Yes, adopting an answering service is absolutely worth the investment. In fact, choosing this option over hiring multiple in-house receptionists is one of the easiest ways to save money and revamp your communications framework—here’s why:
- No More Missed Calls | A single in-house receptionist can’t be available at all hours of the day, and hiring multiple receptionists is not affordable. But directing a missed call to an answering machine leaves customers feeling frustrated and unheard. Answering service agents, on the other hand, are available 24/7 to serve your customers with professionalism and empathy. Always having a friendly voice to pick up the phone does wonders for your brand’s reputation and makes customers feel valued and heard.
- Significant Savings | With an answering service, you don’t need to worry about all of the costs that come with hiring in-house professionals. Hiring traditional receptionists comes with a laundry list of costs. From recruiting to health insurance, it all adds up. Answering services are reasonably priced and come with a whole team of live agents to assist your business. Because these agents are not your employees, you don’t need to worry about benefits, training, onboarding, and other expensive tasks associated with hiring in-house talent.
- Extra Technology | Many of these services offer helpful automated tools to make customer communication even more efficient. Streamlining your call experience for your customers makes it easy for them to connect with you and gives them a better impression of your brand.
- You Have More Time to Focus on Your Business | Answering customer calls is critical, but you simply don’t have the time to handle everything on your own. As an extension of your team, answering service operators learn everything about how your business operates to ensure a seamless experience for your customers—no oversight needed. From taking messages and blocking spam calls to relaying information in a timely manner, live agents can do it all!
Still wondering “why should I use an answering service?” Learn more about how a virtual answering service can work for your business in the next few sections!
What Are Answering Services Used For?
Who uses an answering service and why? Well, one of the main benefits answering services provide is their ability to work for any kind of operation. Live answering services can work for small start-ups or even established, enterprise-level companies to help build better communications and secure strong customer relationships.
At Answering Service Care, we pride ourselves on providing excellent service to many industries, even those with very specialized needs. For example, we often work with businesses that handle sensitive information like medical offices and legal practices.
In the medical field, having a secure and HIPAA-compliant mode of communication is absolutely essential. Providing a human-centric method for communication is also vital. From scheduling a regular check-up to receiving important treatment information, having a skilled agent on the phone who has experience in dealing with complex and often emotional conversations makes a world of difference to medical patients. Answering Service Care provides secure, compliant, and helpful communication services for all kinds of medical practices. With our services, every patient’s call will be handled with care and discretion.
The same can be said for the legal field. A significant influx in cases is, of course, good for business—but it can be quite overwhelming. At Answering Service Care, we’ll make sure no call slips through the cracks, allowing attorneys to stay focused. Attorney calls are private and often require sensitive information to be shared. Each of our live agents are highly trained to manage calls with great respect for attorneys and their clients.
Ultimately, even in the most complex industries, an answering service can provide value to businesses and their customers. Experienced operations, like Answering Service Care, understand that good telephone technique leaves the caller with a positive impression of a business. Therefore, we provide extensive training to all of our agents to ensure optimal results for all parties involved.
Why Should I Use an Answering Service?
Generally speaking, hiring an answering service is a sensible business decision that will boost your company’s credibility, efficiency, and client satisfaction—by giving an individualized experience, offering around the clock availability, and remaining cost-effective. Let’s look further into three reasons why you should hire an answering service:
- While you’re busy taking care of other business, an answering service’s trained personnel will answer your customers’ calls and assist them in any way they need. This means your business will provide the kind of individualized service that attracts customers. A good telephone technique leaves the caller with a positive impression of your business.
- Having a phone answering service ensures that you will never miss another important call. If customers try to contact your business and no one answers, they could have the impression that you don’t value their time. With an answering service, there is a real person answering phones to support clients with inquiries and issues even when the office is closed—meaning your reputation as a business gets even better.
- An answering service is more cost-effective than hiring full-time receptionists—which includes a salary and benefits. In general, payroll and other associated costs are reduced when an employee is not physically present in the workplace.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg. To mention a few more advantages of using an answering service for a company:
One of the additional benefits of employing an answering service is that it enables you to never skip a call from a consumer because of around-the-clock availability. In addition, using a service increases efficiency. For example, it will help relieve your team of routine tasks like fielding phone calls. Not only that, but callers will see your your company as more professional when you use an answering service—because they receive quality service at any time, every time.
With Answering Service Care, you will feel secure in knowing that your business is providing your customers the best service in a timely manner—making your business reputation among competitors better than ever.
How Do You Find an Answering Service That’s Right for Your Business?
Not all answering services are guaranteed to meet your needs. So, before signing a contract with an answering service it is important to ask for the following:
- An overview of the answering service’s background and how long they have been in business.
- Information about how the answering service trains its agents.
- A list of industries the service commonly works with.
- An explanation of how the service handles compliance and security issues.
- A transparent overview of their pricing and refund policies
- A list of additional tools and features they provide aside from live agents
If you want to learn more about answering services and how they can work for your business, schedule a meeting with one of our experts! Or, if you’re ready to invest in an answering service that will fit your needs, get started for as little as $25 per-month.
