Does Your Business Need Phone Answering Services?

Phone answering services manage both inbound and outbound business communications for different industries. If considered on surface value, answering services would only allude to answering calls. However, these services include answering phone calls, replying to emails, transferring calls, cold calling, responding to text messages, etc.

Apart from just responding, answering services can now book appointments, forward calls, process online orders, integrate with CRMs, etc. They also make outbound calls to generate leads if required. These services can be advantageous to any industry ranging from medical to marketing to education, etc. Answering services are generally outsourced.

How Do They Work?

Phone answering services use the call forwarding feature to work. The service will provide the company with its distinctive number to which all the calls will be forwarded to. When call forwarding is initialized, the phone’s traffic is reverted to another destination, i.e, the answering services. Any calls to the company will then be answered by the answering services. There are different forms of call forwarding available that a company can customize.

The company can discuss how they want their calls answered and establish protocols to be followed. They can also decide on how they want their calls answered like how the calls should be answered during working hours and after hours, which type of calls should be transferred, etc.

Features Of Answering Services:

• An outsourced telephone answering service will have a variety of price plans. Some services charge by the minute or by the call while some offer both the price models. The price is flexible and a company can choose the plan best suited to them.
• These services are available 24/7 so that a company’s customers from different time zones would have access to anyone at any time. This makes customer retention easier for a company.
• They have both inbound and outbound calling available.
• The services also offer appointment setting features if one is too busy to do so.
• Answering services also have their portals where the client can view their account information. Certain services also provide features like updating call handling, downloading reports, rating operators, etc.
• Outsourced companies provide dedicated agents to answer a company’s calls which can turn out to be the very advantage that can give a company an edge.
• Answering services also add an automated custom greeting to assure the customer that they have reached the correct place and also have automated messages to play while being put on hold.
• Answering services employees are usually trained and given some knowledge about the particular industry and their products so they can assist the customer. They are also trained to respond quickly and resolve issues soon.

How Much Does It Cost?

So now comes the question, how much does an answering service cost? As it is with every service, the cost of answering services comes down to how much one uses it. The price range of each answering service is different. Some premium services may cost more than others but they are still cheaper than hiring and training a full-time employee.

The same service provider may offer different price plans for different service programs. Answering services are subscription-based services and typically charge a company monthly. Some services, on the other hand, operate on a contractual basis. Services will usually go over all the billing plans in detail before a company needs to make a decision.

Expertcallers’ phone answering outsourcing services are highly customizable. With extensive experience in many fields, Expertcallers offers its services to guarantee the best returns on a company’s investment. The company has a staff of 300 agents capable of handling over 30,000 calls each day. Expertcallers has highly trained professionals and state of the art technology backing its operations. It also offers competitive pricing, which can also be customized depending on various factors.