Investing in a telephone answering service can mean you never need to worry about missing an incoming call to your business again.

Whether it’s an existing customer looking for help, or a lead or prospect calling to find out more information, with a call answering service at your side you know every call is being dealt with professionally so you and your team can focus on your business.

But answering calls, taking messages and forwarding callers to the right person on your team aren’t the only benefits you can get from hiring a call answering service.

In fact there are several benefits for your business you can get from a telephone answering company that you’ve not even thought of:

1 – Qualifying leads

More than a fifth (22%) of sales people 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 more active leads who could be customers, but who you’re potentially missing out on.

Not many businesses realise it, but using a call answering service can improve your sales qualification process, by using the service to qualify leads for you before they get to your sales team.

2 – 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.

3 – 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 everyday, 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 you receive reduces overtime.

4 – 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.

Adding benefits to your business with telephone answering services

A telephone answering service can add a series of benefits that can make your business more efficient and better positioned to be successful.

With call handlers dealing with your calls and messages, as well as handling customer enquiries, taking and chasing payments, blocking nuisance sales calls and qualifying leads, you and your team will have the time to focus on the parts of your business that add value.

Want to find out more about telephone answering services and the benefits you can get, get in touch