You love your clients but you want to have a personal life, too. Meeting their needs and yours can be challenging, but an after hours phone answering service can bridge the gap after 5 p.m. and on weekends when you’re off the clock but want to be available. And this service is not just for doctors or dentists who might have patients go in to labor or have a serious or unexpected reaction to a medication or a tooth that just can’t wait until Monday. Many other service-related businesses such as equipment rental might find that clients need assistance outside of regular business hours when they are using the tools or equipment. If you rent inflatable bouncy houses or carpet cleaners or power tools, you know that customers need answers to their questions now, not tomorrow.
And while people love to use their computers or devices to search, they do not love to reach customer service via an online chat. In fact 80% prefer to contact customer service over the phone and the number one priority is to have their issue fixed or their question answered quickly.
One of the most important factors that can influence the ongoing success and growth of your business and its development into a major force in the market is the quality and consistency of customer communications. As a business owner, you are sure to expect customers to call in to your establishment with questions, queries, suggestions and critiques, and it is imperative to ensure that all such customers remain satisfied with the way communication is being handled by your business. One of the major issues for businesses for many decades has been calls remaining unanswered during off-peak hours. Voicemail did not prove to be an efficient enough solution, as statistics suggest that 80% of customers would rather hang up on a business when they hear voicemail at the other end of the line.
To surmount this issue and ensure that off-peak calls get answered and duly processed, a lot of businesses use an after hours phone answering service. Establishments offering 24 hour answering services might have become popular due to the fact that businesses have always wanted customer communication at off-peak hours to be handled efficiently, but over time, these services have evolved into a lot more than just after hours phone answering services. Currently, many businesses that use 24 hour answering services accrue a number of tangible and intangible benefits from these services, and their increased utility in many aspects has made them an asset that you, as a business owner, should seriously consider.