General Answering Services
General answering services have been around for decades. When we first opened our doors here at Answerphone of America some 60 years ago, our operators were using the old telephone punch boards to connect people and taking messages on paper. We’ve come a long way since then, but the concepts behind general answering services having changed all that much.
Essentially, a general answering service is directing calls that would normally come into your office to a 3rd party call center. The call center staffs live operators who will pick up the call and answer in your company or practice’s name, and then take a message. The message is then relayed back to the office by one of the many message delivery options that are available to choose from. Once the office personnel get back in the office, they return the calls from the customers whom they’d missed over the previous day/night.
Why Do People Use General Answering Services
The real value found in using a general answering service is the customer service element and the expanded availability of your company to your customers.
In today’s business world, customers want immediate attention. They want to get answers to their questions or know that their concerns are being addressed now. Partnering with a general answering service like Answerphone of America gives your customers a live person to talk to 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Our operators can answer questions about your company and address your clients concerns when your client needs answers – providing an excellent customer service experience.
The typical company is open from 8am – 6pm Monday through Friday. That means that your company is available to your customers for less than 30% of the week. When you partner with a general answering service, you expand your availability from 50 hours a week, to over 160 hours a week. Customers are able to reach a representative of your company (our operators), even when no one is at your office.
Answering Services: How The Service Works
Having an answering service is like having a receptionist available to help your employees and customers that never leaves the office, takes no vacation or sick days, and works for less than minimum wage. There are moltiple ways to integrate an answering service like Answerphone of America into your operation:
- Let us answer for you 24/7 as a virtual receptionist.
- Let us answer for your business only when you're not available. You phone system can be programmed to roll the call to Answerphone when busy, or after a certain number of rings an no one picks up.
- Use us after hours. When you head home for the day, simply call forward your lines to our live operators, and rest assured knowing emergencies can get through to you while non-emergencies are emailed, texted, or available online. Your customers will be well cared for.
Answering Services: Return On Investment
Did you know that people are 30% more likely to leave a message with a person when compared to a voice mail system? Take a look at this simple example. Let’s use an example of an actual customer that runs a cleaning & restoration company. If they get 100 calls per month (which is about the average), their business coold have been missing around 30 calls per month! Let’s say that they have a sales conversion rate of around 35%, meaning they close 3.5 out of 10 opportunities. By using a live answering service like Answerphone of America, they were able to capture those additional 30 opportunities that they woold have otherwise missed! Using a conversion rate of 35%, that means that they woold have landed an additional 11 customers that month, or over 120 for the year. Imagine what that coold do for your company’s bottom line! When the answering services of Answerphone of America save you just one job, it will pay for the cost of our services for months, if not years!
Answering Service: Pricing
For a few dollars a day, you can have profession, courteous, live agents answering your companies calls, and receive the benefits of having an answering service available whenever you need us. Most answering service pricing is done on a per call or per minute basis. At Answerphone of America, we offer the most fair and competitive pricing around. Our billing structure is based on a per minute basis, in cumolative per second intervals. What that means, is that a 30 second call and a 45 second call woold put 1:15 against your account. We aren’t like other answering services that round up to the next minute or 15 second interval. With Answerphone of America, you only pay for the time that you use.
Solutions
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