The way customers choose to do business with companies has changed. Consumers are more conscious of their time and expect a level of service that extends beyond traditional business hours, making it easy for busy consumers to get things done. Businesses have had to adjust to meet the demand of customer expectations. Many customers appreciate businesses they can contact before their workday starts and after their day ends. This includes hours as early as 7:00 am and later than 5:00 pm. This means traditional 9-5 business hours don’t suffice for today’s consumers.

The Cost of Missed Customer Calls

The cost for businesses to offer extended hours can be expensive. Increased staffing needs, overtime pay, and operational costs can be burdensome for a small business. However, not being available for a potential new customer or servicing an existing customer after-hours can be more costly. Businesses miss 62% of customer calls. Missed calls equate to missed opportunities that can add up to large gaps in profit margin. In addition to the loss of potential sales calls, the opportunity to provide good customer service by being available can impact a business’s reputation and adversely affect a customer’s overall experience. Lack of availability to customers is not confined to office hours. It also includes unavailability during business hours due to call overflow or understaffing. An estimated 30% of consumers say not being able to reach a live agent is the most frustrating of customer service experiences.

What’s the Solution For Avoiding Missed Customer Calls?

Employing the expertise of a professional answering service alleviates the burden. An answering service provides 24/7 live agents, and a variety of services that allow businesses to operate after hours, and support business overflow within normal hours. A popular service offered by answering services is appointment scheduling. Appointment scheduling is a simple and effective way to keep your doors open for business around the clock. A scheduled appointment engages a customer’s eagerness to do business with you from the beginning. Hiring an answering service for appointment scheduling helps set up your day for success and saves you time in follow-up calls, chasing leads, or playing phone tag with customers. After-hours call answering and message delivery services will provide peace of mind that all of your customers’ calls will be handled appropriately and professionally even when they call outside your regular hours. We know that business owners rarely take time for themselves so when they do, it’s critical to be confident that customers will be treated as you would treat them. Missing those calls could cost you a lot and we know that it’s much easier to work from a list of properly-taken messages than it is to listen to recording after recording of messages that went to voicemail. Depending on your desired method of delivery, appointment setting and messages can be delivered to your business in real-time, hourly, daily, and in a variety of ways. The benefit is captured opportunities and extended customer service without drastically affecting staffing or overhead. Responsive Answering Service provides a host of services for businesses in many industries utilizing only highly-trained live professionals available 24/7 for your business. Contact us to learn more about how Responsive Answering Service can help your business answer every call.
George Otte

George otte

George Otte is an entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience in tech support, fulfillment, and answering service management. His leadership and vision help us provide the best possible support, because he knows how vital it is for the continued success of your business. Responsive Answering Service launched in 2012, with George fulfilling the role of CEO to provide professional contact center and answering services for medical, legal, and various service industries, with the intent to best fit the needs of our clients and their respective fields.

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INSIGHTS FROM SATISFIED CLIENTS

Jennifer Ashner

JENNIFER ASHNER

Compliance and quality director chartwell home infusion and specialty pharmacy

5 star rating

When Chartwell decided it was necessary to upgrade the answering system to accommodate the increase in calls during non-business hours, because of growth in business, we contacted Responsive Answering Service.

“Their representative met with our clinical management group. She listened intently as we described the current process for handling after hours calls, what our needs were, and what our expectations for a new system would be. She took our needs and wish list back to her developers and designers who came up with a customized system that gets text messages to the on-call staff in a timely and effective manner that allows us to deal with the issues that our patients are trying to get help with.

The timeliness of return calls has improved dramatically, and no calls are dropped or missed. Our customers ratings on ability to reach us after hours has scored 98%! We are extremely pleased with the service and the contribution it has made to an increase in our overall customer satisfaction scores.”

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