If you’ve never used one, you may ask, “Are telephone answering services worth it?” That all depends. If you don’t care about your customers, making money, or the long-term viability of your business, the answer is no.
However, if your business and customers are important to you, then a professional answering service should be worth it to you. Consider these items that demonstrate a telephone answering service’s worth.
Retain Customers
Your customers will call you whenever they perceive a need. And they expect a response. If you don’t react, they’ll call someone else. It doesn’t matter how long they’ve done business with your company, if you’re not there when they need you, they’ll jump ship.
Regardless of when they call—day, evening, weekends, or holidays—if you don’t answer your telephone, you’re apt to lose them. Thankfully, for only a few dollars a day, your trusty answering service will cover your phone when you can’t.
They’ll answer your phone and help you retain customers. It’s that simple.
Meet Expectations
Have you ever called a business looking for a response to a question or resolution to a problem and hoped you’d end up in someone’s voicemail? Or that no one would answer at all? Of course not.
Whenever a customer or prospect phones a business, they assume someone will answer. If they didn’t have that expectation, why would they call in the first place?
Who answers the phone isn’t as important as the fact that someone—a real person—answers. And this is precisely what a cost-effective telephone answering service can do for you.
Provide Customer Service
A 24/7 telephone answering service is an ideal around-the-clock customer service tool. The key is that an empathetic human being offers an immediate response to the caller.
When a customer service issue arises, they have little patience and expect quick action. They’re not demanding that your telephone answering service resolve the problem right away, but they do want to know that a real person has set in motion a plan to resolve their concern.
A clunky answering machine can’t do that. A frustrating voicemail system can’t do that either. Only a personal representative from a professional answering service can provide the customer service response that your callers desire.
Enjoy a Huge ROI
What’s all this cost? Isn’t this the underlying question that’s implied when you ask, “Are telephone answering services worth it?”
Unless you’re a large company, expect your telephone answering service to only cost you a couple dollars a day. That’s far less than a cup of premium coffee. And unlike your favorite brew that you drink in a few hours and then is gone, your telephone answering service works for you all day long—and all night.
Given this modest cost of a telephone answering service, retaining one customer a month will more than cover the cost of the service. And when you factor in the lifetime value of that customer, it will offset your telephone answering service bill for months or even years.
What’s the lifetime value of a customer for you? Is it $250? A thousand dollars? Even more? Now, let’s assume your answering service costs you $79 a billing cycle.
Retaining or gaining a customer that represents a lifetime value of $250 produces an amazing return on investment (ROI) of 216 percent. You’d be hard-pressed to get that type of return anywhere else. And if their lifetime value is $1,000 then your ROI is an astronomical 1,165 percent.
Conclusion
Are answering services worth it? They most assuredly are. A quality telephone answering service can help you retain customers, meet their expectations, and provide customer service. As a bonus the small payment you make to your answering service provides a huge ROI month after month, year after year.
Contact us today to learn more about what an answering service is worth and can offer to you and your business. Or if you’re ready to start now, sign up online any time.