Live call answering services are staffed by real people who answer calls on behalf of businesses and organizations. Live call operators can capture customer information, take and forward messages, provide basic information about a company or product, and more. They can also help route calls to the appropriate person, department or office.
You can find live answering services that are available 24/7 or for specific hours during the day or week. Some providers offer tiered service levels, so you can upgrade to a higher level of service as your business grows.
In general, live call answering services are more complex than either an automated phone system or an after-hours answering service. They can be integrated with other software, such as customer relationship management (CRM) systems and accounting programs, to further enhance service capabilities.
While most businesses focus on their web presence, some people still prefer to speak with a human when they need assistance. If your business doesn’t have an in-house receptionist or call center, a live answering service can help fill the gaps.
What does a live call answering service do?
Whether it’s for sales, technical support, customer service or reservations, professional operators can be trained to handle any type of incoming phone call. With direct access to your internal staff and systems, these experts can answer questions about pricing and availability, place orders, schedule appointments and dispatch emergency services.
A live call answering service can also help with outbound calls. Operators can make follow-up calls to customers after they place an order, send appointment reminders and conduct surveys. These services can offer just the basic, or act as sales assistants for new orders, upgrades, and more.
How is a live call answering service different from a contact center, or call center?
A live call answering service is a service that provides a human response to the caller’s inquiry. This differs from a contact center or call center, which may provide an automated response. Auto-attendant systems, for example, direct incoming calls to the correct department or extension without the assistance of a live person.
A call answering service consists of a team of experienced agents who answer calls on behalf of clients. The clients can be businesses in any industry. They may have a large customer base or an industry-specific need for their customers to speak with a real person when they call their business. Incoming calls then ring through to a live agent at the answering service who answers with the client’s greeting and assists the caller as needed.
Live call answering services are critical for businesses that want to ensure their customers get personal attention when they call. It also relieves some of the stress on business owners and employees who are busy working on other tasks and don’t have time to answer every single phone call.
The biggest difference between a live call answering service and a contact center is that the latter has the staff and infrastructure to handle large volumes of calls for businesses that have contact centers.
A contact center is an outsourced provider of telephone, email, web chat, social media and fax services on behalf of businesses. Some live call answering services offer contact center services as well.
A business or organization that needs to provide customer service or technical support to customers can outsource those functions, instead of doing it in-house.
Contact centers typically use computer telephony integration (CTI) technologies to route incoming calls to the appropriate agent using an automatic call distribution (ACD) system. The phone numbers that are used are either toll-free or local so customers can reach the contact center without paying long distance charges.
What are the benefits of using a live call answering service?
The use of a live call answering service is becoming more and more popular. The benefits of using a live call answering service are numerous and include:
1. Increased productivity for your staff. By taking advantage of the services offered by a live call answering service, you can free up your employees to do what they do best and focus on the core activities that make your organization successful.
2. Greater responsiveness to clients. When you use a live call answering service, you ensure that no potential customer is left hanging on the phone or waiting too long for a return call. This makes your company more responsive and leads to higher levels of customer satisfaction.
3. Better management of after hours calls. A live call answering service will manage calls on evenings and weekends, ensuring that all of your customers receive quality care during off hours.
4. Reduced costs. By outsourcing some of the duties handled by internal employees, you can reduce payroll costs while still providing excellent customer service and satisfaction to your customers.
Why not try it for yourself?
If a service like this sounds like it might be the right fit for your glass business, give Service Station a call to discuss your needs. Service Station is glass-industry specific, we hire and train team members to be experts in everything glass. The reason for this is that when customers call, we want them to feel like they’re speaking to a knowledgeable professional that can handle their inquiry.
Service Station is 100% US based so your customers will never be speaking to someone in a third-world country. The service is designed to simulate a local call so all operators are located in the United States.
Another big difference between Service Station and another answering company is culture. We take the time to get to know our customers, and everything about their business so we can handle calls just as well as if we were in your office. We always want to give the impression that customers are speaking to a local shop when they call.