Stop Losing Customers With These 3 Affordable Answering Service Options

How your company’s phone calls are answered can say so much about your company. A bad first impression, whether it’s caused by a lack of product knowledge, a lack of care or simply a lack of professionalism, can lose you potential customers. And that’s bad news, because the chances are that as a small business every call is important to you. In the days of IP telephone services anything is possible - some detailed research could yield you a great answering service solution without breaking the bank.

What answering services are out there?

The most established solution is definitely outsourcing to an external call centre service provider. However since the larger companies require a contract that outlines minimum services, this kind of business might not be the one for your business. After all, we have already outlined above the poor service that these typically provide if you are a small player. It doesn’t mean that you should write this option off altogether. It’s worth looking for small business that are like minded and share your values. You don’t even need to be in the same city since training can be done virtually these days.

The second option is to use an automated answer service provider. The benefit of this kind of service is that you can call in at any time and pick up messages, re-record your company greeting and so on. This kind of service does allow for some bespoke set-up but the downside is some knowledge of IP telephone services will be required to get the most out of the service.

The third option that we have seen work well is using home workers. There are skilled call center workers throughout the US who could ‘use some extra hours’. You will someone in your company to manage the schedule and make sure you always have cover when it’s needed. The home workers are self-employed in this kind of arrangement and have to provide their own laptop or desktop. All you’ll need is software to run this kind of set up. Dialler Phone Software is the kind of solution you’ll need. To search for the right people to represent you look online for noticeboards where people advertise their services. Colleges can be a great source of labor too. Training can be carried out on a Google Hangout or on Webex.