Don’t expect your staff to answer customer calls after their work hours – use an out of hours call answering service instead.
It is really important for businesses to provide excellent customer service, you simply can’t grow a business if you don’t care whether your customers are happy or not. Great customer service includes having someone available to answer customer calls during regular business hours. However, expecting your staff members to also answer sundry calls after their work hours is not a sustainable solution – and it’s not fair.
Every busy small and medium size business that expects customer calls now and then after the usual office hours should consider using an out-of-hours call answering service. Out of hours phone answering services make certain that customer calls are still being answered even when regular staff are not available. And remember, it could be that one call that’s expertly live answered after hours which brings in new sales revenue that changes your whole business. So never risk missing THAT CALL.
One of the key reasons why expecting staff to answer customer calls after their work hours is a very bad idea is that it can lead to high stress, and unhappy employees usually means high turnover. Good staff members need their own time to relax and recharge after a long day at work, but if they are even infrequently being called upon to answer customer calls outside of their regular hours, they will hate the responsibility. This unhappiness will definitely impact morale, leading to carelessness and reduced productivity. Expecting staff to stop their household chores or relaxation and answer work calls is a recipe for an unhappy employee – even if its only two calls a week. Every call is an interruption.
Another pretty obvious reality if a business manager expects staff to answer customer calls out of work hours is that the staff member won’t be full of energy– and customers will sense the negativity . An employee who is tired after a long day will probably sound tired to customers and won’t provide the same level of committed service as they would during their usual work hours. Also, even though the business owner or manager might think this is a smart and cheap solution to customer service, there is always the possibility that this “fall-back” receptionist could really have a very poor phone manner and be unprofessional – so instead of boosting customer service “on the cheap” this solution could be losing revenue.
Subscribing to an out-of-hours answering service is a better smart professional solution because it does away with ad hoc processes that rely on staff goodwill. Our Out of Hours Virtual Receptionists are well trained and experienced professionals, all Americans receptionists with just the right friendly professional tone to put your customers at ease. We ensure that your virtual receptionists really understand your business and we will always follow all your instructions.
We all know how busy we can be these days and the internet and connectivity means customers often expect to be able to reach a business at any time they want, and they don’t usually check the time before they call. It’s a constantly changing customer environment and expecting that an employee taking work calls at home can be a permanent solution is just crazy. The only permanent solution is to put in place a reliable structure, an out-of-hours call answering service.
Even if the business owner or manager is not exploiting their employees goodwill by asking them to handle a few calls after work for free – even if that employee is actually paid some special extra money, it is still a bad solution. Paying an extra “support” bonus like that could even cost more than actually using a professional after hours call handling service, and that’s just plain silly. A smart business doesn’t need unnecessary costs – and what happens when the employee answering calls after hours goes on leave?
To put it very simply, the best way to manage out of hours calls to your business is to contact our expert staff. It makes real sense to pick the right person for each work task and our professional American virtual receptionists are the right people to handle all the out-of-hours calls to your business. And even if you don’t expect many calls you can just simply choose the call package that suits your needs – only expect about 25 after hours calls a month? We’ll have you covered for less than $70 per month.