5 Ways an Answering Service Can Make the Holidays Less Stressful

There are no two ways about it, for as exciting and invigorating and downright profitable the holiday season can be, it’s also an incredibly stressful time for business owners. Trying to juggle the increased needs of your customer base along with family obligations can feel like an impossible venture sometimes, but there are ways to get some relief.

For example, you can hire an answering service to help take some of the pressure off. Since you’ll only pay them for the calls they actually take, an answering service is often a much less expensive alternative to hiring another person to help out.

Here are just a few of the ways an answering service can make the season less stressful:

Creating detailed call logs for callbacks. Taking messages off of an answering machine or voicemail can be tedious and time-consuming. Often, callers don’t leave detailed messages so you can properly prioritize callbacks. Having an answering service means that your callers will always speak to a real, live person who will find out exactly what that caller needs so you can return calls more efficiently.

Managing your appointments. Whether you’re running a spa, a law office or a medical office, your answering service can make, change and cancel appointments for you. Instead of being constantly interrupted by the phone in order to schedule new customers, leaving appointment scheduling duties to your answering service will allow you to focus on the customers in front of you.

Providing quick answers to common caller inquiries. Callers tend to ask a lot of the same questions when they call. Whether that’s about your store hours or how to change the furnace filters in their apartment, you may spend a lot of time handling the increased call and question load at the holidays. By providing an answering service with scripted answers for those common inquiries, you’ll enable them to take off some of your pressure.

Giving you the night off. Taking after-hours calls might seem like no big deal, but when they start coming every night, you’re going to burn out quickly. Without some time away from your business, you don’t have time to recharge so you can perform at your best. An answering service will take your after-hours calls, only contacting you in the most dire of circumstances.

Helping you deal with harsh weather. In many parts of the country, the holiday season also means winter storms and potential disasters. When the power goes out or the phone lines are down, it’s hard to maintain business as usual, even if you’re more or less still open for customers. An answering service can help you develop a disaster plan and keep the phone lines open until your local service is reconnected.

The holidays are a stressful time for everyone, but by partnering with an answering service this season, you’ll feel a lot more jolly. Stress isn’t pretty on anyone, but when you’re struggling to handle the demands of a horde of customers who are in a rush to finish their holiday shopping, it’s even worse. Let your answering service handle the stress this season so you can leave your customers with a lasting good impression.

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