What Exactly is a Telephone Answering Service

Are you considering using a phone answering service within your business model? It’s important to understand what this approach is, what advantages call answering services can bring and the type of businesses it will benefit. Below you’ll find all the information you need.

Are Calls Still Important?

Research suggests that phone calls are more important than ever. One report suggested that only 24% of customers are satisfied with a web form when contacting a company and many demand a human interaction that goes beyond the typical email response. There are numerous reasons why your customer prefers live telephone answering and talking to a real person, including the desire for a rapid solution without the need to leave a message in the restricted timeframe of a voicemail.

This could be why 65% of customers are found to prefer contacting a business directly with telephone calls.

It’s not just consumers that are contacting your company by phone either. You may also receive queries from other organisations keen to offer vital services that you could need. If they can’t get through, it could impact your company.

However, while telephone calls are a vital element of your business, you don’t want them to take up the time of your team.

What is a virtual receptionist? Research suggests that 25% of a CEO’s time can be spent answering phone calls. This means that a lot of their focus is taken away from management tasks and directing the implementation of business strategy. Of course, the typical CEO won’t be answering the telephone calls of a customer, but other team members certainly could be performing like telephone answering services and that can be a massive distraction.

Allowing key staff to simply take incoming calls can draw their attention away from the business tasks that they should be focusing on and impair your business as a result. The wrong phone answering dynamics can have particularly worrying results, especially in terms of productivity, staff development and achieving business initiatives.

So, while answering your calls are critical, you don’t want to waste time and money assigning the wrong resources to the responsibility. That is when professional phone answering services is a smart decision – a dedicated professional Virtual Reception to answer your calls, at a fraction of the cost of payroll staff.

Everything You Need To Know About A Telephone Answering Service

Essentially, a phone answering service is an outsource solution. Rather than answering your calls yourself or relying on in-house members of your team, calls are answered by a professional phone answering service. A team of highly trained and experienced professional receptionists will provide live answering services for your business.

At the same time, they will ensure that your brand ethos and concepts remain paramount when engaging with a new or existing customer. The objective is to ensure that your firm will never miss a call and clients will receive the level of human interaction that they want without placing time and cost pressures on business operations. It’s a fantastic cost-cutting opportunity too because a Virtual Receptionist service is far cheaper than hiring a full-time team member of staff. With these professional receptionist services you will be provided with a new business phone number or if you prefer – simply keep your existing number. Call transfer will seamlessly link to the Australian-based phone answering service and our receptionist services will guarantee that every call is promptly and efficiently answered in your business name.

Complete Control

One of the reasons that businesses avoid outsourcing services like phone answering is that they don’t want to risk losing control over their brand image. However, with the Virtual Headquarters answering service with their industry experience of 10 years+, your company remains in complete control of all facets of the live answering services. You decide the greetings and key messages to callers. You determine what types of calls should be forwarded and prioritised to your executives. You choose the time-frame you want your Australian-based Virtual Receptionists to take lived calls. We have all the expertise to implement a professional and seamless communication experience.

Some firms will use live answering services just to handle overflow or on holidays and weekends. Others will want a phone answering solution to take care of all their calls. Some clients request the Virtual Receptionist service only during work hours, others for only after hours or during weekends and holidays There are a myriad of options to suit the needs of every business, large or small. But most importantly, your Virtual Receptionist service will never miss a call and every incoming phone call will be competently answered in your company’s name. The purpose is to ensure that your phone answering service feels like a connected piece of your business model. Customers will have no awareness that they are engaging with an outsourced solution, and our professionalism ensures it will never be a matter of concern.

Tasks A Telephone Answering Service Can Be Used For

You have the complete power to determine the tasks that this service is used for and the parameters for call forwarding. Many enterprises are surprised by just how versatile a service like this can be. It may certainly go beyond the typical phone answering solution.

For instance, you can decide to use this service to specifically forward calls to multiple entities. This means that the answering service will determine which calls should be passed through to actual members of your staff. This might be the case when customers are ready to commit to a sale. You will want to ensure that they can speak directly to a sales representative.

Alternatively, you might want to use a live call answering service to simply take messages for your business. This can be useful if you are using the solution to answer mobile calls outside of regular business hours. A customer may want to leave a message but will often be frustrated to engage with an automated response system, but with live answering you eliminate that frustration and replace it with a friendly voice. Phone answering services will allow you to provide complete courtesy to all your callers because the Virtual Receptionists are only dedicated to one task. They will especially ensure that customers can leave a detailed message after hours that can allow your sales team to get back in touch when your office reopens. It’s so much better than voicemail. Ultimately, this will ensure that you aren’t going to lose any potential sales to your competition. You have shown your clientele that their business is important and you have ensured your company is available to meet their needs.

