Most of the companies and organizations frequently miss a numberof important calls that are made for enquiring about their goods and services they provide and this in turn affects their business to a great amount. The concerned staff may not be able to respond the essentials calls due to many reasons, like they may be busy in some meetings or may be attending some other important call or might not be available at that time of need, etc...And likewise if you own a service company where you require to satisfy majority of your clients by just attending their calls and helping them accordingly, you might face a major failure by not being able to responding their calls. Well, whatever may be the cause, you have an exceptional choice by which you can never fritter a single call and get a excellent business. The most excellent way by which all your calls will be answered is by choosing the right answering service.
To select a right type of answering service for your organization is a tough job presently and due to the increasing rivalry you may be puzzled as to which one servesthe best. Most of the company owners contract out their important tasks to specialized companies to }reduce|lessen} their costs. And this is the most excellent choice to hire a certified answering service, but then you should have a proper knowledge if you want to lease an answering service for your business so that you get the best out of the deal. Well you require to consider certain features before you select any answering service for your business. For this you need to ask a few queries that will truly assist you to select the right answering service for your company.
- When do you want your answering service to respond to your call? This will help you to choose whether you require the answering service to answer your call when you or your staff is not available or all the time or by chance while you are forwarding your calls to the answering service. So accordingly you can select the answering service for your business.
- The next thing to consider while selecting the answering service is whether you require this service to just receive messages of your clients or take orders too, along with answering the message to all your clients.
- Then next important point of consideration is about the billing process. Most of the Answering services use "round up" method of billing. They round up for the entire one minute even though you might have conversed for a few seconds of that previous minute. Suppose your answering service receives your call for 2 minutes and one second, but they tab for entire three minutes, this process is called round up of bills. This type of answering services should not be selected for your company because by the end of one month the service will add up a good amount of round ups thus raising your bills by huge sums.
- The next important thing is to know how long have they been offering this service, how well is their relation with their clients and for how long have they been in a healthy liaison. You should also check the time period their CSR's (customer service representatives) have been with them.
- You should also verify if your answering service has a sponsorship help in case of power failure. This may sound quite insignificant but then suppose you have launched an advertising campaign for which you might anticipate a large number of calls in response of the ad. If at that time you don't have power supply for long hours, just imagine the waste of calls and your business.
So, the next time when you think of hiring an answering service for your organization, just think about these important tips that will really help you to select the right answering service for your organization.
After Hours Answering Service
Spending so much time speaking with business owners around Florida, I've come to understand just how often potential or current customer calls go unanswered. While these owners I speak to tell me that these callers are sent to a voice message box or instructed to call back during normal business hours, I know the truth is that those calls are missed opportunities. I know, because I was once in their shoes.
As a productivity consultant in the sunshine state, business owners will ask me the first thing they should be doing to get more out of their employees. My advice is always the same: Get in touch with a Florida answering service. There are many local operator answering service providers that can solve the problems of after-hours and weekend calls, as well as call overflow, when calls are placed on hold due to a high volume.
Before becoming a consultant, I ran two small companies and encountered the same problems. My employees who were not dedicated phone staffers spent so much time handling mundane phone interactions, due to overflow customer service calls or a sudden spike in phone sales. The increase in sales was great, but it made more work for my shipping and design people, who at the same time had to deal with the extra task of taking orders.
In addition, I knew the problems of unstaffed phones when my employees left for nights and weekends, but I rationalized that callers would leave a message that we would handle the next day or they would call back while we were there. I was not alone in that misconception. Plenty of other large and small businesses implemented the same practice and many still do. The thing that broke the camel's back for me was when I became so frustrated with productivity issues I instructed all of my non-phone employees to refrain from taking any customer service or order calls during periods of high call volume. It took about a week for me to understand that this impacted sales in a clearly negative way. Leaving callers on hold or sending them to voice mail unmistakably led to a low conversion rate for those callers. I could not afford to hire one or two more people to answer the phones, though, as spikes in call volume were difficult to predict, and margins were slim enough as they were.
My world changed when I signed on with a Florida answering service to handle call overflow and after-hours and weekend answering. Suddenly, the sales conversion rate was better than it had been before. The operator answering service employees have nothing to do but answer phones, so during those times when the phones were slammed with service calls or orders, a live voice picked up after a few rings, and no caller was ever put on hold. Even with my specialized employees picking up the slack for call overflow, callers were frequently put on hold for a minute or two. It was the way I had always dreamt of treating customers, but until that point I was unable to realize that ideal vision.
Even more impressive to me was the huge increase in after-hours and weekend messages we received. Messages increased by about 40 percent, meaning we previously had been losing hundreds of callers, likely to our competitors, because we sent potential customers or current customers with a service issue to a voice mail box when we were not in the office.
The Florida answering service I went with was a really affordable solution -- given the increase in business, higher percentage of customer satisfaction and improved productivity we experienced. There is no doubt that any small business which handles customer service calls or phone orders regularly can benefit from a professional answering service. Outsourcing off-hours calls and overflow makes more sense than hiring more dedicated phone personnel, and the call center assistance will keep specialized employees doing the job they are paid to do. It's all about productivity.
Both Jamie Hanson & Jaredkitchell are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
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