Countless modern industries rely on a professional answering service for better and more productive relationships with their clients. On top of the practical advantages, an answering service enables healthcare providers, lawyers, real estate agents, and other professionals to reap immense cost savings over hiring an in-house receptionist.
For property managers, specifically, an answering service helps ease the administrative burden, keeping tenants and staff satisfied. But what else does a real estate answering service do, and what role can it play for a property manager or landlord? And how do you find the best property management answering service for your needs? Keep reading to find out.
What Is the Difference Between a Call Center and an Answering Service in Property Management?
On the surface, call centers and answering services seem to have a lot in common—they both answer inbound calls to your business—but there are differences to note. Compared with a specialized answering service, a call center offers a relatively impersonal experience, strictly suited to handling a high volume of calls rather than providing a high-touch, personalized experience for callers.
Put another way, leveraging a call center amounts to outsourcing, while an answering service instead acts more like an extension of your business. Working with an answering service like Answering Service Care ensures that the agents handling client or tenant calls on behalf of your business tailor their approach to your exact specifications—another substantial advantage of answering services.
What Does an Answering Service Do for a Property Manager?
A real estate or property management answering service enables better relationships with tenants by handling their calls promptly and professionally. Another advantage of an answering service is that its agents can provide 24/7 coverage, so no calls go unanswered—note even those that come in the middle of the night, on a weekend, or even a holiday. This is especially important for property managers, whose tenants might experience urgent situations at any hour of any day.
Based on how you typically engage with and take care of your tenants, you can decide how each call is handled—including how it should be answered, where to route it, and how to answer certain types of questions. This way, your time can be spent further cultivating those relationships and taking care of tenants.
What Does an Answering Service Cost for Property Management Companies?
Probably less than you expect! For example, Answering Service Care offers several packages at different price points. At the time of this writing, these range from the Starter package ($25/month, plus minutes) to the Enterprise package ($599/month, 500 minutes included). Plus, you’re able to live chat with your customers for $5 a chat starting with our Small Business plan. You can read more about these packages, compare their features, and see current rates on our speciality answering service pricing page.
Let’s say you opt for our Pro package, which is $289/month with 250 minutes included. Even if you were to exceed the allotted minutes by 100 minutes per month ($1.43/minute), over the course of 12 months, the answering service would cost you just over $5,000 ($3,468 for the plan, $1,716 for 1200 additional minutes). Compare this with the average real estate receptionist’s salary ($45,763, according to Glassdoor), and the cost savings become exceptionally clear.
At Answering Service Care, we understand why some property managers might be hesitant about an answering service, and cost is always important. Our services come with a 21-day money-back guarantee and no burdensome, long-term contracts.
What Is the Best Voice Answering Service for Property Managers?
Comparing one property management answering service to another can sometimes feel like comparing apples and oranges, due to the variety of features and how they package and price their offerings.
If you’re serious about finding the best answering service for property management, we recommend starting your search with Answering Service Care. Our empathetic, professional agents will provide around-the-clock availability. They’ll be equipped to answer basic tenant questions, coordinate maintenance processes, schedule showings, provide immediate assistance (including emergency escalation of urgent issues), and more.
Of course, an answering service company’s track record and reputation are also important to consider. As we approach our 50th year, our experience and professionalism has made us an industry leader—not just in real estate and property management, but several other industries as well, including healthcare, law, finance, and more.
The best part? It’s easy to get started, and we can have your answering service up and running within a day. Get started today, or visit our website to learn more about our property management answering service and what it can do for you.
