Do you get anxious whenever the phone rings? Think you should hire an answering service for your business? Not sure if it’s what you need? Different types of businesses in all industries can benefit from using an answering service.
Medical
Every phone call to a medical provider is important. Patients and the people who are their primary caretakers are vulnerable. They need to feel like their needs are being met by a medical professional.
Doctor’s offices, in-home health providers, hospitals and medical supply companies can all benefit from having a 24/7 answering service that will provide patients with confidential, HIPPA compliant virtual receptionists. Virtual assistants can do far more than a voicemail. Which is awesome, because anyone who needs medical attention feels that their message is urgent. Services can include scheduling appointments, calls about prescriptions and billing, and pushing through the most urgent of calls to an on-call doctor immediately.
Law firms
Time equals money. No one is more aware of this than someone who is receiving counsel from an attorney. Big firms and small firms can both benefit from an around-the-clock answering service.
Whether family law gets too dysfunctional or a personal injury case gets a little too personal, a virtual receptionist is able to pick up those middle-of-the-night phone calls and take detailed messages. That means the attorney can spend their waking hours building cases with straight-to-the-point data, minus all of the fluff that can cost them time and their clients a lot of money.
Maritime
“Can you hear me now?”
Service can be sporadic when you’re out in the deep blue sea. Vessels and shipping agencies can benefit from using an answering service by having someone on land to man the phones. Virtual assistants can relay information about shipment, give updates for the vessel, and refer calls to the specific person in charge of a requested vessel.
Service Companies
Plumbers, HVAC, electricians, pest control, couriers, IT consultants, accountants, general contractors, the list goes on. If you’re providing a service, your customer doesn’t want to catch you trying to garner more business while you’re on their clock. And unfortunately, whenever a potential customer calls and can’t reach you, they’ll just move on to the next service provider that shows up on their web search.
If a trained professional answers their call and takes detailed notes on what service they’ll need, their search is over.
Entrepreneurs
When you’re starting a new business, the number of hats you wear becomes daunting. Startups require a lot of behind the scenes work, and manning the phones will interrupt the flow of what you’re doing. Whether you are writing code, working on a presentation for investors, or creating a marketing plan, your time would be better spent focusing on those aspects of your business.
You!
Apply this to your small business
It boils down to this: any company or sole proprietor who isn’t able to answer the phone twenty four hours a day, seven days a week should hire an answering service.
A few more examples of when you should outsource your calls to an answering service:
- You’re overwhelmed by the amount of calls coming in
- You want your employees to focus on the specialties of their trade, rather than manning the phones
- You’re missing out on calls being made after business hours
- You know that call automation can kill customer service
- Your in-person customer service is lacking because of time spent on phone calls
- You want to take advantage of the most lucrative area of the marketing pipeline