You are the owner of a small to medium size, service based business. Your company has been growing, your marketing is working effectively and you are probably busier than ever before. With all of this success you are likely seeing profitability and a strong bottom line. Odds are that this is everything that you had hoped for when you first decided to become an entrepreneur and start your business. Of course, success can be a double edged sword and with all of these positives can come some negatives. One of the most common problems that many small business owners face is that they become inseparable from their phone.
Being successful in a service related industry typically means that the phone rings 24/7 including weekends. For tradespeople like HVAC contractors, plumbers, and disaster restoration companies, emergencies don’t stop happening just because your office closed for the day. In fact, for your customers, most emergencies and urgent situations occur after hours, and that is why you keep that phone on you, ready to be answered at all times. Family dinners get disturbed by calls, a day at the lake or gatherings with friends get interrupted constantly and the real problem is that only a small percentage of the calls you answer are truly emergencies. You answer every call because you don’t want to miss out on potential business, that’s what has made you so successful, but all too often the call interrupting your family time is non-urgent such as someone wanting to reschedule their maintenance appointment for next Tuesday and this can be just plain frustrating. This is one of many reasons that thousands of small business owners choose to utilize a Telephone Answering Service.
A telephone answering service employs a group of trained telephone service representatives (TSRs) who answer telephone calls from a multitude of different clients and customers. Serving business and professional clients, the telephone service representative (operator) takes incoming calls, records messages in a database, and then passes those messages on to the client’s designated on-call personnel. The TSR takes detailed messages and relays those messages to the client based on the client’s specific instructions. Many of the incoming calls are of an urgent nature, but those that are not can be saved for the next business day so as not to bother you or your on-call staff with issues that can be handled during normal business hours.
Among other things, using an answering service gives business owners a certain amount of freedom from their phone while still providing an assurance policy that they will not miss out on true emergency calls and have the call go to a competitor instead. An answering service will not only capture the customer call but also ensure that you get their message in a timely manner so you can respond to their needs. Using an answering service will also give your company an image of professionalism and respectability that voice mail or phone tree simply cannot offer. A high quality answering service such as Centratel ensures that a live person, representing your company will be available anytime, day or night to take your calls, help you gain new customers, retain old ones, and help your business continue to grow. All of this while allowing you to have an uninterrupted family meal and a peaceful night of sleep.
