Does your business rely on phone calls for customer service? If taking phone calls is important to managing your customer service, you should invest in a cheap answering service. No one likes to call a company and be sent straight to voicemail. Worse than that, people really don?t like listening to recorded messages instead of speaking with a real person. There?s no reason to jeopardize your customer satisfaction ratings by not having the best answering service possible.
Interested in learning more about how a 24 hour answering service could improve your customer satisfaction ratings? Keep reading to find out why customers prefer speaking with a person over the phone when contacting a business.
Why Phone Answering Services Matter for Companies
You may be thinking that your company really doesn?t need any type of answering service. You have a great system going where customers can write in about their problems or leave a voicemail. Unfortunately, it is highly likely that you?re wrong in this assessment. Whether or not a customer wants to report an issue or praise you for your good work, they generally prefer to do so on the phone to a real person.
In fact, many people simply won?t continue on with their request, issue, or praise report if they reach a voicemail. Around 80% of people simply end the call once the voicemail begins. That means you?re missing out on valuable information every time a customer doesn?t reach a real person. With a 24 hour answering service, this wouldn?t be the case. Instead, all customers would reach a representative and their phone call would be noted for company response.
So, if they don?t want to reach a voicemail, why not just try scripted phone calls? Once again, this isn?t a customer preference. When using a scripted phone service, customers aren?t always getting some of their most basic needs met. For instance, many customers want to reach a representative who is trained to offer empathy and emotion during the phone call. With a scripted service, these two characteristics are left out entirely, leaving a customer feeling isolated.
How to Offer Assistance Over the Phone
Not to mention, a scripted service and a voicemail can?t do the one thing customer want most: having their problems solved. If a customer goes out of their way to contact a company, that business should do everything they can to offer help. It doesn?t matter if they?re submitting a good comment or requesting a new item because theirs arrived damaged. They want to speak with a real person who can provide them with a quick response that allows them to move on with their day.
On that note, the reason you should have the best cheap answering service possible is so that customers aren?t put on hold or waiting for hours to reach a representative. Many customers claim they would rather hang up then wait on the line. They prefer to try again later than to be told they need to stay on the line and wait for minutes or hours for the next representative. If you have a cheap answering service that moves customers through the line quickly or has enough representatives to handle the incoming calls, this won?t ever be a problem for your company.
If you don?t yet have an efficient customer service department up-and-running, this is a great way to get started. Add a cheap answering service to your company that can begin the process of creating a customer service department to help your customers out. That way, you?ll be able to better retain customers over time instead of losing customers time and time again after their first purchase of your company?s product or services. A customer service department is essential at any company that wants to demonstrate to its customers that they care about customer opinion and feedback. You never know when a customer review could help create more authority for your company and its brand.
Has your company considered using a phone answering service? Which one did you choose and why? Let us know in the comments how this has helped with customer satisfaction at your company.