When looking at hiring an onsite receptionist or enlisting the services of an answering service, you don’t have to take a great deal of time to realize which one best suits your company. Based on the response we’ve receives from clients who use a live answering service, three key areas rise to the top; time, availability, and money.
Availability
The office can sometimes be limiting for any business. An employee’s regular shift is usually Monday-Friday, 8am-5pm, but do your clients and customers shop or need services in regular shifts. Do their needs only happen Monday through Friday and stop at 5 pm, and not on weekends or holidays. Of course not! Now, this is where the benefits of being available to come in when you use a call center to handle your calls. A live answering service offers your company a host of proficient representatives available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year. This translates to you not having to worry about client intake, missed sales leads, or not being available for a client that may want to re-schedule or change an appointment. Being available around-the-clock shows your customers that you’re attentive to and truly care for their needs.
Money
Money is an element that any office manager or business owner is most interested in. The cost of hiring in-house representatives continues to be on the rise. Be it technology, insurance, paid time off, benefits, or other things needed for a new staff to carry out their tasks, it is costly and many employers fail to think through this when they need to manage or expand growth. For instance, you may have to pay a full-time, in-house receptionist $10/hr. Count that per month and you’ll have to pay about $1600, not including overtime and holiday pay, insurance, and other benefits. And that is just for a single service rep.
Services such as The Best Call Center only charges $1/minute flat-rate. Some of their clients pay less than $250 a month for a full array of answering service. Using a call center representative would significantly free you up so you’re able to use what you save to reinvest in your company, get access to a big team of professionally trained call answering experts, and provide more for your customers.
Time
Another benefit of choosing an answering service over hiring an onsite receptionist is that you save time. You also gain peace of mind because you no longer have to stress over investing your energy, effort, and time on enlisting, interviewing or training customer service agents or receptionists. When you partner with a live answering service to help oversee or develop your company, not only do you save time from not having to recruit and train agents, you also save time when your business grows given that a professional answering service will scale with your growth. Whether you’re in or outside your office, time is always important. An answering service allows you to spend time with loved ones or go on that vacation you’ve been wanting for some time.
These are just three of the main benefits of partnering with a call center over hiring an in-house receptionist. There are other numerous benefits that your business can take advantage of.