Answering Services

More information on Answering Services

Written by Steven Bryan

As a business owner, you always should be prepared to deliver top-notch customer service, and that means keeping the lines of communication open between your employees and your clients. One good way to do this is by using an answering service, a customer service tool that quickly can become an invaluable business asset.

Adding the human touch

For some industries, an automated answering system that routes calls and stores voice mail after hours is a practical solution. However, many customers still want to reach a human being, even at the times when no one is on duty at your office. Call center answering services can fulfill this need, especially in the middle of a busy workday when the phone lines are jammed. This "call overflow" can be routed to an outside answering service, which will listen to customer concerns and relay messages.

Financial benefits of an answering service

Staffing a call center in-house means putting more employees on the payroll, which increases your human resources costs. Contracting with an outside company reduces this business expense while allowing you to give customers the same level of service as a much larger company. Clients who receive prompt attention also are more likely to bring you repeat business.

Selecting the services to meet your needs

An answering service can do a lot more than just field questions and log messages after normal business hours. Some of the additional services they can perform include:

• Bilingual operators. It's important to know all the languages that your customers speak and contract with an answering service that can handle them. When incoming calls are routed to an off-site call center, a client should be offered a menu of language choices including English and Spanish.
• Reminder calls. Outside answering services also can make outbound calls to clients, reminding them if payments are late or a product they ordered has been shipped. The call center operators can even make follow-up calls, checking with clients to see if they were happy with your product or service.
• Technical support. Answering services can perform some basic technical support for you, too. With a little training provided by you or a staff member, the call center employees can talk a customer through some basic technical issues after normal working hours. If the problem is too complex to handle over the phone, the customer's name, phone number and technical issue can be logged and prioritized for your technical staff.

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