Defined as “a service that can manage both inbound and outbound business communications,” telephone answering services can help businesses of all types and sizes with tasks including the following:
- Answering incoming calls
- Routing phone calls
- Taking messages
- Scheduling appointments
- Responding to emails
- Sending follow up emails after calls
- Replying to text messages
- Answering general questions about the business and its products or services
What Does A Telephone Answering Service Do?
Businesses partner with telephone answering services when they’re feeling overwhelmed, and unable to service all of their callers on their own. By outsourcing to a call answering service, your business will say goodbye to missed calls and lost opportunities, and hello to increased customer satisfaction and revenue. If that sounds good to you, read on to discover what a telephone answering service does, and the ways that your business can benefit from partnering with one.
How can a call answering service benefit your business?
Outsourcing to a telephone answering service allows businesses to better serve their customers without having to hire additional in-house staff. When business owners begin working with a leading answering service, they will immediately notice that fewer calls are going unanswered, and that they have more time on their hands to focus on the tasks that will help them grow their business. Calls will be transferred in a more efficient manner, and there will likely be fewer missed appointments as a result of better communication. Long term, these business owners often see an increase in customer satisfaction, which can be measured in several ways:
- More positive online reviews
- More repeat business from existing customers
- More customer referrals
- More revenue overall
The bottom line is that providing better customer service is imperative for growing your business. When customers, prospects, patients, and vendors call you, they have something that they’re looking to resolve immediately. Sending them to a voicemail could cause them to give up on your business forever and call your competitors instead.
What else can a telephone answering service help with?
If your phone is ringing faster than you can answer it, it might be time to consider outsourcing to a telephone answering service. In addition to helping with the tasks listed above, an answering service can also provide value in the following ways:
- By providing coverage outside of standard office hours, with night, weekend, and holiday options available.
- Managing and streamlining your appointment booking in real-time with appointment scheduling
- Helping your business better serve Spanish-speaking callers with bilingual virtual receptionists
- Following up phone conversations with automatically generated emails
- Serving customers via text message, if that is their preferred communication method
- Providing disaster coverage to ensure that your business can continue to communicate with customers in the event of a hurricane, blizzard, earthquake, or other catastrophes
- By being a more cost-efficient option than hiring an in-house employee. When you outsource, you don’t have to pay to recruit, hire, and train the right person, and then pay for their salary, benefits, and equipment.
