Answering Service & More

Considering hiring a phone answering service or contact center to handle your business communications?

Here are some great reasons to utilize a professional contact center for handling your business communication needs:

Reduce Costs

Are you trying to run a call center in-house or attempting to handle all of your inbound business communications (emails, phone calls, web chats, etc.) by having your staff provide responses?

Outsourcing your business communications to an answering service offers you an incredible opportunity to save costs associated with the staffing, facilities and infrastructure including software, servers, and telephony that are required to run a fully-redundant 24/7 call center.  Even if you’re not trying to run an in-house call center, a true 24/7 answering service makes your business available to your clients around the clock at a fraction of the cost of having your staff handle inbound communications at all hours.

Decrease Call Abandonment & Increase Customer Satisfaction

Chances are that your employees have limited availability and might even lack true customer service training.

• How do you plan to handle unexpected increases in calls especially during odd hours?
• If your staff is unable to handle the call volume then what experience are you providing for your callers?
• What happens when an employee who isn’t properly trained to handle high stress situations doesn’t act professionally towards an upset customer?
• Will your clients be happy with your business?

A professional answering service is capable of handling unexpected increases in call volumes. Therefore, even if your business experiences a spike in inbound calls, customer satisfaction isn’t negatively affected, long wait times are avoided and call abandonment is kept to a minimum.  Additionally, answering service operators are trained to handle uncomfortable calls and confrontations in a manner that deescalates upset callers and leaves the callers feeling satisfied with the service they’ve received.

24/7/365 Support

Unlike your office, answering services are available 24/7/365 to answer calls and provide your customers with support. Answering services offer your business the opportunity to provide round the clock service, with no need to employ a 24/7 workforce of in-house call center agents. The fact that you are able to answer calls even after business hours, during holidays, and on weekends not only provides your clients with superior customer service experiences, but also can keep customers from reaching out to your competition.  If a potential or existing customer cannot reach your business then he or she is more likely to call a competitor to attain the service or product they need.

There are many other benefits to hiring an answering service, but we’ve listed the main points above.  Making use of answering service is a very effective tactic to increase efficiency, improve customer service, and reduce risk.

What makes a superior answering service?

• Pay as you go billing with an affordable base rate.
• Pay only for what you use, as you use it.
• A secure online portal for account management.
• Access to call recordings and reports in real time.
• Message archives.
• Inbound email processing.
• HIPAA & PCI Compliant

Are you searching for a telephone answering service near you?

As you probably know, an excellent answering service can be located anywhere in the world and still provide top quality service to its clients 24 hours a day, every day of the week.

Our headquarters is located in Tampa, FL and all of our operators are in the United States. However, we successfully service thousands of clients around the globe. Some of our bigger clients have included: PBS, NPR, Coldwell Banker, Heinz, Keller Williams, Berkshire Hathaway and so many more. Click here to read why our clients have chosen to work with us.

Answering service vs. call center?

The term ‘answering service’ has historically referred to a company that answers the phone for other businesses. Typically, these services are trained in message taking, customer service and various levels of custom support, such as tech support or billing support.

Also, an answering service might be synonymous with the term ‘inbound call center’ or a ‘virtual receptionist’.  However, never mistake an answering service with an ‘outbound call center’ which usually offers cold calling as a service. When comparing the two terms or services, it’s important to decipher between inbound or outbound call centers.