An answering service provider is a much-needed investment with a high return on time, energy, and money that businesses mistakenly overlook. Partnering with a reliable and professional answering service can help you manage your time and resources. In many ways, hiring a live answering service streamlines your workflow and can improve your office’s efficiency.
Manage and Route Calls to Appropriate Departments
A virtual receptionist acts as your company’s receptionist. They manage and route calls to the appropriate departments and can double as the phone extension and central message center for departments that aren’t equipped to take direct inbound calls.
Take On Overflow Calls During Busy Days or Peak Seasons
Eliminate the time, energy, and cost associated with equipment set up, and hiring and training new staff to take on the additional workload during your busy season. When you partner with an answering service, you provide the answering service with essential information related to your business. Experienced agents are then trained by the answering service provider based on the materials and information you shared. This removes the burden of you trying to carve out time or taking a valuable member of your staff off their project to provide training to a new team of customer service agents. To streamline the process, you work with a point of contact at the answering service who assists in communicating your desired overflow call handling procedures. They manage additional information, implement your feedback, and assist you in reviewing progress.
Extend Business Hours Without Extending Your Budget
Many businesses lack the staff to provide customers with the convenience of 24/7 service. An answering service is staffed with a team of agents ready to provide around-the-clock service to your customers. Your business runs after hours without disruption. There’s no need to pay overtime, holiday pay, or shift differential. Regardless of your office hours, personal emergencies, or PTO, your call center remains available for your callers. Your customers can rely on your business to be open regardless of whether your employees are unable to work weekends, holidays, or overnight hours.
Bilingual Support
If you have a business that requires translators for your call center, you can outsource your bilingual calls to a third-party answering service provider. Answering services are equipped with a variety of linguistic options depending on your business. By simply pressing an option or dialing into your staff’s designated bilingual extension, you can connect your customer to a representative who can assist them in their preferred language as an extension of your office. Providing bilingual service makes customers feel important and improves your inclusive customer culture without the added pressure required to scout, interview, test, hire, and set up a separate bilingual staff.
Appointment Scheduling
You can share your calendar and set up a simplified schedule system with your answering service partner to manage appointment workflow. Appointment scheduling allows your answering service to schedule appointments on your behalf and to gather additional information and communication details before the appointment day saving you valuable time.
Live Messages
Messages taken by a live person are more effective than voicemail. Message delivery from an experienced answering service will include clear details that otherwise may have been inaudible or missed on a voicemail. This service can also be customized to include additional questions needed to obtain information and provide quality service during the follow-up. Messages can be sent at the frequency you prefer (i.e., daily, hourly, etc.) and via your preferred method (i.e., email, fax, text message, etc.).
Regardless of your industry and the size of your business, achieving a successful workflow is easily achieved when you hire a professional and reliable answering service like Northwest Telephone Answering Service. We provide a full list of end-to-end phone and virtual assistance support that saves you time, energy, and money so you can focus on your business’s revenue-generating activities.
Contact us for information on getting started today!
