subject: What Should Your Answering Service Offer? [print this page] What Should Your Answering Service Offer?
If you find that your business is starting to receive more phone calls that you and your employees are able to handle, you might want to consider hiring an answering service. This is a far more cost effective option than hiring several more employees just to answer the phones, and it is better than having your current employees spend all of their time on the phone. If you do not find a solution, your customers will become frustrated that they are always waiting on hold for someone to pick up the line. When those customers are angry, they might just find another company with which to do business.
Rather than let things get out of hand, simply hiring an answering service can take care of many of your phone related problems. However, you want to make sure that you find the best company to hire. What are some of the things that you should look for in one of these companies?
The first thing that you should determine is your budget. Find out how much your company has to spend on a service such as this. Fortunately, you will be able to find great services that are very cost effective. Of course, the total cost depends on the level of service you need and how much time they will spend answering phone for you. You will also want to know what the company offers for their answering service. Are they going to be available on weekends and overnight? What about holidays? Even though you might not be working on the weekend, your customers might still need to get into contact with you and leave a message. Make sure that the company you choose will be there.
Another thing that you will want to check are the hold times. This is the amount of time that the average customer will have to spend on hold before someone picks up the phone. It is important that you find an answering service that has a low hold time. After all, you do not want your customers to hang up the phone in frustration.
Also, make sure that the company has employees who speak and understand English clearly. If most of your customers are English speaking, it will make it much easier to communicate with them. Rather than outsourcing outside the country, you can find companies in the U.S. that can handle your needs and that are still very affordable.
