24-hour Answering Services

Do You Need a 24-hour Answering Service?

Certain kinds of businesses can justify 24-hour answering services by the incremental profit they pick up. If having a live person answer a call at midnight stops a potential customer from calling your competitors, then it may be worthwhile.

Other businesses absolutely must have a 24-hour answering service to meet their customers' expectations. Doctors of humans and vital machinery are examples of professionals who, when customers call day or night, had better not give them voice menus if they want to keep doing business with those customers!

Doctors' answering services are especially critical; not just any 24-hour answering service will do. The operators who take calls will deal with panic-stricken patients, more than likely. "Little Johnny is running a 102 degree fever - what do I DO?" cries Mom. Specialists in medical answering services should be as well-trained and professional as 911 emergency call takers. Often, such people are recruited by physicians answering services. Former nurses who no longer want to change bedpans make good doctors answering service operators, too. Ask questions about the backgrounds of operators and the training they receive.

Emergency repair services need 24-hour answering services because callers often don't know exactly how to explain what's wrong with the failed equipment. A live operator, properly trained, can ask questions that help pinpoint the nature of the equipment problem. Then a repair technician can be dispatched with the proper tools, parts, and know-how. It's a big help if the answering service has operators experienced in handling calls for your type of equipment. Ask about the industry experience of the answering service's operator pool.

Be careful of 24-hour answering services whose operators only work during regular business hours. How would they do that, you might ask. Simple: an answering service can employ operators who are physically located in any time zone, spreading work around the globe so that no one has to work the graveyard shift. But you can see what happens: in the wee hours of the morning, someone in India or the Philippines who your customers can barely understand will be answering their calls.

Global financial services may also need a 24-hour answering service, and an international answering service may actually be a plus for them. It depends on whether the answering service can rapidly transfer a customer in, say, Saudi Arabia to an operator who speaks his or her language.

A 24-hour answering service will cost at minimum several hundred dollars per month. If you are accustomed to using an auto-attendant for after-hours callers, you may have to experiment with a 24-hour answering service for a few months to see if it justifies its cost. So look for a service that won't lock you into a long-term contract.

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