For most small businesses or professionals, a lost or mismanaged call can lead to a lost customer or even a gradual attrition in your customer base. For you and your staff, manning the phones can be a distraction from your focus on billable services or selling products. Yet for the caller, the perception of an unmanned phone – whether you have an automated switchboard or a cell phone with voicemail – can leave the impression that your organization isn’t busy or responsive enough to meet their business needs regardless of the fact that you may be in meetings or in transit between customer sites. In fact, the impression of an unmanned phone can be negative enough to prompt a call to your competitor.

Why consider a professional answering service? Manning the phones takes time and often administrative support such as following up by dispatching staff, or sending faxes and couriers. Professional answering services are staffed by call-center trained employees who can act as an administrative center and customer Help Desk.

Beyond the pick-up and greeting, they are trained to respond to queries about product availability and pricing, taking orders and payments, or fielding a technical support issue that gets passed to your service staff. Answering service staff are also equipped to provide event registration support such as entering and confirming bookings, updating your event registration database and sending out program information. On top of the routine phone answering part of your business, answering service professionals can also take surveys to track service and product satisfaction. Lead generation and telemarketing are additional responsibilities that a professional answering service can provide for you.

Just who is using answering services? While answering service clientele were once dominated by physicians and medical practitioners, increasingly, the trend is towards organizations whose staff are mobile yet can’t take calls or orders using devices while driving. As legislation limits the use of cellular phones and mobile devices while driving, utility, technology and other service providers are employing organizations who can field calls for staff while they are “on the road”.

Unlike a receptionist on your payroll, professional answering service staff work in a team and relieve each other during lunch and other break times as well as vacations. Your customers, suppliers and resellers never have to concern themselves with time zones and whether your phones will be manned because their critical hours fall between 11 and 1 of after 4 when staff are heading home to beat the rush-hour crunch.

What are the financial benefits of outsourcing call taking to an answering service? Studies show that virtual receptionists and professional answering services can reduce the reception overhead by 20% including the hidden costs of telephony equipment, office space and training.

One additional advantage of a centers in North America and can provide fluency in a range of languages including French, Spanish, Mandarin, Cantonese, Punjabi, Vietnamese and Arabic. The ability to switch into the language your customers prefer can be a competitive advantage Cialis for businesses in multicultural metropolitan areas.

With a professional answering service, you’ll never have to worry about the negative perceptions of dropped calls. Businesses base their success on building relationships with customers, and answering services provide the relationship-building advantage of presence, prevalence plus pervasiveness.

Author Bio: Ingrid Schneller is an office space expert at Elite Business Centres. Elite specializes in providing telephone answer service and virtual office solutions that are fully supported by trained, professional staff. You can learn more about their services by visiting their website at http://www.eliteoffices.com

Category: Business
Keywords: vancouver, office space, virtual office, solutions, professional, office services, work