Your customers count on you all day long, but what happens if they call after hours?
Will someone be there to send a truck to their location when the sewer backs up, the car breaks down on the side of the road or the furnace stops blowing? You may not have the in-house staff for 24/7 telephone help, but an answering service with after-hours dispatching can help fill the bill.
The Benefits of After-Hours Dispatching
Even if you can’t be there for your customers all day and all night (and who can?), you can have your after hours answering service manning the phones just in case you’re needed.
Emergencies don’t happen every night, but when they do, your callers have turned to you for a reason. They trust you, and only you, to help them solve a problem they find insurmountable. Don’t let them down with a voicemail system that won’t be checked until the morning.
The benefits of an after-hours dispatch answering service are many, these are just the beginning:
- Increased trust in your brand. When a customer calls after hours because they’re in distress and they get a voicemail system, more often than not they’ll hang up and call someone else.Since they have no way to know when or if you’ll check that voicemail, it can be a better bet to try to find a real, live person. But your after-hours dispatchers will save those callers from straying. When they call you and get a professional phone operator and the help they need, they’ll know there’s no reason to call anyone else.
- Ensuring all-hours coverage. You have to rest some time, even though it seems like your business can be non-stop. With a dispatch team, you can make an on-call list and trade evenings out with other members of your team so that you have a chance to rest and recharge.Burnout is a real problem for small business owners like you, bringing in outside dispatchers and others who will enforce on-call rotations can help make sure you take much needed time off, while still ensuring all-hours coverage.
- A competitive edge. Professional dispatchers mean that your team will get to the bottom of the problem faster and have a team member on site quickly.When callers are utterly amazed at how quickly your team can move on after hours emergencies, they’re often motivated to tell their friends and to become lifelong customers themselves. Your competitive edge becomes even more apparent if you’re the only business in your market that’s offering after-hours dispatching—it never hurts to be the only game in town.
After-hours dispatching is just one of many services an answering service company can offer your business. Other options, like appointment scheduling for regular service or sales during business hours or standard call handling can help supplement your hard-working daytime staff.
Since you only pay for the calls that your service actually takes, it can be an affordable way to increase your customer service power without committing to training new staff members. After-hours dispatching is only the beginning of what you can do with an answering service!
