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A telephone answering service is a company that answers telephone calls on another company’s behalf. That explanation sounds simple enough, but a lot more goes into the process than meets the eye. This article will give you an inside look at how answering services work. What Answering Services Look Like Historically, a telephone answering service was nothing more than a few operators in a room processing messages. If you walked into an answering service 20 years ago, it probably wouldn’t have looked much different than a typical office. Today, answering services have expanded into full fledged call centers, with large centers having hundreds of agents taking calls on a 24 hour basis. While answering services do operate in a typical call center environment with employees sharing the same physical location, many also maintain a remote workforce with employees taking calls from their homes. What They Do for Customers A lot goes into taking calls besides just answering the phone. When answering services are taking calls for another company, they’re likely performing a variety of other services as well, such as registering someone for an event, placing an order, scheduling an appointment, or dispatching a technician to a job site. There are a wide range of services performed by answering services because every business has different telephone communication needs. Take a property management company, for example. Think about the variety of calls that could be made to a property management company: Prospective tenants looking for general information Prospective tenants wanting to schedule a viewing Current tenants with maintenance requests Technicians and service companies checking in regarding requests General office calls And the list could go on. In order to appropriately handle these various situations, answering services employ custom scripting and software that allow them to personalize the experience depending on the client and the type of call. So, when a tenant calls in with a maintenance request, the answering service is prepared with a series of questions, with the resulting request either being entered into a maintenance queue or dispatched directly to a maintenance technician if the situation requires immediate attention. Why They Succeed Though technology has advanced and new communication channels exist, telephone communication is still a necessary tool for most businesses. And as long as that is the case, businesses will need means to effectively process their call volume and better serve their customers. Answering services serve that need by providing a cost effective means of outsourcing core communication functions. As you’ve seen, they are flexible companies capable of serving a wide variety of needs and situations. By customizing their services to meet the ongoing demands of modern enterprise, and doing so at a competitive price, they’ll continue to be successful for decades to come. Click here to know more about telephone answering services. Answering Service
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