Reasons To Outsource Your Phone Services
Small businesses generally have to dig deep if they are to succeed in this highly tumultuous economy. Larger corporations, with their endless budgets and innovative marketing campaigns, are seemingly impossible to compete with. The one thing that small business owners rely upon is personalised customer service. When you buy a product or service, you will obviously expect to get good after-sales service. As industries have become saturated over the passage of time, differentiating one product from the next has become all but impossible.
Small business owners generally try to excel when it comes to providing top quality services. Larger companies have to cater to a much larger group of customers, which often means that they are unable to provide a standard of service that most customers want. Every person wants to be treated as the top priority, which is why most people get disgruntled when they are put on hold for several minutes before their call is answered.
If you are running a small business, your first aim is survival. How do you succeed in a market that is so saturated? How do you compete with big companies that have bottomless wallets and can splurge endless amounts of money in order to sell more than you? The only way that your business can even hope to stand a chance is if you provide top quality after-sales service.
How long do customers have to wait until their calls are answered? How long do customers have to wait until you resolve their complaints? These are just some of the questions that you should be asking if you want to stand even a small chance of survival in this brutal economy. Unfortunately, most small businesses do not have enough capital to spend on setting up a separate call answering department.
Most small businesses generally have very limited working capital. Most of the money is spent on fulfilling orders, and because a lot of the dealing is done on credit, there’s often very little money to spare at the end of the day. Therefore, many small businesses generally have a makeshift landline and put up members of their staff on answering duty. The staff may not have any formal training either. Obviously, this is not going to cut it if you want your business to grow in the future.
One of the best options available to business owners who want to improve their standard of after-sales service is to outsource their telephone answering services altogether. There are plenty of companies in the UK that you can outsource your phone calling services to. All you have to do is get in touch with such a company, highlight your requirements and let the company take over.
Outsourcing your non-essential services is an excellent way to progress in the modern economy. More business owners have begun to realise that the best way to survive is to focus on the core product and services of your company. Many business owners generally avoid outsourcing these services, because they are confused about the type of service that they will receive. Here are just a few facts that might convince you to outsource your phone calling services altogether.
Financially Feasible
As a small business owner, almost every decision that you make will be motivated by financial outcomes. Obviously, you will want to run a cost-benefit analysis before deciding what to do. The first thing that you must decide is whether it’s financially feasible to set up your own customer support department or outsource these services altogether.
If you were to outsource the phone calling department, you would end up saving a great deal of money. Most phone calling service providers generally require you to pay a small signing-on fee upfront, and then pay a monthly fee for their services. This brings a sense of predictability to your business. Each year, you will already know the exact amount of money that you have to pay for the company’s services. Most companies provide highly flexible packages, so if you don’t usually have to worry about answering a whole bunch of calls each day, you can opt for a cheaper package as well.
On the other hand, you will have to authorise a significant outlay if you want to set up your own call centre department. For starters, you will need to allocate office space to the support staff. You will need to purchase furniture and sophisticated telecom equipment in order to make sure that no call is dropped.
Once the office has been set up, you will also need to add more employees to your payroll. When compared with the costs of outsourcing the call centre services altogether, you would obviously have to pay more if you were to keep everything in-house.
Overflow Calls
At certain times during the year, you may have to handle more calls than necessary. It might be due to a media furore, the release of a new product, a recall of your existing products or virtually anything else. Either way, overflow call handling is often a crunch time for small businesses. Customers want answers, and nobody likes to wait. If you have set up a makeshift call centre in your office, it is highly unlikely that you will be able to answer all calls and satisfy your customers’ queries.
However, if you were to outsource these services, the company will easily be able to handle everything on your behalf. Most professional companies use top of the line equipment, and have a whole team ready to answer calls. All you have to do is provide a message to the company about what you want to say to your customers, and the company will handle the rest. This is a good option in most cases, since your customers will be satisfied with the prompt replies. Most importantly, you won’t have to worry about spending all of your time waiting for the phone to ring, thus leaving you free to work on maximising your business.
