Today, most business owners have probably heard of a telephone answering service.
However, there can still be misconceptions over what a telephone answering service actually does.
Lots of people think an answering service simply takes a name, number and message so you can get back to the caller when you’re ready.
While it is true that some call answering companies only offer this basic message taking service, there are lots of companies out there that offer so much more.
That’s why today we’re looking at 6 surprising ways you can use a call answering service.
1. Order taking
If you’re running a shop or an eCommerce business, it’s vital that you’re ready to sell to customers when the time is right for them.
If they phone up ready to buy and you’re unavailable, they’ll just go to one of your competitors instead.
When you use a call answering service as your order taking line this never happens.
There is always someone waiting at the other end of the phone to take orders 24 hours a day, and you won’t have to risk losing business.
2. Diary management
When you’re running a business things can get on top of you. It’s hard enough to get to all your meetings, let alone answer all your calls and manage your diary.
With a diary management service, it takes some of the stress out of the process.
Simply ask a call answering service to manage your calls and book appointments directly into your diary, and you can focus on getting to the meetings and looking after the customers.
It’s an easy way to take the bureaucracy out of the process and give yourself some time back.
3. Engineer Call-out
If you’re running a business like an IT firm or a Facilities Management company, it’s likely you’ll have a service level agreement with your clients.
When you try and manage this in-house, it can quickly get expensive.
With an engineer call-out service, you know your phone lines are covered 24/7 and you can reduce overheads.
The call answering services handles the who process from answering the call to triaging the problem and finally dialling out to an engineer.
You only pay for the time spent managing the calls, and you know the calls will always be answered whenever they come in.
It’s the easy way to manage engineer call-out.
4. Information Lines
Information lines can be a costly expense for businesses – however they are a necessity.
However clearly you signpost people to the right information on your website, there are some people who would simply prefer to phone a company up and talk to a real person when it comes to finding out information.
A call answering service makes this process easy.
The answering service will come up with a thorough script that covers all the questions they’re likely to be asked, and your callers can get the information they need 24/7.
5. Ecommerce Management
When you run an eCommerce site you might not have the infrastructure needed to deal with customer service enquiries. For example, if it’s a one man operation you might spend most of the day dealing with the packing and dispatching process.
A call answering service can be the perfect companion to an eCommerce site acting as a dedicated customer service team while you focus on the logistics side of the business.
6. 24/7 Cover
Finally, one of the biggest benefits of telephone answering is having your phonelines covered 24/7.
As we’ve already discussed in some of the other points, we live in a 24 hour culture and your customers want to talk to you at a time convenient to them.
A call answering service means they can always talk to a real person whenever they call in.
If you want to know more about telephone answering, you can visit our telephone answering service page.
