Small businesses looking for help managing phone calls and appointment scheduling may be considering using an answering service to handle those tasks for them.
Many business owners who have never used an answering service before have questions about the general uses of an answering service and want to learn about scenarios where an answering service would be needed.
That’s what we’ll share with you in this post: Several scenarios where a small business will need an answering service and what an answering service does.
When does a small business need an answering service?
As a 5-star reviewed answering service with a legion of satisfied clients, we wanted to share some information about the ways a small business can discover whether it might need an answering service like Conversational. First, we’ll talk about the basics of answering services and what they do.
What is an answering service?
An answering service refers to a third party who answers inbound calls on a company or individual’s behalf, takes messages, and delivers messages to the recipient. These are the basic offerings of an answering service, but some answering services provide additional features, like appointment scheduling and management, basic customer service, and custom greetings and promotion advertisement.
Conversational has all these features and more - including a 30 day free trial! Click here to get started.
Why would a company need an answering service?
A business might need an answering service for a variety of reasons, but some reasons we’ve heard from clients are:
- Unpredictable, low, or high call volume
- Lack of business landline
- Unreliable cell reception (if using cell for business calls)
- Vacation time
- Holidays
- Sick days
- Employee time off
- Cost of in-house receptionist too high
- Having someone else answer your phone appears more professional
- Hate talking on the phone
- Want to screen a number of calls
- Work from home and no office space to hire receptionist
- Not enough office space to hire receptionist
As you can see, there are a number of reasons that a company might need an answering service to handle their calls and messages for them. While there are lots of answering services out there that market to small businesses and startups, there’s an important feature many of them are lacking: Customization to business’ needs.
Consistent, branded customer phone interactions
One of the main reasons a small business can benefit from the right answering service is that a good answering service will act and appear as another arm or continuation of your business. With an answering service that allows you to make personalizations to your service, you can ensure your company has consistent, branded customer phone interactions.
Being able to instruct an answering service to use a certain greeting, talk about a current promotion or deal, play specific on-hold music or messages, etc. is so valuable to a small business. It makes an answering service seem more like an in-house receptionist than a company in a remote office.
Always available when you need them
When you select your answering service, you can ensure that they’re always available when you need them. Some answering services let you set your own hours that you’ll need your answering service operating, and some offer pre-designed packages that set regular phone hours for you. Make sure you’re covered when you need it, whether it’s full-time during the day, overnight, just during the holidays or your vacation, etc.
Some answering services are available 24/7, but unless your office needs this type of coverage (say, for urgent calls at a vet’s office), you’ll be paying a high premium for the 24/7 availability and chances are, you’ll never receive a call that far outside of regular business hours, anyway.
Want to try a BBB accredited, 5-star reviewed answering service absolutely free for 30 days?
Click here to find details on our monthly answering service and 30 day free trial!
Source: https://www.conversational.com/when-does-a-small-business-need-an-answering-service/
Publish Date: March 20, 2017 5:00 AM |
2021 Buyers Guide Inbound Call Handling Services
| 1.) | 3Fiftynine
Branches
Calls are received by the right person or department. The right corresponding information is shown to the agent which makes that appointments are handled quicker and more secure. |
| 2.) | Agara
Agara is an autonomous virtual voice agent powered by Real-time Voice AI. It is designed to have intelligent conversations with your customers, vendors, and partners without any assistance from human agents. It can handle a wide variety of calls including inbound customer care calls, outbound lead generation calls, appointment scheduling calls, and overdue payment recovery calls.
Agara is available for several industries including banking, insurance, retail, e-commerce, airlines, and telecom. Powered by advanced Real-time Voice AI that understands speech in real-time, automatically determines the right process to follow and guides the caller along in the process with natural conversation.PH: +1 (512) 333 4634 |
| 3.) | Call Center Studio
Call Center Studio
Call Center Studio is the world’s first call center built on Google and is one of the most secure and stable systems with some of the industry’s best reporting. It is one of the most full-featured enterprise grade systems (with the most calling features, one of the best call distribution, outbound dialing features and integrations—including IVR, AI Speech Recognition, blended inbound/outbound calling and includes Google’s new Dialogflow and Speech API. Call Center Studio is the absolute easiest to use (with a 10 minute setup), and is the price performance leader with lower equipment cost and less setup time.PH: +1 512-872-7565 |
| 4.) | Connect Assist
Contact Centre Services
We’re a specialist Contact Centre business and market leaders helping socially focused organisations deliver quality support to their clients and service users. We do this by providing 24/7 helplines, software solutions and consultancy services.
