Answering Services for Small Businesses

Answering services for small businesses assume importance when the employees find it difficult to keep track of unattended messages and revert to the callers. Many a times, a business may lose revenue despite attending to messages on a prompt basis since a number of callers may hang up instead of leaving a voice mail. It's time to turn to a professional answering service when messages start piling up and delays in answering customer queries translate into lower business revenue. A 24-hour answering service, that is geared towards handling customer queries, ensures that a business provides the desired level of customer service and retains clients while roping in many more.

Business Answering Services

Answering services for small businesses may be virtual or live. The latter is preferred since the caller has the opportunity of talking to an operator who can render the desired assistance.

Virtual Answering Services: A virtual answering service or a virtual receptionist is programmed to answer calls with the name of the company, take the message and inform the recipient by email or SMS. This is an automated telephone answering service that is set-up to handle either select calls or all calls that are not answered within 15 seconds. These automated answering services also allow the caller to obtain a series of information based on responses to prompts. A virtual answering service may also divert calls to a call center in case a busy signal is detected. The caller, whose call has been routed, is typically given the option of speaking with an operator or leaving a voice mail. For more on professional voice mail etiquette, one may refer to the article, 'Voicemail Etiquette'.

A virtual order taking service can be useful for a business when clients typically call after normal business hours to place an order for a specific product or a service that has been advertised on television. Businesses can also use computerized telemarketing to advertise products. This is done by hooking up a computer to a standard phone and programming it so that numbers are dialed automatically.

Live Answering Services: These telephone answering services give the caller the opportunity of talking to operators who assess the urgency of the call and decide on the course of action. If the call is not urgent, the call may be transferred to an automated answering service. This is useful for entrepreneurs who would like to provide a business answering service that is personalized to suit the needs of the clients.

An operator is desirable when the business would like to set up appointments with potential customers or would like to conduct surveys to gather public opinion.

A number of small business answering service providers invest a great deal of money for setting up answering systems that provide virtual answering services in addition to meeting 24/7 call handling requirements. Telecommuters and solo entrepreneurs benefit from using these business answering service that help render a professional appearance to their enterprise.

An automatic 800 answering service or a toll free service is made available to callers by businesses engaged in processing a large volume of calls. It is possible to get a 800 business number for a residence phone or a cell phone. Moreover, a number of service providers have started waiving the one-time line setup fee and monthly fee for initial months of service. This has made it possible for small businesses to extend this facility to callers. Answering services for small businesses have caught on in a big way, thus encouraging entrepreneurs to start a business answering service from the comfort of their home.