Finding the right help for your niche business can be challenging, but even if you luck into a great employee with some knowledge in your area, training them can present another huge hurdle.
It can be months from the time you start your employment search until you finally get to put that new hire to work doing a basic job handling your telephone customer service or taking messages for your more specialized workers. Instead of investing so much time and energy on another entry-level employee, it might be time to consider a specialty answering service.
What Can a Specialty Answering Service Do For You?
Besides saving you time, energy and frustrating trying to track down the perfect employee to handle your customer service while learning enough to remain conversational with your customers, a specialty answering service can make things easier on your budget, too. Since these services only charge for the services and the time you use, many small specialty businesses find that they save money by choosing an answering service over an in-house employee.
These are just a few of the services that specialty answering service operators are trained to perform:
Customer service. When your callers have questions about your products or services, professionally trained agents at your answering service will have all the answers they need. If there’s a question they just can’t answer with their available information, your customer service team can take a message or patch the caller through to an emergency number for further customer care.
Message relay and Follow Me. Taking a message is great, but knowing what to do with that message in order to best protect that caller’s data is sublime. Instead of simply texting or calling with messages, a professional answering service is well versed in privacy laws like HIPAA and put client data safety first to help protect you and your customers. If a caller just can’t wait, services like Follow Me can find you no matter where you are so that emergencies are given the priority they deserve.
Bilingual answering service. In many areas, business owners are expected to cater to both English and Spanish-speaking customers. Having a bilingual answering service is vital for these companies. Not only does it show your callers that you really care that their message is relayed accurately and in its entirety, but that you’re interested in opening as many communication channels as possible. Don’t lose market share because your receptionist or answering service only speaks one language.
After-hours calls. Hiring an answering service also means an opportunity to provide your customers with assistance 24/7. No matter the problem, no matter the time, someone will be available to help them through it. In a world where customers increasingly expect more for their money, the boost in satisfaction callers get from being able to contact you when they need to can bring in lots of new business from referrals alone.
Hiring a specialty answering service for your niche business can be one of the best decisions you’ll ever make. Not only will you be able to turn over your customer service and call handling to professionals who do nothing but answer calls all day, you’ll have the option of expanding your caller’s access to your business in ways you never could before.
