No question, whatever your situation, you want your every-day and off-hours call-handling to provide great customer experiences leading to solid client retention, and of course the addition of new business.
And get this “other side of the coin”: If you’re losing current clients and potential new business due to poor after-hours call handling, you won’t even know it…
Truth is, most answering service operators are not able to deliver anywhere near first-rate call handling. “High quality answering services?” They are few and far between. Believe me, I know: I’ve been in the middle of this game for 36 years.
Your incoming emergency calls of course involve refrigerant leaks, clogged lines, ventilation snafus, gas leaks, electrical problems etc.. Ideally, these calls are being processed by a real human being, an agent who will empathize with the caller, get precisely correct information, and pass it on immediately. And let’s just say it: No customer (or potential customer) with an after-hours HVAC problem wants to deal with a voice mail system or to be put on hold for a drawn-out period of time…or to not have their call answered at all.
But, you knew that already, right?
No question, all-the-time availability is mandatory, but for an around-the-clock answering service to survive as a business it must put callers on hold now and then. But the simple questions are, how often does this happen and how long is the average hold-time? Well, then there’s this question, too: do callers ever get a busy-signal? (They better not! Not ever…).
The emergency phone call should be managed by the operator/agent so that 100% of the conversation is about the resolution of the actual problem.
The operator should be quick and empathetic, and to the point: friendly and professional, and the message precisely delivered…with no more and no less information than is required for your on-call personnel.
Obviously, the agent should be able to unfailingly make the distinction between urgent and non-urgent (office) calls. Waking your on-call people at 2am for a billing question can’t happen! But maybe even more importantly, emergency call handling should never include waking up the wrong on-call person!
Yes, Centratel answering service is about getting all of the above details exactly correct every single time, and know – per actual statistics – in all of these aspects, we’re literally the very best answering service in the United States.
We provide fail-safe, cordial, fast and precise call-processing by our operators to hundreds of HVAC companies across the country!
And we’ve been doing it for well over three decades.
For much more information, whether you use an answering service now – or never have used one – take a look at our website “Price Quote” page where you can email us an application. Or, just give us a call at 800-664-7159.
Note that we’ll send you a valuable no-obligation gift just for talking to us. (The gift? It’s a hardcover copy of the just-released fourth edition of my bestselling book for small business owners, Work the System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less.)
And remember, you’ll get a 30-day, no-obligation free trial if you choose to give us a try.
Thanks for taking the time to read this. And have a great day!
Sam Carpenter
Centratel Founder and Owner
