If you’ve decided it’s the right time to outsource your business’ call answering you’ll have two options.

You could either use a dedicated, professional call answering service.

Or you could hire a call centre.

If you’re new to outsourcing telephone answering, you might think that call answering and a call centre are the same thing, but there are a few key differences that can make or break the success of your investment.

If you want your outsourced call answering to be specific, personalised and an extension of your company – then a telephone answering service will be a better investment than a call centre.

Here’s why.

Creating a personalised call answering service

The main benefit of using a telephone answering service – rather than a call centre – is it will operate as an extension of your own business, rather than a simple message taking service.

When a caller gets in touch, as far as they know, they’re talking to a member of your company.

Your call answering service team can take and relay messages to the right people if necessary, but you can also provide them with information so they can answer basic questions themselves, freeing your own staff to focus on more important work.

Essentially, they operate as an in-house receptionist, only they work remotely.

Compare that to a call centre.

In a call centre, operators are only there to take messages and follow a rigid script that’s the same no matter who calls or what their enquiry is.

This leaves a lot of room for customers to be unsatisfied with their experience dealing with your company when they call.

Improving your business operations with telephone answering

As a business owner you only have a finite amount of time in the day and you need to spend as much of it as possible on your business.

Whether it’s making decisions in the short-term or planning for the future.

Dealing with phone enquiries can take away from that time, but you can’t afford to let calls go unanswered.

This is especially true if you’re a solo or small business.

From a business operations standpoint, a call centre offers zero value.

On the other hand, a telephone answering service can give you back valuable time to focus on your business.

As well as ensuring you never miss a call from a lead or customer, a dedicated call answering service can deal with simple customer enquiries and questions so you can focus your attention on more complex enquiries, or on improving your business.

A telephone answering service can even streamline your sales process by qualifying leads before you or your sales team take over.

Lead qualification is one of the most complex and time consuming tasks according to 22% of sales people.

And it can be costly when your sales team is spending most of its time qualifying leads, rather than dealing with leads who have higher probability of converting.

So from a business operation perspective, a telephone answering service is the best option over a call centre.

Adding additional services to your call answering

Most call centres are specifically for message taking and offer no other services that can help your business.

However, most telephone answering providers do offer other business functions that can improve how your business operates and increase its profitability.

One of the key additional services you can get from your telephone answering service (or at least from Face For Business) is diary management and meeting booking to help remove the need for call backs, freeing up your time and increasing productivity.

A good call answering team will also remove sales calls should you want them removed and politely but effectively turn away sales calls and deter them from calling again.

Extend your opening hours – whilst your business may be closed at 5pm or 6pm  and not open weekends some telephone answering services offer extended times of opening so callers have more flexibility when they can call your company.

Your call answering service can take care of this for you.

Improve your business with a telephone answering service

If you’re planning to outsource your business’ call answering, you need to know it will be to the benefit of your company and not the detriment.

Today, 80% of customers are more likely to make a purchase with a business which creates a more personal experience for them.

This is particularly important when dealing with customers over the phone.

Hiring a call centre will mean you’ll get messages, but you won’t get the kind of personalised phone service your customers expect.

You’ll also lose the additional benefits, all of which can set the tone for you to turn your business into a success.

If you want to know more about telephone answering for your business, get in touch to find out about our free trial.