Answering services are great when they are customized to fit your business. Here are a few ways you can make sure your live support plan is tailored to your specific needs.
So you’ve signed up with an answering service. Great! Clearly you understand all the benefits that come from partnering with a live support provider. But hold on. You can’t just sign your month-to-month contract and walk away expecting great results. If you really want to get the most out of your answering service, then you’ll put in a little time to ensure success. And a successful answering service program requires one thing from you: customization.
To truly make your answering service an extension of your business and reap the rewards, you must make sure your plan is fully customized to fit your company and its unique needs. Here are a few ways you can customize your answering service and ensure you’ve got a program that is perfect for you.
Dial in that script
It all begins with the scripting. Don’t settle for some lame template where you just insert your company name here and there to get some weak mad libs style script. This is your chance to convey what you want your company to sound like to callers, so take this big opportunity to really brand your phones. Include verbage that you use when you handle the phones. Customize your script to ask callers questions that will help you diagnose how to help them best. Put together a list of answers to frequently asked questions they might have. Work with your answering service rep to build an ideal script that is completely unique to your business. When your callers reach your answering service they won’t even be able to tell the difference!
Message delivery
When it comes to your answering service delivering your messages, let them know exactly how you’d like to receive them. Rather than simply saying, “Send me my messages,” you should give some precise instructions to further customize your answering service plan. You’ve got to consider if you prefer messages be relayed by call, text, email, fax, page, secure online portal, smoke signal, carrier pigeon, or however you prefer. When should you get the messages? As soon as the call is complete, all over night messages at 8 a.m., every hour? Don’t forget to decide who should be getting the messages. Do they all go to you? What time frame should your on-call person receive them? Should they go to someone on your management team? You can mix and match all you want when it comes to message delivery too! Customize your message delivery options to create an answering service plan that works best for you.
Promotions
Not everyone thinks of this one, but you can and should further customize your program by leveraging your answering service to promote your specials, deals, and events! Whenever you are running a promotion, trying to get people to sign up for something, or spreading the word about a product you should get your answering service to help. Just give them all the details about what you’ve got going on and have them share with all your callers. It’s a fantastic way to share your info, increase sales, and get more people in on whatever you’ve got going on. Using your answering service to help with your promotions is a truly fantastic way to customize your live answer plan.
Maximize the power of your answering service by fully customizing your plan to become an extension of your business. If you’d like to find out what a customized answering service program could look like for your company, give us a call today at 800-295-7000.
