9 Top Benefits of Answering Services for Small Businesses

Let’s Discuss The Benefits Answering Services Provide Small Businesses

It’s no secret. Things can get chaotic in a thriving small business even if you have a professional internal staff to take care of your business communications. If you manage a small business, you know what we mean and how hard is to ensure business growth.

Things can get so crazy sometimes. It can be a struggle just to complete your daily To Do list and keep up with your business plan, so finding a solution for every problem seems an impossible mission.

During the busiest times, things can fall through the cracks, hurting customer service. When that happens, business owners can damage their reputation and lose customers, cutting profitability.

What you need is a way to regain control of your business and ensure effective communication with your customers. Partnering with a live phone answering service can be just what the doctor ordered.

Opting for a virtual receptionist service can help you regain control of your business, speed up the work process within your company, and boost profitability.

Below are nine benefits of virtual answering services— benefits that can boost your small business to the next level, help you ensure excellent customer service, and increase customer loyalty:

1. Boosts staff productivity

Telephone calls can be a big distraction. Cell phone usage, for example, is among the biggest distractions in the workplace. Sure, customer calls are great for business. They help you keep in touch with clients and potential customers, and deliver epic customer service.

But too many phone calls can hamper productivity, especially during a busy month. They also can interrupt workflow and waste time. Plus, they can break momentum when employees are working and force them to spend time finding out where they left off before answering certain business calls.

A live answering service is a cost-effective way to eliminate phone calls and boost productivity. Additionally, telephone answering services help your staff maintain their momentum and focus on more important tasks. They can get more things done in less time, and increase profitability.

2. Helps you control labor costs

If you’re like many other small businesses, labor is one of your biggest expenses. You’ve come to expect that. Start-ups in particular try their best to control their budget and hiring an in-house receptionist team to handle incoming and outgoing calls is not exactly a priority or good investment. Startups often lack the budget for a large staff.

Using an answering service or a virtual receptionist is the perfect solution to eliminate the cost of hiring an in-house receptionist or an admin person and enhance customer service. This decision frees up funds to invest elsewhere in your business. Plus, it eliminates the costs of hiring the wrong person.

3. Eliminates the need to train new staff

Hiring new staff is often a headache, one you could do without. A new employee (part-time, full-time) forces you to think about wages, experience, and benefits before deciding on a candidate.

Once you hire them, you need to make sure they provide the same exceptional service your business is known for. That means you need to put in a lot of time—and monitor—training new employees to make sure they’re doing the job correctly and ensure flawless client communication.

Using a live answering service does two things. Working with phone answering service providers helps you eliminate the stress of training new employees and the need to monitor new employees until they come up to speed in their jobs.

4. Maximizes return on investment (ROI)

Maximizing ROI is imperative for a small business. Spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on marketing is wasted, if you’re inaccessible when sales calls come in because of your promotional efforts. That cuts ROI of these projects dramatically.

Partnering with a 24-hour answering service means you won’t miss any sales opportunities when your staff isn’t around. Thanks to the answering service receptionist, you could see hundreds of hot leads in your inbox in the morning, maximizing the ROI of your marketing dollars.

To better calculate your ROI, we recommend you read this article onanswering serviceprices.

5. Boosts profitability while sleeping

It would be nice if you could be open 24/7/365. But you can’t. Few small businesses can. Hiring a live answering service is a cost-effective way to expand your hours and boost profitability while your staff is not on duty. Plus, you’ll always have a dedicated team handling calls from potential clients, scheduling appointments, and taking care of outbound calls.

6. Increases reliability and consistency

Your customers need to know they can rely on you when it counts—like when they have questions or issues with your products or services. The challenge is making sure your staff follows your quality procedures and delivers efficient answering services.

Working with a phone service provider can guarantee that employees follow procedures when customers contact you and deliver high-quality service. If procedures change, your dedicated agents have the tools and flexibility to change their activities to meet your needs, ensuring reliability and consistency.

7. Enhances value-added activities

Customers come to you not just for your service but also for your value-added services—the little things you do that differentiate you from your competitors. But your staff can’t provide those value-added services if they’re busy handling phone calls.

Live answering services can help filter incoming calls, forwarding only those calls that matter and allowing your staff to handle the more important matters, and working on your professional image. Receptionist services are here for your peace of mind.

With a business answering service, employees can take calls when they’re free and manage them when they don’t want to, allowing them to focus on providing the best value-added service possible and coming up with the best business solutions for your start-up.

8. Helps you cope with the unexpected

Business is often unpredictable. You never know what to expect, regardless of how much industry experience you have accumulated over the years. But one thing’s certain. An unexpected event or a sudden emergency can occur at any time, and this is when you need to ensure exceptional customer experiences. If you’re not prepared to handle it, the event could wipe you out even overnight.

Having an experienced agent handling emergency calls can help you cope with the unexpected—even if it’s just a temporary surge in calls during the busy season. Call center services can keep you up and running when things deteriorate and help meet customer needs quickly and efficiently.

9. Manages scheduled appointments

Managing appointments is a challenge. In fact, appointment scheduling can be a real nightmare if you lack the right staff and technology, resulting in missed appointments. That’s unprofessional. Missing a meeting also creates a poor first impression, especially if you’re meeting with someone for the first time.

Turning appointment setting and managing over to a live answering service can help you overcome this challenge. It simplifies things and frees your employees from the hassle of managing a full schedule of appointments. This way nothing falls through the cracks, you get detailed reports about every call and ensure excellent customer care services.

These are just some of the benefits a live answering service delivers—benefits that can help you take your business to the next level.

Managing a small business isn’t easy. With everything that goes on daily in a small business, you can easily lose control. When that happens, you need to do something about it. Whether you are running a law firm, managing a real estate business, or planning to offer contractor services, you will benefit greatly from call center services and the help of a dedicated team of phone answering agents.

Partnering with a live answering service can help you regain control of your business. More importantly, virtual receptionist solutions can provide advantages that can help your business survive and thrive and improve the quality of calls and personal experiences.

The key is working with a professional phone answering company that meets your exact needs, has transparent pricing plans, and provides answering services within your budget.

This post was updated on September 29th, 2022 to reflect changes in the industry. The original post was created on November 27th, 2018.