What an Answering Service Can Do For My Business
As your business grows, however, it’s not possible to be on call 24/7; it’s not really possible even if you’re a single-member business. If you and your key employees spend all your time fielding customer calls, you won’t be able to actually do the work or run the business.
Too many business owners know the feeling that can come with being strapped to your phone in case an important client or vendor or even an employee calls. You worry that missing a customer call could mean missing their business, and you know the importance of handling everything quickly as soon as it pops up.
That’s where answering services come in. High quality, US-based answering services can help your business in a number of ways, giving you a little more breathing room while offering multiple distinct benefits. In this post, we’ll go over the most advantageous benefits that services like ours offer and how they can impact your business.
Guaranteed Great First Impressions
Answering services like PATLive use experienced agents who will greet customers exactly how your business prefers, guaranteeing a fantastic first, second, or third impression.
Having a warm, knowledgeable agent fielding your calls will show that your business is established enough and committed enough to your customers to have help on hand to take great care of them. This can give a big boost in credibility and trustability, and it will make you look professional.
Consistent Message-Taking
If the answering service can’t resolve customer questions or complaints for any reason, or if they just have to pass along information to you, they offer diligent message-taking services. Here at PATLive, this is something that our clients appreciate, as we’ll immediately pass along any urgent messages to the people who need to see them.
Fast Appointment Scheduling
Hiring a full-time receptionist can be expensive and may be out of budget for a large number of businesses; an answering service is the best and only stand-in for an in-person receptionist that you need.
PATLive agents can actually handle appointment scheduling for you, as long as they have access to your schedule and your preferences. They can take in customer calls at 2AM, get them on the books for a Thursday meeting with you, but still ensure that your afternoon is blocked off from calls so you can enjoy the company party that evening.
Reliable Lead Collection
You work hard to generate leads, and may even have multiple sales funnels set up online and in person to get people reaching out to express interest in doing business with you. The last thing you want is for those efforts to be squandered because you aren’t available to answer the phone when those leads come knocking.
Answering services like PATLive are available 24/7, 365 days a year so you never have to worry about missing a call from a lead. Our agents are also well-trained to take lead information and answer their initial questions or concerns before passing them along to you.
Streamlined Event Registration
When you’re hosting an event, everything can get real crazy real fast. Trying to field the increase in questions, the event registrations, and your typical workload could send things spinning out of control without the right systems in place.
High-tier answering services will have you covered here, handling all event registration tasks at hand. We can accept entire event registrations or applications over the phone, even processing payments so that you don’t have to. If you’ve ever had to ask customers for a credit card and listen to them rummage through their home to find it for five minutes, you’ll understand what an incredible time saver this will be. Let us take this off your hands while you focus on preparing and hosting the event.
Call Overflow & Transfer Abilities
Are all your in-office lines tied up even when you’re actually in office and taking calls? The thought of losing a potential sale by missing a call when you’re actively answering that phone at rapid-fire paces can be almost unbearable, so you need to consider call overflow options.
Sure, the customer could leave a voicemail, but the last thing you need is to get behind on client calls and voicemails, which can sometimes start piling in faster than you can catch up, sending you on an unpleasant spiral that’s hard to come out from.
If you’re tied up, answering services offer call overflow, ensuring that every call is answered in a prompt manner. Those 24/7 hours really come into play here and ensure that you never walk into the office with fifty voicemails to start your day off in a chaotic way.
If the call must be directed to you, the answering service agent can either take a message and bring it to your attention immediately or transfer the call directly to you. This tells the customer that they are a priority and that while you’re tied up now, you’ll be with them soon.
As your business grows, it’s impossible to do everything yourself, and if you try, you won’t be able to do anything well because your attention will be too divided.
Answering services will take an enormous burden off your shoulders, allowing you to focus on running the business you love while expert, enthusiastic agents handle some of the incoming calls that could disrupt your day otherwise. With so many distinct advantages available with the right service, there’s no reason not to invest.
Interested in learning more about how PATLive can help you advance your business and improve customer relationships? Try it free for 14 days.
