When it comes to product or service inquiries, customers and business owners often have different perspectives. Clients want fast answers, whether they’re calling their computer salesmen or technicians during the day or inquiring about a health emergency to their doctor in the middle of the night. Customers expect answers to their inquiries within 30 minutes.
But you and your staff are not always in the office. You don’t want to think about work when you’re on vacation, too. Naturally, as a business owner, you want your customers to get the answers they need to ensure they’re satisfied.
Meeting Customers’ Needs Immediately
To provide consistent and high-quality customer service, consider subscribing to a live answering service.
An answering service is a firm that answers phone calls and other modes of customer communications for your business. This service is more than just picking up the phone and answering emails. Depending on the type of service you get, the firm you work with may be in charge of forwarding callers to the right person in your company, collecting customer feedback, resolving customer problems, taking voice messages, and even selling your goods.
A professional answering service improves your customers’ experience, which helps your business’s overall image. When your customers are satisfied with your services, they’ll do more than just stay; they’ll also actively vouch for you to their family and friends.
Why Opt for Live Answering Service
There are two major types of answering services.
The first one is automated answering, which involves a computer taking calls and answering basic customer functions. It doesn’t need a human to provide answers. The other one is a live answering service. This involves a representative answering calls to route them, take messages, create appointments, answer questions, and more. You can train the agents from your chosen firm on your preferred answers to customer questions and what you prefer they do during tricky situations.
Some people are used to automated answers, but they still want to talk to people, especially about complicated problems.
Only humans have the creativity and problem-solving skills to help out distressed customers and their specific problems with your business. As such, live answering continues to be considered a favorite choice among business owners and customers alike.
If you want to provide both experiences to customers, you may combine automated and live answering services.
For example, an automated directory can answer basic questions; if customers are unsatisfied with what they get, they can opt to speak with a live representative. This can be applied to your phone and even instant messaging communications. The only difference is that IM applications, like Messenger and WhatsApp, use more sophisticated, AI-powered chatbots to address queries.
The Advantages of Live Answering Services
A variety of benefits come with a live answering service, whether you’re running a fledgling startup or an established business with a growing consumer base. Here are the most important ones:
- Little to no training required — What’s great about live answering service providers is that they already have a trained and fully-equipped staff that can handle your customer communications with ease. There’s no need to put them through hours or even days of courses. They can start as soon as possible. Just give them your company protocols when it comes to answering questions and handling customers, and they’ll take it from there.
- Focus on the important parts of your business — If you’re running a small business, chances are that you’re the one taking calls for your company as well. This is OK if your company is still in its infancy. It may not be sustainable once you expand. You’ll get even busier with meetings with clients and investors, as well as mentoring your team. You don’t want to get sidetracked from your core business because your customers are ringing your line nonstop.
- Full benefits, a fraction of the price — With a live answering service, you get a full customer service team for a fraction of the price. This is because you don’t have to go through a hiring and training process to get them employed. They’re fully trained and equipped to do the job, so there’s no need to invest in extra computers for them. And because they likely have other workloads from other companies, you only pay for a fraction of each worker’s time and labor.
Contact Always Answer Today for Your Live Answering Service!
There’s no better way to attract and retain customers than by providing fast and high-quality customer service. However, it can be difficult to juggle your core business requirements and manage customer inquiries. With a live answering service, you provide quick and consistent services without compromising on other business matters.
Personalized communications will give you a strategic advantage to succeed with 24/7 live answering services. With our trained professionals on the other end of the line, you can be confident of personal service and great customer relationships.
