Small business answering services are a great way for growing companies to get the help they need in a shorter amount of time. They can also help with portraying a more professional image and with answering calls when things get busy. What else is there about small business answering services, besides getting someone to take calls for you? Here’s what you need to know about call answering service for small business:
A Personal Touch Matters
Research has found that 90 percent of consumers will hang up and call another company if they get a voicemail or an automated menu of some kind. This means that a real live voice answering your small business phone can go a long way in bringing in more leads and customers. Besides, your business looks better to potential customers when you have someone there to answer with your company name and a friendly greeting. It’s more legitimate and potential customers feel that they can get the help they need to solve their pain points (which it ultimately what you need to do to bring in and to keep customers).
A Small Business Answering Service Can be 24/7
Even if you aren’t open 24/7, there are many reasons why you would want 24/7 availability for your customers. Perhaps you have customers located all over the world, so you might have people call at any hour of the day. Or, you could provide emergency services where you need to take a call at 3 a.m., but not every night so it’s not worth staffing for. Sometimes, no one is there or can take a minute away from the current task to answer the phone. Whatever the case may be, a small business answering service can serve as a great backup plan so it never looks like you’re too busy to take calls or that a person’s call isn’t important to the business.
A Small Business Answering Service is More than Just Phone Answering
A small business answering service can do more than just take calls, forward the good ones, and take messages. You can also have the service take orders, provide some basic customer support, lead management, and even set appointments. This is good news, as many more small businesses could use help taking orders and setting appointments, and not necessarily with taking messages and forwarding calls. What’s also good news is that the service can adjust to your needs i.e if you didn’t need help taking orders at first, and now you do, then most answering services can work with that. Most small business answering services will also allow you to customize the phone script, so even that can change depending on your needs.
Small Business Answering Services Can Be as Low as $279/Month
Yes, the prices will differ depending on call volume and minute volume, but if your small business needs an answering service because it just doesn’t have the time to deal with phone calls, then $279 a month is a bargain is you’re just too busy to answering the phone. Granted, not every call answering service for small business is that low, but consider that a traditional receptionist costs about $2,000 a month, on average. And that figure only includes the salary, not the benefits or the overhead costs just so the receptionist can have everything he/she needs to work in the office. Anything lower than $2,000 a month is great for any company’s bottom line. Outsourcing a part of your business operations can be tricky at times, but outsourcing your phone calls typically isn’t.
Does all that make small business answering services a little bit clearer for you? We hope so. Next week, we’ll actually discuss what you need to think about if small business answering services are in your radar. Simply needing them isn’t enough!
