8 Ways a Phone Answering Service Can Improve Your Customer Service

Customer service offers a direct connection between your business and customers. Therefore, you must provide incredible customer service to retain and extract more value from your clients.

Some businesses may need assistance with customer service but can always outsource to a phone answering service. Discover some ways a phone answering service can transform your customer service.

1. Around-the-Clock Service

Many customers always value the availability of live customer support agents. So, when clients call your company, they expect to receive help irrespective of the time of day.

Amazingly, phone answering services have enough people to answer calls 24/7. By offering 24/7 support, customers can call at their own convenient time without having to wait. This perk can help your business increase customer satisfaction.

2. Customer Service With a Human Touch

Automated phone systems and chatbots can frustrate customers, particularly baby boomers and older Gen X customers. Many clients would rather speak to live customer support agents due to the human touch.

Outsourcing your customer support to an answering service ensures that clients always have the option to speak to humans. Customer support personnel can offer the human touch that customers desire. Besides, a real person can help with both simple and complex inquiries.

3. Boost Professionalism

Some clients use customer support to gauge the professionalism and reliability of a business. Therefore, you must ensure your customer support department portrays your business in a positive light.

Phone answering companies have well-trained staff who understand how to better interact with customers. In addition, the customers won't be frustrated with countless automated messages.

4. Prevent Communication Barriers

Helping customers who speak a foreign language can be challenging for many businesses. However, a phone answering service can help deal with such customers. Professional answering services and call centers have bilingual and multilingual agents who can speak several foreign languages.

With multilingual agents, foreign customers won't feel locked out—the bilingual answering service will provide them with an incredible customer experience.

5. Handle Overflow Support

Your in-house customer support staff can only handle so many phone calls at once. If hundreds of customers call your company, the support team must put them on hold.

Overflows can result in long wait times, which often frustrates customers. However, a phone answering service can help your business handle overflow calls when your in-house receptionists become overwhelmed.

6. Data Analysis & Reporting

Hiring a phone answering service gives you access to important analytics about your callers. You get to know:

• Market trends
• Customer demographics
• Caller frequency
• Peak call times
• Customer feedback

This information can help you make data-driven decisions. You can evaluate and improve your customer service strategy by analyzing the call data.

7. Boost Employee Productivity

Having your in-house support staff deal with all calls can affect productivity. As productivity declines, your support team might struggle to offer excellent customer service.

Outsourcing specific functions of your customer support can reduce the workload of your in-house team. This allows in-house staff to focus on urgent and complex tasks as the call answering service handles basic queries.

8. Routing Callers to the Right Department

Improving customer service is not all about picking up calls. You must deliver on caller expectations to enhance customer experience. Good customer experience starts with directing callers to the correct department.

Once you set up routing definitions with a phone answering service, the operators will know when to transfer the call to a specific department. These operators will also explain the reason for the call before patching the caller to the right department.

Customer experience is much better when you engage a phone answering service. At AnSer, we understand that exceptional customer service is crucial to your business. Call us today to discover more about our customer support services.