Choosing Your Modern Business Answering Service

Choosing an answering service depends on your company’s industry, the goals you’d like your service to accomplish, and the size and general competency of the candidates on your research list. Not all business answering service companies are alike. It’s important to ask questions when you contact a business answering service sales representative, but it’s just as important to listen as they ask you questions about who your company is, and who your clients are.  When a company’s representative invests the time and effort to fully understand your business, then you’ve found a good partner in assisting your customers. A business answering service relationship puts their operators on your customer service and sales division’s front line. Their good work will reflect positively on your company. A knowledgeable relationship will give your customers higher satisfaction in their phone transactions with you, and increase your sales’ bottom line. 

Today’s business answering service tasks are built on the telephone answering service industry’s core foundations, but have moved beyond analog into digital, cellular and even satellite communications territory.  Business answering service companies perform typical core services across any industry, but many are increasingly adding other digital services that allow their clients to create an office virtually anywhere. Telephone answering services provide complete customer service solutions for any client, and sometimes specialize in serving as the call center for one specific industry. Some business answering services are actively involved in phone, computer and business systems installations and support. Answering services will offer expanded telephony options like enhanced voicemail services to client packages. Mid-size business answering service centers are more than capable of handling all the call center duties for any-sized retail business, or any business that relies on order-taking as its core sales task. Higher-tech answering service centers can act as a company's virtual switchboard. Answering service operators commonly deliver messages by fax line, and can also offer clients the option of sending and receiving messages through a private fax number or through fax-to-email service. Business answering services are branching out into aspects of both inbound and outbound telemarketing, and providing sales training for their operators.

Telephone answering service companies have reliably supported American businesses since the marriage of the phone and the office. When your business is ready to hire a telephone answering service, you should examine exactly why you need a telephone answering service, and decide on the goals you want your new telephone answering service representatives to achieve. Looking at telephone answering service history can help you creatively plan integrating business answering service usage into your existing operations.

Live Operators are Gatekeepers to American Business

American telephone answering service companies date back to as early as 1923. Small mom and pop answering service companies would purchase large, corded switchboard stands and install them inside their homes. Telephone answering service for medical professionals was the mainstay of these early business answering service companies. Telephone answering service companies quickly expanded their services to include business answering service, taking daytime and overnight calls for small businesses and the trade operations. Plumbers, physicians, contractors and attorneys all were served by the same group of telephone answering service pioneers. Mail order companies expanded their catalog business and hired local answering service companies scattered around the United States to take orders placed by phone. Larger business answering service centers would morph into the first call centers, specializing in telephone answering service tasks for the retail industry, government and the insurance industry. Until recently, the typical telephone answering service worker would most likely be located in the United States, operating from large phone banks, working in one central location. Computer networking is causing many business answering service companies to re-evaluate the home answering service concept: operators are working from home locations. Globalization and the growth of call center companies in the developing industrial nations are further affecting the telephone answering service industry. These overseas companies are pushing smaller American business answering services to become more aggressive the worldwide business answering service marketplace.

The Business Answering Service Live Wire

Modern business answering service companies came into existence when corded switching systems were phased out of the telephone answering service industry, and computerized message-taking entered in. While most telephone answering service phone messages were still handwritten on pink message slips and calls were manually patched by operators up until the late 1970’s, digitalization of the business answering service had begun in earnest. Small, local answering service companies were feeling the technology crunch, and struggled to keep up with change. Broadband Internet permanently changed the telephone answering service industry in the 1990's. Smaller business answering service firms merged to become mid-sized call centers. These business answering service companies started to integrate hosted voicemail systems into their service packages,  and added email-capable features to their existing feature list. Large call centers had been telephone answering service industry players for decades. However, new, affordable technology allowed smaller answering services to encroach on big-business territory, implementing competitive pricing structures that made it possible for smaller companies to consider hiring one as their call center.  Many new businesses are outsourcing call handling duties to business answering services that can provide live operator telephone reception coupled with fully-featured voicemail systems, skipping everything but purchasing basic phone hardware in the process. Telephone answering service providers generally offer a range of other add-on features that create a complete set of virtual telephony services for the Small Office / Home Office community (SOHO).