Thanks to modern technology, we have come to expect more out of customer service. As the Internet and globalization provides 24/7 access to customer service affiliates, your business has to keep up with the pace. You must respond quickly to phone calls and emails, as well as to social media comments.
If you are running a small business, however, you don’t have the capacity to maintain this effective level of communication. After all, you have a business to run. Stress abounds for small business owners as they attempt to juggle it all including their personal life. For these owners a professional call center service is essential. Hire a call center to achieve the following benefits.
Reduced Stress
When you are running a small business, it’s often you who is handling everything from product orders, inventory and customer service. Your life revolves around your business, which means weekends are fair game for working. Forget about a holiday or vacation, unless you are going to take your business with you. Hire a call center to reduce your stress during vacations and holidays, as well as hours or days when you are off from work.
The main duty of a virtual secretary is to screen calls and forward messages when necessary. You have the ability to choose when to respond to calls, and when to handle them via an automated answering service. For example, if you have to rush out of the office to take your child to the emergency room, your virtual secretary can pick up the calls while you are out.
This saves you from having to call around to find a person to watch your store and answer the phones. Furthermore, you can save yourself the trouble of dealing with receptionists who call in sick or quit unexpectedly, which is one of the most stressful situations for any small business owner to deal with in any industry.
To Handle Excess Traffic
What if you would only need an Arizona answering service once in a blue moon? You don’t need to be out of the office to utilize a call center service as they are beneficial for businesses even when you are in the office. This service has the ability to pick up calls and take messages during an influx of phone calls so you aren’t overwhelmed by the situation. For instance, if you are running a seasonal gift basket business that fulfills the majority of your orders during the month of December, you can utilize a call center at that time to manage the overflow.
Your customers will continue to be cared for and their messages received, while you handle the extra workload taking place with packing and shipping gift boxes. You are less frazzled and better capable of dealing with your day-to-day so you don’t blow your top with customers. Above all else, each of your customers will receive the same high quality service when they call in whether they are trying to place an order or voice a complaint.
It Puts you In Control of Your Time
As a small business owner you have several irons in the fire. You cannot afford to spend all day answering phone calls, nor should you thanks to the services of virtual answering services. Say you are running a clothing design company that caters to boutiques and online shops.
You are doing everything from the creative design of the pieces to choosing your fabrics to packing orders for shipping. You’ve just started out in the business and have yet to hire others to join your company.
Start with the most important job of all, that of customer service, and hire a virtual assistant to help you. Customers, after all, are the top priority of any business whether you are selling clothing or gift baskets.
If you lack the ability to meet their expectations and answer their questions, then you will fail at connecting with your customers. Small businesses are the most tedious to operate.
Delegate your time wisely by outsourcing your first position, that of a virtual secretary to handle your customer communications. Your business will improve as you devote more time to the aspects of product curation and financial matters, while you can rest assured your customers are receiving the utmost attention.
It’s Easy On Your Pay Roll
As you seek out your first employee, you have to consider the overall expense of your payroll. Hiring a receptionist to come into your office includes several costs. In addition to payroll, you have to pay to train your worker when they start the job, in addition to ongoing training to help them grow with your business.
Then you have the expenses of health insurance costs, retirement plans, vacation days, sick days and worker’s comp. Along those lines are social security and taxes that you have to pay for each of your employees. Where are you going to situate your receptionist? You will have to pay for space to house the receptionist’s desk, along with the ongoing expenses for answering service technologies, which are constantly evolving.
After you have looked at all of the associated costs of hiring professional receptionists, you will likely determine that you can’t afford them after all. Call centers overcome all of that. You don’t have to hire anyone, and a virtual assistance service will manage your calls from an off-site location. The managing company of the center will handle all technologies. Therefore the only cost you will have is the base expense for the virtual receptionist service. Easy on the payroll, call centers provide an array of benefits for your small business.
Conclusion
Finding a way to save money is one of the most important parts of running a small business. However, you can only cut so many cost corners before you lose sight of your focus, your customers. Without your customers you can’t sell any services or products. Take a step back and determine how you are going to better serve your potential and current customers.
Providing top-notch customer service is a major aspect of this, but you can’t do everything alone. By outsourcing your customer service communication needs to an answering service, you stand to gain in your business reputation. Furthermore, you gain the ability to grow your business without adding a superfluous expense to your budget. Take a note from the experts among small business owners and hire an answering service today to maintain your customers’ service expectations.