Or you may want to use a Virtual Reception answering service as part of a click to call campaign. A click to call campaign will allow your customers to call directly after clicking on a button displayed on your website. This is a lead generation tool and a phone answering service can be used to guide generated leads further down the marketing funnel. Potentially the aim here will be to ensure that they do reach the point where they are ready to make a purchase.

All of these options are possibilities when you use the right solution.

Ideal For Small And Medium-Sized Businesses

Small and medium-sized businesses can struggle to provide the phone answering solution that customers demand, particularly when compared with larger corporations. Larger businesses will often have entire teams of staff dedicated to answering calls. A small business can often think that matching the capabilities of larger competitors is outside of their budget range.

But this isn’t the case. With a Virtual Headquarters live phone answering service, the process can be scalable and affordable. We ensure that you are playing on a level field when competing against larger companies.

There is also a vast array of different businesses that could benefit from this call answering fix for specific purposes. Here are a few of the possibilities

Ecommerce Companies

Regardless of whether you are running a small or large ecommerce company, you are guaranteed to get a steady influx of calls. Many of these calls will be based around checking the status of an order or asking questions about products that you are selling. Some will be contacting your business to complain or attempt to get an issue resolved. It is absolutely vital that you provide a rapid response.

Remember, these customers are sourced from an online platform. They already expect a rapid service and will want this to continue when they call your business. With a live call answering service, you can guarantee that each customer receives professional service. They will feel valued and this is always going to lead to a more positive experience that can lead to revenue growth and repeat custom. Reliable call answering is a vital support for your brand - a poor level of customer service can be an immediate tipping point for customers to switch to a competitor.

Local Service Businesses

Local service companies are another key section of the market that do experience a high volume of calls. The reason for this is simple. Most local services provide a solution based on dealing with a problem that customers are facing. A problem like this can be completely time-sensitive and customers believe a phone call will provide the most rapid response. They will also call companies like this out of hours and that’s where taking live messages can become vital. It will ensure that callers can be contacted immediately by providers and utilities. Service companies that fit this category include plumbers, construction and contractors.

Medical Businesses

Medical businesses are a special case because they won’t just receive a mobile call from a customer. They will be receiving calls from patients who may require immediate medical support. Many medical businesses are already stretched to their limits so it’s important that the right patients are prioritized. A professional answering service can ensure that this is the case, Hence being in complete control of how phone answering service team members respond can be of particular importance. You can guarantee that patients will be handled with the utmost level of care and respect.

IT Support

If you are running an IT support business, then you should be prepared for calls from people with IT problems. These are going to be the main calls you receive, whether they are from existing clients or new customers. It’s worth noting that issues with tech do not follow a strict timeline. They can occur during hours when your offices are closed, however, you still need to make sure that customers receive the right level of support. Remember, a tech failure in a business can cost companies a fortune every hour it isn’t resolved. With a 24/7 call answering service, you can guarantee customers receive an immediate response.

Accounting Teams

Virtual Receptionist answering services are completely scalable as a solution. This means that you can decide how much or how little you want to use this service, even at key periods throughout the year. That’s a valuable option in the accounting sector. If you run an accounting firm, you will already know that there are fluctuating times when you receive a great inflow of calls. Many business owners and private individuals leave their tax returns until the last minute. This means that calls flood in at the end of the tax year.

What Are The Benefits Of A Telephone Answering Service?

There are numerous benefits to phone answering services when they are utilized in commercial enterprises. First, you will be able to ensure that you improve your customer service. You won’t need to worry about clients waiting on hold for hours or even missing calls from customers completely. This also ensures that you won’t drop crucial calls and lose potential profits for your company.

At the same time, you can enhance your customer service without putting any more pressure on existing team members. Instead, you will be able to rely on experts outside of your company. They will faithfully handle the calls on behalf of your business and give certainty that the company brand and principles are professionally stated. While the Virtual Receptionists team manage your calls, your employees can focus on their key responsibilities, uninterrupted.

A communications solution like this can also be used to provide accessibility, a primary tactic in any strategy that seeks greater involvement and understanding with the client base. Quality accessibility is something that modern customers are demanding now more than ever. Live phone answering services are a primary solution that will allow you to cater to this demand.

A phone answering service provides your business with an intrinsic competitive strength based on customer care. Many businesses now rely on automated solutions to handle calls. This clunky generic software frequently frustrates customers and leads to poor levels of interaction and engagement which equals loss of revenue.

The right live phone answering services from Virtual Headquarters will help you stand out by offering a far superior modern communication process.