If you think that a business answering service is impersonal and not right for your company, think again. Studies show that customer take extremely well to business answering services and don’t find them impersonal at all. Not only that, but you’ll also see some major cost-saving benefits from hiring a professional answering service for your company.
There’s No Cost of Training New Employees
Training a new receptionist can be time consuming, costly, and you actually might see a decrease in your profits during the training period. SmallBizTrends shows that training a new employee can set a small business back anywhere between $1200 and $1800. With a business answering service, you won’t experience any downtime related to training and there are no training costs involved.
The professionals working at these answering services have already been thoroughly trained in answering calls, top-notch customer service, and managing schedules and appointments. You might have to do a short training session about your company policies and business practices, but you won’t actually have to perform this training session yourself.
It Cuts Back on Customer Service Costs
With an answering service in place, you don’t have to invest as much into your customer service department. The answering service call representatives will handle all matters relating to customer service, so you technically don’t even need to have an onsite customer service team. They’ll do everything from booking appointments to answering questions to handling urgent customer service matters.
There’s More Profits from Not Missing Out on Customers
With an onsite receptionist, chances are your phones are answered from the hours of 9am to 5pm, or 8pm to 5pm depending on your company’s hours of operation. That means that the phones aren’t being answered for the majority of the 24-hour day, which means your missing out on customers that call outside of business hours.
With a professional business answering service, the phones will be answered 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, 365 days per year. The phones won’t ever need to be redirected to voicemail, which means more sales (and profits) for you. The fact that you won’t miss a single phone call doesn’t just increase your customer conversion rate, but also improves customer retention.
You’ll Pull Ahead of the Competition
If your competitors have yet to invest in an answering service themselves, you’ll be able to pull ahead and outperform them in the customer service department. But you won’t just outperform in customer support, since an answering service can do more than just that. Answering services can also help with tasks like order processing and lead generation.
You Won’t Have to Pay for Benefits, Overtime, or Holiday Pay
When you invest in an answering service, you pay a flat rate – either monthly or yearly – and that rate is all you need to pay. The employees that work for the service will receive their benefits from their direct employer, which is not technically you. That means you won’t have to pay for healthcare benefits or overtime. You also never have to worry about your receptionist going on vacation, since there is a team (rather than one individual) dedicated to manning your phones no matter what.
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