A lot of companies and businesses have realized the importance of using a live phone answering service and the advantages it provides in terms of customer service and at drawing in a larger revenue. Once your business, firm or industry has expanded beyond a basic level, it makes a lot of sense to employ a phone answering service. It cuts down the hassle and the expense of having to staff an in house cell devoted to answering customer calls. This usually consists of hiring a receptionist or two. It is definitely expensive to do this, and receptionists aren’t the most reliable person to charge with the duty of conveying the right kind of information to your customers, partners, colleagues and potential customers always or to promote your business them to them and help expand your business. Using a live answering service thus as a resource suggests the kind of micro thinking that can take any start up to great heights.

A live answering service provides so many different features. Following are some of these features:

Someone will always answer calls, and on time. When the call centre has a team whose only job is to answer calls and do that well, the staff is ever ready and prepared to answer the call immediately. They are professional and friendly. They know your business inside out and can not only answer any questions knowledgeably, but also promote your business. This helps increase sales, improves impressions, helps with problem solving and betters customer relations.

Also, companies routinely outsource the answering of calls to a live phone answering service which uses the business name. They also answer calls as if they are on site at the main office. The person on the other end of the call will never know they have not, in fact, reached the office at the actual location they are calling.

In addition the service providers issue the company hiring them with a toll free number to replace their contact number. Or their old contact number can redirect calls to the toll free number where an operator answers and deals with the call. It’s a fairly seamless integration. Indeed more businesses are using this facility than not. It is simply considered a service the company itself offers that has been outsourced. Since the staff handling calls on behalf of a particular company also view themselves as linked to that company, as well as end up knowing a fair amount about the company and how its internal processes work, this is a two way street and indeed, reinforces the ‘integration’ concept from both ends of the deal.

Data management is another advantage. Every call is recorded. Every message is recorded as our voice mails and caller details. It is usually available in a hard copy format, printer friendly as well accessible from web portal client accounts that connect to their Phone Answering Service provider. It opens the door for a lot more accountability. Losing a message or call becomes a thing of the past.