Your customers are coming to rely on you more and more, but there’s not more of you to go around—you’re already working long hours to keep your business running, you simply can’t be around to answer the phone when they call at all hours.
A voicemail doesn’t seem like enough, but maybe a 24/7 answering service could help you continue to provide the excellent service your customers have come to expect.
Why Choose A 24/7 Answering Service?
Although it doesn’t seem like there should be a lot of difference between a 24/7 answering service and a traditional answering service, the two are like night and day. A traditional answering service often is only open during regular office hours, leaving your customers without support for up to something like 16 hours of the day and maybe even only five days a week.
The 24/7 answering service was born to help small- to medium-sized business like yours be more accessible to your customers and more competitive against the bigger guys. But besides staffing someone on the phone around the clock, your 24/7 answering service will also provide services like:
Message relay. Whether you run a medical office, a towing service or a retail shop, your customers leave messages because they want to be heard. Message relay ensures that you get that message right away, rather than waiting until morning for a log of all the calls that have come in through the night. This optional service can help businesses stay in touch with callers who may need answers sooner rather than later.
Emergency call forwarding. Sometimes calls simply won’t wait until business hours. No one knows this better than service people like plumbers and real estate experts like property managers. When a call has to be answered right away, your 24/7 answering service can forward it to the appropriate designated person directly so that your customers never feel like their emergencies are being dismissed. Not only is this good for business, but emergency call forwarding is also a great way to create some seriously happy customers.
Disaster recovery. No one wants to think about disasters, but they happen all the time—and no location is completely risk-free. That’s why a disaster recovery plan should be part of any 24/7 answering service package. This service not only helps you get your company back on its feet without missing a beat, it keeps your customers in the loop to help them plan their own recoveries. From pharmacies to HVAC shops and even grocery stores, during a disaster, customer calls are going to increase dramatically as people hustle to get information.
When you’re looking for more coverage for hours you simply can’t answer the phone, a 24/7 answering service is exactly the helping hand you need. Since you’ll only be charged for the services you actually use, your answering service partnership can expand as your business grows, keeping costs low and manageable. But these services are only the beginning of what a 24/7 answering service can do—they can also help with common growing pains of small- to medium-sized businesses like overflow calls, appointment setting and even providing bilingual operators so you can serve even more of your neighbors.
