What Should You Look for in a Telephone Answering Service?

As a small business owner, you are always trying to do more with less while providing your customers with the best experience possible. But if you’re like many other businesses right now, you might need help achieving your goals. 

As such, you may be considering outsourcing your customer service to an answering service because it will free up your time and boost your productivity. And at ASPEN, that’s precisely the kind of service we set out to provide our clients.

Our telephone answering services can be customized to provide you with what you need. For example, if you need 24-hour call coverage, we can make this happen, thereby giving consumers more options to do business with you. But what other telephone answering services are important to your business, employees, and customers?

Below, you will find the most common factors that you should look for in a telephone answering service.

One of the first things to do when choosing a telephone answering service is to make sure they know your company. At ASPEN, our team carefully researches, studies, and learns the ins and outs of our business and what you expect from us.

You can also use our answering services for specialized areas within your company, such as customer service and sales or legal and billing departments. When you enlist our services, we set out to gain as much company knowledge as possible, with ongoing training to reduce mistakes and bolster customer service.

Caring Agents

You want call center agents who care about your company and its success. What does that mean? It means the people who answer your phone should be knowledgeable about your business, your products, and the services you offer.

This will ensure that customers get the information they need quickly and easily. Not only that, but it also tells the customer that they’re speaking with a knowledgeable agent who takes customer needs seriously—a sure-fire way to keep consumers coming back.

24/7 Availability

One of the things you should consider when choosing a telephone answering service is whether or not they offer after-hours call availability. If your business operates 24/7—or you wish to extend the hours of your answer services—this is an essential feature to look for in a telephone answering service.

At ASPEN, our personalized solutions ensure you are getting the service you and your clients need most, and that includes 24/7 availability. Many consumers love having the option to speak with a representative after normal business hours. In some cases, it’s the only time they can call. Catering to customers from all walks of life is an excellent way to enhance your appeal.

Security

Answering phones for a business can be both an exciting and exhausting experience. It requires you to multitask, prioritize workloads, and juggle various phone calls. You’re also responsible for answering any inbound calls as well as outbound calls. 

It may seem like it would be difficult to keep track of all the information you need to manage your company, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Outsourcing a telephone answering service lets you unload some of your responsibilities onto an experienced team of professionals.

And because of their experience, you can trust that your commitment to secure information will carry over to your telephone answering service. This means keeping both customer information and company information safe and secure at all times—a must-have for businesses in 2022.

Functional Operations

The functionality of the answering service is another important factor to consider when choosing the most suitable one for your needs. You want a service that will provide the features that your business needs. For example, if you are a small business with very few inbound calls, you may not need call queuing or other advanced features like voicemail-to-text services. But if you’re a high-volume company, those features would be more useful to your daily operations.

Some popular features include:

Voicemail-to-Text : turns voicemails into text and sends them to the subscriber. This reduces downtime by allowing you to quickly scan the contents of a message and prepare an appropriate response.

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) : when callers dial your number, they’ll be given options for what they want to do next. This is an excellent way to free up live agents for various departments within your business.

Call Queuing : when agents are busy on other calls, callers will be put on hold until an agent is available. This allows your business to take multiple calls at a time while minimizing potential lost calls.

ASPEN specializes in a wide variety of call center and answering services to assist your business’s needs. Plus, our personalized approach to service means we help you build meaningful relationships to boost your bottom line and more. We invite you to call us today at 303-786-9500 to schedule a consultation. 

The information in this blog post is for reference only and not legal advice. As such, you should not decide whether to contact a lawyer based on the information in this blog post. Moreover, there is no lawyer-client relationship resulting from this blog post, nor should any such relationship be implied. If you need legal counsel, please consult a lawyer licensed to practice in your jurisdiction.

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