An answering service can benefit any organization who wants better customer service, more efficient operations, or a more consistent workflow as a whole. Most know that answering services work with inbound calls, but they can do much more than that. The best answering services also perform many key functions for a quality customer experience, from live troubleshooting to customer feedback collection. A select few answering services even specialize in specific industries, meaning that whether you work in law, medicine, finance, or any industry that requires a knowledge base, operators can work competently in your field.
If you’re a business owner that’s wondering “why hire an answering service?” This article will give you some reasons it’s most likely a good move for your business. Keep reading to learn more about what role an answering service could play in your organization and the benefits of an answering service.
What Is the Role of an Answering Service?
Answering services are third-party providers that handle customer-facing roles as well as internal roles. While they are commonly mistaken for call centers, answering services also perform other functions like:
- Live troubleshooting with customers
- Prioritizing and organizing inbound requests
- Relaying information to appropriate contacts
- Collecting feedback and data from customers
- Outbound marketing campaigns
- 24/7 monitoring to ensure everything is answered promptly
- Filtering out spam or unsolicited contacts
Answering services offload these essential roles to a provider that specializes in customer service. While all of the above tasks are helpful—sometimes even vital—to an organization, they often fall to the wayside in lieu of other business functions. This is particularly true for demanding industries such as healthcare, law, finance, or any small business. Of course, none of the businesses in these fields wants this to happen, but balancing customer needs with company development is a difficult undertaking.
For example, attorneys for a law practice have to balance billable tasks with customer service. Even if they have an in-house receptionist role, that position is likely to see high turnover; on top of that, a law receptionist is hard to replace, as they need to know the ins and outs of how to handle client calls, such as confidentiality precautions.
Working with an answering service ensures that a company can both grow the business and maintain the business it already has. And since it acts as an extension of the business, there is no disconnect between the answering service and the organization. If a medical office hires a healthcare answering service, for example, the operators will answer as if they’re in the medical office—no matter where they’re located. The patient gets a more consistent experience, and the practitioners can spend more time doing what only they can do: providing care for their patients.
What Are the Benefits of Answering Services?
Answering services provide many benefits to an organization, such as:
- A higher-quality, more consistent customer experience
- Increased operational efficiency, communication, and organization
- Greater capacity for outbound marketing and high-touch customer service
- 24/7 attendance to inbound messaging and calls
- Less money and resources spent on customer-facing roles
- And more time to focus on key business functions!
Businesses who must field a high volume of inbound and outbound calls, such as law practices or medical offices, benefit the most from an answering service. But any business that requires a high attention to detail or a high level of customer service, such as funeral homes or accounting firms, would most likely benefit from an answering service as well.
Answering Service Care: Time to Ditch the Answering Machine!
How important is answering a call to your business? If your answer is “very,” then you should consider an answering service. And if you want the best that answering services have to offer, then you should consider Answering Service Care. We have decades of experience helping businesses operate at their best through quality service and expert operators. Our services maintain a thoughtful balance of modern features and human helpfulness, which ensures your customers get what they need, when they need it, in the most convenient ways possible.
Some of the services we provide include (but are not limited to):
- After hours answering services for medical offices
- Legal intake services for various types of law practices
- Small business support through administrative services
- Outbound marketing and customer data collection
- Helping funeral homes provide compassionate care to families
At Answering Service Care, we understand the importance of a quality customer experience. And if your organization needs help making that a reality, we can provide it at a mere fraction of the cost for a full-time receptionist. In fact, our most basic plan starts at just $25/month (at the time of this article’s publication).
To learn more about how we can work for your business, get started with us or browse our monthly plans today.
