subject: Find Out Ways A Business Telephone Answering Service Could Contribute To Your Bottom Line [print this page] No matter how big your business is, if you have customers, you have phone calls to answer. How those calls are handled can represent your company to the caller and leave a lasting impression, whether positive or negative. As you decide how you want your calls handled, you also need to think about when you want them answered. This could mean only during business hours, or on the other hand, twenty-four hours seven days a week. When evaluating your options, make sure to consider a business answering service.
While you might not give much attention to the process of handling your phone calls, it can be a very important part of your business. As such, you should give it as much thought and evaluation as any other aspect of your company. Believe it or not, how you handle phone calls from your clients or customers can make a difference in the success of your company.
The most traditional option is to have a staff that answers all calls. Depending on how many hours per day you want the phones to be answered, this could involve multiple people. If you decide on normal operating hours only, you may be looking at only one person, potentially with a backup in case of illness, absence, or vacation of the regular operator.
The benefits of having a live person answer the calls is that they can interact with your clients, accept and deliver information, provide service, and leave an image of your company with the caller. If the person is properly trained, the image they leave should be a positive one. The cost of handling calls this way includes the salary and benefits of your operator and some level of overhead to provide them with a place to work to take the calls.
If having multiple people available to answer calls around the clock does not make sense for you, you could use a live person during operating hours and then choose to use a message machine or voicemail system for the remaining hours. If the nature of your company and customer base is such that using one of these methods will not be a negative experience, then you could also consider doing this as your only option, and using it 24-hours per day.
The benefits of such a solution are that it is relatively inexpensive, requires no office space, and does not call in sick. The downside is that you have no interaction with the caller, leaving you unable to provide them service in one phone call. In addition, there are some prospective customers who will hang up when met with something other than a live person, and could move on to your competitor, costing you a potential client or sale.
Another solution to consider is hiring a service company to answer your phone for you. This could be your total solution, or you could consider it for the hours when your office is closed. With such a solution you will always have a person answering your calls, which many consider to be the best option for providing quality customer service.
The cost of one of these business answering service companies can be less than what you would pay to have your own employee answer your phones and could involve coverage twenty-four hours a day. These companies can tailor their services to your needs, whether that means just answering calls and taking messages that are routed to you, taking customer orders over the phone, or anything in between. The company will train the staff that will service your company to act as if they were actually your employees. With this solution you can get the benefits of having your own employees without all of the costs, and every dollar saved in personnel costs can make a difference in your company's bottom line.
by: Douglas Williams.
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