For a growing and established businesses alike, finding ways to cut costs and boost growth is essential to keeping your company afloat. If you’re not thinking about ways to streamline operational procedures and improve the bottom line, you could be putting your business at risk and siphoning away funds that you could be investing in your company. But it isn’t always easy finding places to save money and increase productivity at the same time.
Fortunately, one of the simplest ways to do this is also the most cost-effective. Hiring an answering service for your company isn’t just a shrewd business move, it’s common sense for entrepreneurs who are expanding at a rapid rate and don’t want to lose out on quality customer service during that period of growth. If you haven’t considered setting up an all-hours answering service before now, here are a few good reasons to get started on improving your bottom line today.
Streamline Inquiries
When your business was first starting out, you probably began with a small staff manning the desks until you go large enough to hire a full-time assistant or receptionist. Now, you’ve grown large enough that your receptionist isn’t quite enough to handle all the calls coming through on a daily basis. When it comes to off-hour calls on evenings, weekends, or holidays, you have to let each call go to voicemail and deal with it on Monday.
While this is a common situation that many young businesses find themselves in, it can be easily remedied without much hassle, and at a much lower cost to you. Using an answering service won’t just help you free up your receptionist for more urgent tasks, it will help you filter calls by order of importance, sort through data, and figure out what the majority of your callers want to know. Are you getting a lot of calls about basic information, like office hours and directions? Do you deal with a ton of telemarketers? Do your calls come from potential new clients? All this information will prove incredibly useful as you grow your business and learn to prioritize client needs through your new, streamlined communication system.
Raise Your Business’s Profile
It might not seem like doing something as simple as setting up an answering service could do a lot for your business’s prestige. But think again: Using a professional service can go a long way toward building up your reputation in the eyes of your client base. If your customers keep calling only to be greeted by the same few overworked staffers, they might start to develop doubts about how capable your business is in terms of meeting their needs. You never want your company to appear to be over its own head or disorganized, especially when it comes to basic communication. An answering service will be able to do the work of keeping your brand looking organized, professional, and consistent to callers who might be seeking your services. Never underestimate the importance of presenting a polished, consistent front to the outside world: It could end up being just the thing to raise you above the competition and growing your funds year by year.
Enhance Credibility
When you’re taking meetings, making moves, or even jumping on a client call, presenting your business in the best possible light is extremely important. When clients or potential investors call your office and aren’t directed to the right person or are left on hold for long periods of time, it doesn’t speak well of your business. Your clients want to trust you. When you use a professional answering service, you’re making it that much easier for potential clients and partners to put their faith in your business.
You never want your office to appear unorganized, even at the most basic operational level. Instead of spending a ton of money and time hiring receptionists and having to train them to reflect brand values, you can use an answering service that already keeps your business priorities in mind at half the cost of a full-time employee. The right service will provide you with a professional organization system that will reassure your callers that they’re putting their trust, and their money, in the right hands.
Organize Your Workforce
When figuring out the best way for your company to operate, you’re probably focusing a lot on getting the important work done. You’re figuring out your strategy, raising funds, hiring staff, and finding a way to market your business successfully. All that work is crucial to your survival as a business. However, in the early days of setting up a successful company, a bunch of equally important operational tasks can easily get swept under the rug.
If you’re focusing all your attention on higher-level management solutions, you could be ignored a huge part of your business. Of course, you shouldn’t have to be responsible for overseeing every single aspect of your growing company. Ideally, you’ll have a dedicated staff and a number of organizational tools to help make sure that your business is thriving. One of these organizational tools should be an answering service that lets each caller know that their call is valued and prioritized by your company. The better your business becomes at dealing with high call volume and increasing customer satisfaction with each call, the more likely your customers will be to stay loyal and bring in new clients.
Funnel Savings into Long-Term Growth
Even if your business is thriving after the first few years, your continued success still depends on how you use your money to grow and sustain your company. If you’re still dealing with basic disorganization from day to day, chances are you’ll still be throwing money at the problem hoping it will go away. If the volume of calls just gets more overwhelming the more your business grows, it won’t matter how many staffers you hire to deal with the issue. By using an answering service, you’ll be saving money on full-time employees while implementing a long-standing organizational system to help you keep client needs high and operational costs low. With all the money you’ve saved, you can start thinking about the smartest, most efficient way to put it back into your business.
