According to Freelancer.com, the largest outsourcing and crowdsourcing marketplace, a huge increase in virtual assistant jobs (144%) focusing on answering service and administrative functions emerged in the first quarter of 2012. The figure indicates that many companies are already acquiring the service.
Also, every other firm you know has already acquired answering services. All over the world, businesses, organizations, companies, and even individuals (who are usually very busy) have an answering service.
You, however, are still in a dilemma whether to get the service for your company, thinking, "An answering service may take the load of a hundred calls off our shoulders, but will the service value our customers' concerns as much as our company does?"
For individual professionals, what pushed them to finally take advantage of an answering service was having a phone ringing off the hook in the middle of making business plans or reports. For others, it's the accepted fact that taking calls usually eats up much of their time as well, putting other business matters on hold, if not entirely neglected.
Many of these people have resorted to voice mail too, leaving a machine to "rescue" the calls; however, the piled-up voice mails will eventually still have to be attended to, and will take up much time all the same.
If your business or company has been experiencing such cases, then it's high time to avail an answering service. As for the quality of the service, you can rest assured that your customers' concerns are well taken care of as long as you do your part in searching for the best BPO (business process outsourcing) service provider.
The following are the major factors that you should look into upon looking for a third-party service provider of an answering service:
- Answering Service Operators
See to it that the answering service operators, the people who will take the calls of your company's customers or clients, are assigned to focus on your business.
The BPO service provider can train its operators to be as good as experts about the nature of your company. In turn, addressing your customers' concerns can be well deemed as being delivered within your office walls
It is important for the operators to have ample knowledge of the industry your business belongs to. If your business is in the publishing industry, then operators who are wide readers can make a difference in taking the calls of your customers—that is, being able to connect with the callers by easily answering queries about books or providing further information about famous authors and the latest novels.
- Up-to-Date Technology
Look for a service provider that has the tools or equipment that can efficiently record phone logs, take note of call fluctuations, and track inbound and outbound calls. The data from these are vital in determining selling patterns and growth rates of purchases. Also check the provider's technological ability to handle calls of bigger volumes.
The technology to speed up receipt of calls and messages is as important as the availability of a failover system; it is best to opt for a company who has both means.
- Workforce Status
Constructive and accommodating answering service operators can stem from healthy working environment. Checking the status of the workforce of a service provider can help you determine whether it's favorable to partner with that BPO service provider.
A high rate of employee turnover can also translate to poor accommodation of your callers. With employees constantly leaving the BPO company, the customers of your business will have to be constantly reassigned to another operator, which can result to an inefficient means of addressing customer concerns.
- Price Comparison
Gather background data and price rates of the main competitors of the service provider/s you are looking into. Narrow down your options to ones that can truly deliver quality answering service and offer reasonable rates.
Getting an answering service may be a big decision for your company, but with the aforementioned to guide your choices, availing an answering service can turn out to be one of the best moves you've made for your company.
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