Answering services for small businesses – should you be using them?
If you are a small business owner or manager, you may be considering whether you should use an answering service.
Over the past few decades, call answering services have become big business, and the pandemic showed us that they are set up very well for the working from home, meaning that your call answering service can be in operation uninterrupted at all times.
In this feature, we look at all of the options that you should consider when recruiting a call answering service for your business.
Should I Use One Of The Major Call Answering Services?
Whils there are some very well known, well advertised, telephone answering services in the UK, as with any larger company, they do have their pitfalls.
These include:
- Lack of flexibility. We know from speaking with many customers of the major telephone answering services, that when it comes to working with them it is ‘their way or the highway’. If you want them to customise any aspect of their service, they will not do so as it does not fit into their working practices.
- Supporting a small business owner. If you engage one of the major call answering companies, you are missing the opportunity to support a fellow small business owner. As one yourself, wouldn’t you rather work with someone running a sme like yourself?
- Paying more. If you use one of the larger telephone answering services, you will definitely pay more. Do you need to or want to do that?
Why Should You Use An Answering Service?
If you run a small business, you often have many aspects of that business to run and control. Answering the service is unlikely to be the best use of your time. Plus, there are other reasons why you should use an answering service instead of doing this yourself.
1. It makes your business look more professional.
If you answer the telephone yourself, it really can seem to a new prospect that you really are not very busy.
Does any potential customer or client want to work with someone who seems to do nothing but answer their own telephone?
2. It leaves you free to do your best work.
If you allow your day to become interrupted by telephone calls, emails, social media, when will you have the time to do your best work?
When will you be able to write that amazing client proposal that seamlessly sells your services?
When will you be able to update your website so that it brings in ideal new prospects each and every day?
When will you be able to undertake your client work that will lead to a fantastic review of your services which will bring in your next client?
Outsourcing your call answering service is a very smart thing to do.
3. It ensures you do not miss any new client enquiries.
As a small business owner, new business is vital to the success of your business. If you spend hours working on your marketing, only for your telephone to ring but not be answered, or to go straight to your voicemail (again, highlighting that you are the only person answering the telephone), you will be sure to lose business.
Engaging a call answering service fixes this problem immediately.
If you have now decided that a call answering services is a good idea, what else can an answering service do for your small business?
Do They Only Handle Call Answering?
Do these answering services for small businesses only do call handling?
No. These days they can handle any number of tasks. Some of them may surprise you:
- Live chat on your website. Call answering using fingers, you might call it. Ultimately, this is the same service but just without the audi.
- Taking sales calls. Many telephone answering services will take your orders for you and enter them into your system for you to process. You don’t need to lift a finger to make sales up to 24 hours a day!
- Customer service & Support. If you are a small team, you can let your answering service be the first port of call for any customers service enquiries or support issues. In time they will soon expand their knowledge of your business and be able to handle more and more enquiries on your behalf.
Answering Services For Small Businesses – What Next?
We have a range of answering services for small businesses that our clients have used, vetted and approved.
If you would like an introduction, simply enter your details below: