Ensuring business growth has never been easy, but it’s arguably now more difficult than ever with the growth of the internet. Small businesses have always faced a huge challenge with regards to taking on the large and already established companies, but even the big businesses have to keep their eye on the ball now more than ever because just about anybody can reach a global market with the right online marketing techniques.
However, as important as effective marketing is, no business can succeed without a professional customer service department, but companies may not have the resources to hire a team of staff specifically for dealing with customers.
But regardless of how profitable or new a company is, it needs to be able to respond to customer queries and complaints quickly and professionally if it’s going to ensure its customers keep coming back. There’s so much competition within almost every industry that poor customer service could be all it takes to lose out to your competitors.
Of course, email and SMS communication have grown exponentially over the last couple of decades, but people still largely think the quickest way to get through to a company is to give them a call. That means you always need to have somebody manning the phones, ideally 24 hours a day.
A Call Answering Service Can Help
At this point, you might be thinking that you simply can’t afford to hire a team of employees specifically to answer phone calls. Fortunately, you don’t have to if you utilise a professional call answering service. Check out Message Direct’s infographic which simplifies their call handling service and you’ll see how beneficial it is. However, just to give you an idea, here are some of the main advantages.
- Overflow call handling – Imagine a customer is trying to call several companies in order to compare their offering. If your lines are so busy that they’re put on hold for 20 minutes, you can bet they won’t choose you. A dedicated call answering service is there to answer calls during your most busy periods.
- 24-hour service – You never really know when a customer might try to make a call, and that’s why you need people ready to answer the phone 24 hours a day. If you don’t have the resources to accomplish such a task, let a call answering service do it for you.
- Trained receptionists – Of course, you need whoever answers the phone to have excellent customer service skills, and that’s exactly what you’ll get by outsourcing your answering service. All employees who work for such a service are highly experienced and receive ongoing training.
Even if you’re running a very technical company, a virtual receptionist can take messages and forward them to you immediately so you don’t have to leave customers waiting for the information they need. If you want to expand your business without having to invest in full-time staff, utilising a call answering service is the perfect solution.