Imagine putting time and effort into marketing, only to miss out on new leads because you couldn’t get to the phone.

Or losing a customer because of poor customer service simply because of missed phone calls.

Or seeing productivity drop because your team is spending too much time dealing with nuisance sales calls that pull them away from what they’re meant to be doing.

Phone calls are an often overlooked part of customer service today, with electronic communication like instant messaging, email and web-based live chat taking priority.

But the fact is, telephone answering remains an essential element of customer service.

One answer can be to hire a receptionist to sit at a desk and deal with calls (and there’s definitely a space for this).

But hiring staff gets expensive quickly.

A better solution can be to invest in a call answering service.

Here are 9 reasons why.

1. Never miss another call

Try as you might, there will be times when you just can’t answer the phone in time.

Whether you’re in a meeting, travelling or on another call, things get in the way.

When this happens, you’re left hoping a caller will either leave a voicemail or call you back (although they’re more likely to call someone else).

With a call answering service, you never need to worry about missing calls again because a team of PAs will be available to deal with calls when you’re too busy.

Unlike a call centre, your PAs will answer the phone as if they’re in your office, so callers get the kind of personalised experience you’d want.

They can either forward calls to the right person, take messages or even deal with some customer enquiries directly.

Securing just one sale a month as a result of signing up for a telephone answering service and having your PA take the call, could pay for the investment itself.

2. Giving the right impression

Answering a call is obviously important, but how you answer the phone can be just as important when it comes to creating the right first impression.

This isn’t always easy when you or your team are answering the phone, especially when you’re feeling rushed.

It can be too easy to answer the phone as if the call is an inconvenience or getting in the way – which isn’t how the customer wants to feel.

With a call answering service like Face For Business, you know calls are always answered professionally and that your business will be represented in the best way.

Your PA can work from an agreed call script and ensure calls are handled in a confident, friendly way so customers feel greeted.

3. Qualifying leads

More than a fifth of salespeople (22%) say that qualifying leads is the most difficult and time-consuming part of their job.

And for every minute they spend qualifying leads who don’t become customers, they’re spending less time on active leads who could be customers.

And this is new revenue you’re missing out on. Not many businesses realise it, but using a call answering service like Face For Business can improve your sales qualification process, by using the service to qualify leads for you before they get to your sales team.

You can simply provide your PAs with your sales qualification questions and allow them to either forward hot leads directly to your sales team or send cold leads to more information that will help them.

4. Taking payments directly from customers

Some customer enquiries are going to be relatively simple to deal with, but when there are lots of them, and they mount up during the day, they can take up as much time as a difficult enquiry.

One such enquiry is when customers are phoning to pay for a service.

These are calls you don’t want to miss (you never want to miss a call when money is involved), but is it really the best use of your employees’ time?

With telephone answering services (at least the right one), your receptionists can take payments directly from customers so your staff can continue focusing on new business and generating more revenue.

5. Removing you from sales lists & avoiding nuisance calls

Unsolicited sales calls are a common part of business, and there’s always a provider somewhere looking to sell you their product or service.

These calls can quickly become a nuisance when you’re dealing with dozens of them every day, and when you’re a solo entrepreneur or small business with limited resources, handling these types of calls can take up all the time you have to work on your business.

Hiring a telephone answering service can help you create a barrier between you and these sales calls so you don’t have to deal with them.

Your receptionists can screen calls using your agreed criteria so only legitimate business calls make it through. Not only that but your call answering service can have you removed from sales lists when they call, so the number of nuisance calls that you receive reduces over time.

6. Handling customer enquiries for you

Any business owner or client-facing person knows that while every customer enquiry is important, many of them are of a similar nature, which means the answers to many of them are just the same too.

When you’re low on resources, answering all these queries can take up too much time and deflect you away from value-adding work and dealing with more complex customer enquiries.

With a telephone answering service, you can have these basic enquiries dealt with for you so you and your team have more time to focus on other enquiries and building value for customers.

7. Cover busy periods

Whether it’s the annual holiday season, someone is off sick, or you’re recruiting, with a call answering service, your phones will be picked up even if there is no one in the office.

You can choose when calls are answered, and where they are diverted to. And you’ll always get your messages in your preferred format straightaway.

The benefit of using a call answering service during these busy periods is the scalability of the service.

You can easily add more call answering to your plan to cover busy periods in the year, and then scale your resource (and price) back down when things get calmer.

If you did this by hiring a member of staff, you’d have the cover during the busy period, but then still be paying for wages and everything else even when you no longer need as much cover.

See how our call answering service can help you out when you’re suffering from staff shortages.

8. Increase your productivity

When you’re in the middle of a meeting or knee-deep in documents, the last thing you need is to break the flow by answering the phone.

A telephone answering service is the perfect way to filter and forward calls, so you can focus without interruptions.

Meeting requests, sales enquiries and important new business queries can be answered by your PA and forwarded to you by email or text. That way, you and your team can focus more on your work and value-adding tasks.

9. Be confident it is being done correctly

We all like to be in control of our destiny, and putting faith in an outside company can be hard.

At Face for Business, not only do you have your own, trained PA who understands who you are and what you do, but you can also listen to the calls they answer on your behalf.

All of your calls and messages will be accessible to read and listen to, 24 hours a day, via our unique web portal.

Experience the benefits of a call answering service free for 7 days

What we’ve mentioned here are just the obvious benefits you can get from a call answering service.

If you want to get these and many other benefits, sign up for a free 7-day trial of Face For Business’ telephone answering service.

We’ll onboard you just like any other client, and you’ll get a team of PAs answering your calls and letting you concentrate on your company.

If you’re not convinced at the end of the trial, there’s no obligation to continue, and we can part ways. What have you got to lose?

Sign up for your 7-day free trial here