Since launching in 2006, we’ve operated at the sharp end of customer service, supporting some of society’s most vulnerable people. We’ve pioneered in our space to become a specialist in helplines, whilst using the most advanced communication and database technologies available.
Our social mission has remained a constant throughout, providing many meaningful career prospects and growth opportunities to people within our local communities and fur...
(read more)We’re a specialist Contact Centre business and market leaders helping socially focused organisations deliver quality support to their clients and service users. We do this by providing 24/7 helplines, software solutions and consultancy services.
Since launching in 2006, we’ve operated at the sharp end of customer service, supporting some of society’s most vulnerable people. We’ve pioneered in our space to become a specialist in helplines, whilst using the most advanced communication and database technologies available.
Our social mission has remained a constant throughout, providing many meaningful career prospects and growth opportunities to people within our local communities and further afield. We work nationally, but with the care and commitment of a local company. In our opinion, that’s what sets us apart.
Our mission is simple: to create positive human outcomes. Here’s what we do:
• We’re transformational, both in our ability to affect positive change in people’s lives and in viewing change as a way to adapt and improve.
• We’re architects of communication, mixing heart with experience, process with insights, and human with technological.
• We keep things simple, pooling together knowledge and experience to create easy yet fulfilling customer experiences.
• We embrace technology, which enables our clients to thrive and provides us with insights to inspire positive change.
Our values underpin everything we do. We strive to be:
• Human. We’re rich in technological resources, but ultimately people are at the very core of our business.
• Emotionally intelligent. Our experience and insight allows us to adapt to different landscapes, situations and challenges.
• Driven. We’re motivated to consistently improve and innovate, exceed expectations and achieve the best personal outcomes for customers. We’re compelled by seeing the impact we can and do have.
• Methodical. We guide each of our clients through a tailored and methodical pathway, offering effective solutions to deliver their vision.PH: 07973640527 |
| 5.) | Jointly International Inc.
Front Office Solutions
Front office is your Company’s first line of customer interaction and serves as the mirror of your business. Focus on your core business and let our competent staff handle your various front office needs such as:
* Customer Service via chat, email or phone
* Technical Support via chat, email or phone
* Helpdesk
* Virtual Assistant/Receptionist
* Answering Service
* Lead Generation
* Appointment Setting
* Verification
* Surveys
* Debt Recover, Collections
PH: +61 7 5660 6284 |
| 6.) | MattsenKumar LLC
Contact Center Outsourcing
By catering valuable, usable and enjoyable customer service, businesses can increase their CSAT Score and Customer Retention Rate. We help organizations to provide quality customer service through varied channels like email, phone and live chat. Ensuring quality after-sales support is our USP and we rely on proven approaches to ensure quality customer service. |
| 7.) | OpsTel Services
SPEED
The SPEED solution solves for service level issues while cost optimizing the environment with automation.
Provides an enhanced way to speed up & optimize invoking temporary agent skills configuration changes into the contact center environment.
Speed allows you to schedule both future changes & temporary changes that auto-revert back to the original state when scheduled time expires.
Speed features:
*Automated / Scheduled Temporary Agent Skills Configuration Management
*Immediate Temporary or Reoccurring Schedule Skills Configuration Changes
*Easy to Use/Operations Administration Focused
*Descriptive Monitoring Activity Dashboard
*Detailed “End to End’ Audit Trail and Performance MonitoringPH: 1+480-435-9390 |
| 8.) | Vads
VADS Inbound Contact Center
VADS Inbound Contact Center Services provide live operators who answer incoming calls as you would yourself. A team of professional script writers is available to help you script a greeting and experience programmers will set up a time and money saving program. Our unique approach to call center services is client-focused, and takes each project’s unique needs into account to our client’s satisfaction. We offer solution as part of our service to keep you in touch with your client and drive sales.
- Customer Service
- Walk In Center
- Service DeskPH: 0217991445 |
| 9.) | Tru29 Outsource Solutions Inc.
Front Office Solutions
Any part of your business operations that requires constant end-customer facing task is an essential part of your business.
This task requires a good customer experience results for every customer interaction. Our extensive experience in handling Front Office related tasks can help you focus on your core business while being cost-efficient at the same time. |
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