Outsourcing Live Phone Answering Services

Outsourcing to live answering services is a concept that’s been around for decades. But if you have just started thinking about using one for your business, you may have some questions about how live answering services work, and how your business can benefit from partnering with one.

Below we will answer and discuss the following questions to give you a better idea of what to expect when you outsource to a live phone answering service.

• What is a live answering service?
• What can a live phone answering service do?
• Why should I outsource to a live phone answering service?

What is a live answering service?

Like the name suggests, a live answering service provides real, live humans who answer calls on a business’ behalf. When a company hires a live answering service, their incoming calls are routed to professional live agents working remotely who will answer quickly and work to address any questions or issues the callers have.

What can a live phone answering service do?

Unlike automated answering services, live answering services mean that your calls will be handled by a real person. These agents are trained and experienced, and they act just like an in-house receptionist would in many ways.

Here are some of the things that a live phone answering service can do:

• Provide you with real customer service agents who answer your phones and assist callers at any time of day, any day of the week. Even weekends and holidays!
• Assist your customers via SMS text message in addition to via phone.
• Help your customers set, reschedule, and cancel appointments. Your appointment book will be updated in real time, helping everyone stay organized and informed.
• Screen calls before transferring them to the appropriate extension. Telemarketers will be weeded out, basic questions will be answered, and only the most urgent calls will be passed along to you and your staff. Our live agents will ask the right questions and inform you about the caller and their situation before transferring them over to you. If you’re unavailable, they will take a detailed message.
• Answering Service Care’s Spam Blocker feature can filter out automated spam calls, resulting in less time wasted by you, your staff, and your live agents.

Why should I outsource to a live phone answering service?

No matter which industry you’re in, live answering services eliminate the responsibility and stress of managing incoming business calls. You and your employees will no longer have to interrupt your work to answer calls or deal with the possibility of missing any important calls. Small businesses are especially in need of live phone answering services to allow them to put all their efforts into helping the business grow while providing customers with immediate, professional, and reliable service.

Another reason businesses outsource to live answering services is because they employ highly trained, educated professionals. Answering service companies are dedicated to ensuring that their agents know how to handle customer service relations, scheduling, conflicts and much more in a friendly and skilled manner. You don’t need to worry about hiring inexperienced receptionists or spend time training people yourself.

Live answering services also help keep customers happy and loyal. Unlike with automated answering services and voicemail that give off cold and impersonal first impressions, live answering services will improve your customer relations by providing a real representative.

Not only do live answering services provide real humans, but some of these individuals are also bilingual, which can be extremely beneficial for your business. Chances are, you have some Spanish-speaking customers who need to be efficiently communicated with. Outsourcing to a bilingual answering service will improve your communication with these customers and open the doors to new business relationships that may have been out of your reach before.