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Small business can benefit from an answering service in a number of different ways. It ensures your business never misses a call and makes handling and responding much easier. While the benefits are always there for small businesses to enjoy, not all live answering services are the same. When picking your service, you need to consider the different features that add to the service. Here are five of the top live answering service features your small business should consider.
1. Appointment management
Your life answering service could have an appointment management service to save time and money. The feature means your customers can instantly book an appointment to see you, without the need for callbacks and other messy arrangements. It can help schedule regular meetings and call, ensuring you and the customer are always aware of when, where and how the meeting will take place. Since scheduling can be costly and especially time-consuming practice, small businesses will love this feature.
Furthermore, you can combine appointment management with appointment reminder calls. No-shows are a common occurrence in all sorts of industries and they can be devastating financially for a small business. With the appointment reminder calls, you can reduce the number of no-shows and help your customers enjoy a better experience as well.
2. Customized phone coverage times
Everyone knows how difficult it is to run a small business. No matter how much you might want to you can’t be present 24/7. This naturally can be damaging for dealing with customers and live answering services can counter the downside for not being able to always be there. This is because the live answering service can be customized according to your business’ needs. You can ensure that even when you or the staff is not there in the office, the system will still pick up and help the customers. The customization guarantees you also don’t end up paying for useless features – you can simply choose the service the work on the days and times the service is most needed and used.
3. Capturing leads
One of the other features you should consider is the ability to capture leads. Some service providers are not just able to take the incoming calls for your business, but can also proactively capture leads to benefit your business. This means that your service can actively bring more money to your business and therefore pay for itself!
4. Local number options
You definitely want to ensure your live answering service offers the option to go with local numbers. Your small business can benefit a lot if the number is local because it ensures the cost stays down and customers don’t need to worry about paying extra somewhere along the time. Furthermore, there are certain service providers that can provide a toll-free number. This service is always an additional feature you want to look into with your answering service.
5. Basic customer service
Live answering services are much more than just call transferring services. You can provide basic customer service for your customers with this service. The feature ensures that your live answering service can tell the customers basic things about your product (pricing details) and the business (such as address or e-mail, for example). This is not a full customer service system, but it can save time in helping out with simple queries the customer or potential customer might have. The customer service feature will ensure your answering service is not just a nuisance or a call transfer system, but a service that provides real value to both your customers and your business.
How to find the right service provider?
The above call center solutions and features are definitely worth keeping in mind when browsing for service providers. But how do you start the search in the first place? Your small business definitely needs to look around and consider different options before picking out the winner.
You can find live answering service providers online. Review websites have great lists of some of the best providers this year and you should look for the service providers’ websites for more information. The review has options for both inbound and outbound services. Check with your network as well to see what other businesses might recommend.
When selecting the service provider, keep in mind two things: your business needs and the cost of the service. Search for special discount codes at OZCodes to find clever ways to cut down the cost and trim down your financial burden. Don’t opt for deals your business can’t afford at the moment. In terms of the needs, always consider what you actually need from the service and don’t add features that only cost you money, but don’t provide any real value.
The above five features are among the best live answering service features you can find. They might not all be particularly useful for your business, but you should always consider the possible value features like this could add to your business and its customers.
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