3 Benefits of an After Hours Answering Service

Small business owners are used to working late. But burning the candle at both ends will start to take its toll. And for many, even yourself, your business may suffer.

You put your heart and soul into managing your business and making your customers happy. You may work late into the evening to plan for the next day and answer your customers after hours phone calls.

That’s great! Only, it’s not sustainable. Your family, your employees, and your customers may start to notice that you’re getting stretched thin.

If you find yourself in this situation, don’t worry - you’re not alone. You and I have both been in that situation - sacrificing our personal time for the sake of our business. 

For nearly 100 years, Ambs Call Center has helped many entrepreneurs free up their time by introducing them to the after hours answering services. If you’re here, you likely know what an after hours answering service is but would like to know what it can do for your organization. 

In this blog, we’ll look at how an after hours answering service can benefit you so that you can decide if an answering service is right for you. 

So, let’s look at what the 3 main benefits of an after hours answering service:

1. After Hours Answering Services Save You Time
2. You Can Save Money With An After Hours Answering Service
3. An After Hours Answering Service Offers Consistent Customer Experience

Now let’s take a look at the first reason an after hours answering service benefits you:

1. After Hours Answering Services Save You Time

Like many business owners, you probably struggle to find time during the day.

You might have sacrificed a personal commitment to make time for work. You’d rather go to your kid’s baseball game or to the bar with your friends, but you can’t.

Or at least you thought you couldn’t.

With an after hours answering service, your time is yours. You’re available to work until you can’t or don’t want to. Then, the after hours answering service kicks in, and all your calls will be answered.

“What if I have to head out of the office for an emergency during my business hours?”

Many call centers today offer per-minute plans. What this means is you have a certain amount of minutes to use up within that month for a fixed rate. So, let’s say you are on a 250 minute plan. As long as you keep within that plan, you can have your after hours answering service take your calls for you at any time!

So, before you head out, you can simply turn on call forwarding on your phone and your after hours answering service will take care of the rest!

Then you can go to your meeting, or your kid’s baseball game, and have a flourishing social life again - enjoying the things money can’t buy.

2. You Can Save Money With An After Hours Answering Service

You don’t realize you spend money working late, but you do. It’s hard to put a number on it, but there is a cost to being tired and having to work.

When you work late, you wear yourself thin. You stay up so you can get more work done. You get up early so you can get more work done. You nod off at the computer because doing both of those things aren’t compatible. You may start to feel more tired, dizzy, and unproductive.

Calls into your business may go unanswered. And you don’t want that. Why? Because there’s a very real cost of missing a call that comes into your business.

Let’s say you run a HVAC company. Now let’s say that the average deal comes up to $500. We’ll assume you close with a 20% rate. So for every missed call, you potentially lose $100. If you only miss a call a day for a year, you potentially lose out on $26,000! Thousands and thousands of dollars in a year could be unnecessarily lost.

An after hours answering service on the other hand, would not cost you that much. And, the cost is fixed and not varied like the cost of fatigue is. The average cost of an after hours answering service is $295-395 every month.On the high end, it would only be $4,740 a year. And, if your business receives under 100 calls a month, you may only be paying around $2,500 a year.

Thank God for math. Saving all that money from direct and indirect costs is no small feat. And, ensuring your customers have a consistent experience is equally as important.

3. An After Hours Answering Service Offers Consistent Customer Experience 

If you’re a small business owner, you’re likely very personable. You know how to talk to people, pitch ideas, and collaborate. Those are great skills! But, there’s a chance that you may be lacking in one regard:

Customer service.

For those of us that have worked a job in the service industry, you may know already that it isn’t for the faint hearted. It’s the same way with answering phones!

Expert call center agents aren’t born, they’re trained. Any call center worth being talked about has a rigorous process for training its call center agents.

Having been through this training myself, I can tell you - it’s not easy, and it’s why we deeply appreciate all our call center agents. Your answering service agents are trained to never be phased and to act as the most formidable representatives of your company. At all times.

If you’re running your business daily, you can’t be expected to constantly have perfect customer rapport. Not to mention, if you’re answering calls late into the night, you might have the mental energy to work with a…demanding caller. 

Call center agents, however, are literally trained for that.

We suggest leaving the phones to the after hours answering service so that you can go back to dealing with the important business at hand. You deserve it.

Is an After Hours Answering Service Right for my Business?

If you find yourself struggling to find the time to maintain your professional work and personal time because of the phone in your office, chances are that you’ll greatly benefit from an after hours answering service.

You might be wondering however, “Would my industry benefit from an after-hours answering service?”.

Or, you may ask yourself “How much does an answering service cost today?”.

We hope this blog and our resources available in our learning center help you get one step closer to your decision in getting an after hours answering service.

If you are interested in what we at Ambs Call Center have to offer in terms of our family-owned after hours answering service, fill out this simple form below and we’ll have someone reach out to you soon. Don’t worry, we never spam.