, the greater the impression you will make.
Fast response times are a vital part of great customer service. And these days, it really isn’t possible to have one without the other. Below we will demonstrate just how important a fast response time is, and explain how a live answering service can help your business improve your response times.
Just how important is a fast response time?
Quick response times are one of the main ways to make your customers feel valued and taken care of, which leads to customer loyalty, referrals, and increased profits. Here are some statistics that prove just how important a quick response time is.
- According to one study, the average response time to respond to customer service requests was over 12 hours. However, nearly half of all of customers (46%) expect companies to respond faster than four hours, and 12% expect a response within 15 minutes or less. There’s obviously a mismatch here, and one thing is clear: If you don’t have a fast response time, you are missing out on business opportunities.
- 75% of consumers consider fast response times an important attribute of the customer experience. In fact, fast response times were considered important to more people than having knowledgeable staff, consistency across channels, and user-friendly service tools.
- With 70% of consumers saying that they will warn their friends against using a company after a negative service experience. With your reputation on the line, you cannot afford to disappoint customers with slow response times.
Improve your response times with a 24/7 answering service
Speeding up your response times and connecting with your customers to assist them is the key to making them happy. Here are some of the ways that a live answering service can help you accomplish this:
- We can monitor your emails and react accordingly. Have you ever reviewed your inbox, only to realize that you missed or forgot to respond to an important email from days ago? With Answering Service Care’s email monitoring service, you’ll never have to worry about an important email slipping through the cracks again. Our trained live agents can monitor your inbox and quickly alert you if a new lead, service ticket, or tech alert comes in.
- We offer 24/7 coverage. Sometimes the most important calls come in at the oddest hours. When you partner with an answering service, the after-hours callers with urgent issues will not have to wait until morning for a response. They will feel valued and appreciative.
- We create better first impressions. With fast response times being so important to customers, what better way to impress them than to assist them quickly? Our virtual receptionists can help callers with a variety of tasks including appointment scheduling, answering general questions, call transfers, and more.
