March 25, 2021
Have you noticed your office’s communications have been slacking lately? Maybe your staff doesn’t always get every call when they are busy or they don’t seem as professional as they could have been because they are helping multiple people at once. Whatever the case, your communication can easily take a hit when things get a little crazy.
How important is communication if everything is still getting accomplished? Well, communication is actually the key to great customer service and customer service is what determines who a person will do business with. You wouldn’t skimp on quality in other areas of business so why would you take go the cheap route on communication by having your staff handle the phones in between other tasks?
It’s time to bring in an answering service to increase your customer service quality, lessen the stress on your staff and keep your customers happy at all times. Here is a look at how an answering service is going to increase the quality of your communication.
Why spend money on an answering service?
Answering services are an important area to spend money on because the quality of your communication is key to your customers. If they struggle to reach or feel unappreciated and unimportant when speaking with one of your representatives, it won’t take long before they’ll be considering taking their business elsewhere. There are too many companies that want their business and are willing to make them a top priority, so are you? Spending money to increase communication quality in your business will pay for itself.
Why do you need an answering service?
Even though there is a stigma against answering services because of the cost involved, the fact that they are too general and would work as a one-size-fits-all service is simply not the case. A quality answering service goes a long way in helping improve your communications which directly relates to your customer satisfaction.
As long as you are careful to investigate an answering service before bringing them on, you can easily pick a fantastic provider to improve your communications. The areas you need to look for are their turnover rates, how much they are willing to customize to your needs, what their technology is like, and if they are outsourcing.
Finding a Good Answering Service
A good answering service will not have a high turnover rate. Those that don’t invest in their employee development may have a higher turnover rate which means they aren’t working hard to hire and retain quality workers. Ask about the average operator’s tenure and what training programs there are in place. This will help you gauge how good the answering service is and how they treat their employees.
Are they asking you questions to understand your business model? If not, they may not be willing to customize their services to your needs. Look for a service that has an in-bound calling program that is customizable and ask what other businesses they serve. Be sure to ask about what technology they are using because a quality answering service should be investing in the latest technology and have a proper back-up system along with disaster recovery protocols. Which method of message dispatch do they use and what type of escalation procedures do they use? They should be able to provide call reports and have privacy policies in place to protect your sensitive information.
If they are outsourcing work to other services or offshore; run. Quality control will be really difficult and your calls may be sent to a lower priority status if they are generating a lower revenue for a third-party service that answers the calls. You don’t want your callers having a long wait time so make sure to ask if anything is outsourced so that you can determine if there are enough quality control measures in place.
Finally, you shouldn’t be paying an arm and a leg to get a quality answering service but you will get what you pay for. If you find someone that is too low, they may have some major flaws but look for average prices and stick with that price point to ensure the quality remains.
These are reasons why an answering service may be the solution to your communication quality issues!
