AnswerNow, Inc.—a leading provider of call center solutions, answering services and customer support—recently published a white paper titled, “Live Answering’s Positive Impact on Customer Service.” This document illustrates the importance of using live answering services to provide callers with immediate attention and efficient service.

Some companies try to save money by using automated answering systems or having customers leave messages on a voicemail system, but this can have a major negative impact on the customer experience. As these companies often discover the hard way, cutting corners when it comes to customer service usually ends up hurting you in the long run.

Why Companies Use Automated Systems

For companies that try to get by using an automated system, the motivating factor usually boils down to one thing: money. These businesses like the idea of the savings they can realize by not paying for people to staff their phone lines.

But this is a case where trying to save a little bit of money upfront can result in considerable lost revenue down the line. While it’s true that automated systems can be cheaper than the live answering alternatives, the negative impact on the customer experience can lead to decreased profits and lower customer satisfaction—both of which can be bad for business.

How Customers Feel

It’s probably no surprise that customers generally prefer dealing with a live person instead of an automated system or voicemail. People generally have a less favorable feeling about companies that force them to have interactions with automated systems. Research shows that most customers would be willing to pay more in order to get better customer service.

The Cost of Annoyed Customers

These days, customers expect the best service—and don’t have a lot of patience for companies that don’t provide it. If a customer gets the runaround or can’t reach someone who can help them right away, they will quickly grow frustrated and may take their business elsewhere. The cost of customer abandonment can be huge, since it is much more expensive to try and get new customers than it is to keep customers you already have. In fact, research shows that it can be up to seven times more costly to replace a customer than it is to retain an existing one.

Why Live Answering is So Important

Customers expect good service, and they also want to be able to get the answers or assistance they need quickly. While automated systems may be able to provide answers to basic inquiries, more complicated or unusual issues will usually require the help of a live person. The longer someone must wait for an answer, the more frustrated they will become. Worse, this delay will give this unhappy customer time to consider other options—including possibly going with one of your competitors instead. Having a live agent available to answer a question quickly will go a long way in improving the customer experience and will also reduce the risk of customer abandonment.

AnswerNow’s white paper explores this issue in greater detail, discussing the pros and cons of using an automated system and explaining the benefits a business can realize by providing live answering services for their customers.

To download the white paper, visit http://www.answernowinc.com/landing/live-answering-vs-automated.php

About AnswerNow Founded over three decades ago, AnswerNow! provides call center solutions to hundreds of businesses across a multitude of industries.  The U.S.-based company offers answering services, bilingual inbound and outbound call management, customer service and support, marketing and sales contact management, 24/7 service, appointment scheduling, overflow and disaster recovery.  For more information, visit the company's website at http://www.AnswerNowInc.com

First impressions have the power to make or break sales opportunities in service-oriented organizations.  With an excellent interaction, customers are more likely to make an initial purchase, become a loyal customer and refer a business’ solutions to others.  A bad experience, on the other hand, drives customers to the competition.

Given the huge impact on a company’s success, AnswerNow outlined how to boost customer service in its latest white paper titled “5 Most Important Steps to Improving Customer Service.”  The document provides industry research highlighting the enormous costs of bad service, along with the dependable tactics you can use to ensure your business doesn’t miss the boat when it comes to making good on customer expectations.

The Impact of Lost Customers

A company’s call center is the major player in service delivery.  It has the power to develop and maintain favorable customer impressions for the company and its solutions.  Conversely, just one bad service encounter can cause a hit to your bottom line.  For example, it costs far more to replace customers than it does to retain them.  According to findings reported in a Parature Customer Service blog, poor service encounters cost U.S. companies approximately $83 billion each year!

Tried-and-True Tactics for Stellar Customer Service

Fortunately, businesses have several ways to elevate service levels.  The top five things you should do to improve customer service and protect your financial well being include:

1. Establish a solid “front line” for your business.
You don’t want to water-down the efforts of your support teams.  So, consider transferring front-line duties to a call center provider.  Then, you don’t have to risk escalating costs and plummeting profitability because you don’t have adequate resources to serve your customers.  

2. Lower your customer service wait times to a bare minimum. 
Nobody likes to waste time on hold for service.  If your customers are waiting long periods, you’re causing their frustration to build and increasing the odds the encounter will be less than positive.  To ensure interactions have the best opportunity to get off on the right foot, you can outsource customer service to an experienced call center with the expertise and technology to answer calls within seconds.

3. Utilize contact services centers to assist with call volume during peak periods.
If your call volume fluctuates, you must address service levels during peak calling hours.  Otherwise, the bottleneck created from backed-up calls can turn into a service nightmare.  Investing in additional customer service personnel is an expensive option.  Why hire additional service reps when you really only need additional staffing during certain times?  Instead, you can maintain service levels and keep costs down by relying on an outsourced call center to handle the overload.

4. Provide live chat support. 
In today’s online world, customers expect services such as live chat.  A chat application is an economical way to raise service levels and reduce costs.  It’s much cheaper to “talk” with a customer online than it is to participate in a phone conversation.  And for those customers who don’t want to waste time on the phone, chat is a perfect solution for addressing their needs. 

5. Create a company-wide culture around customer service. 
A customer-centric organization lives and breathes service.  The customer service culture is highly valued and engrained throughout the organization, from top to bottom.  And when the company’s leaders set the right example, the rest of the organization follows suit.

You need your existing customers to help your business grow and prosper.  Therefore, make sure you do everything to support them at the highest levels so you can count on long-term relationships and positive word-of-mouth.  Every company should set a goal to deliver “WOW” customer service in each encounter.  By doing so, you’ll build stronger brand loyalty, create deeper customer engagements and be on target to achieve your overall business goals. 

Working with AnswerNow

By partnering with AnswerNow, companies ensure a results-driven first impression on each and every customer interaction.  Businesses of all sizes and types leverage AnswerNow’s real-time accessibility and highly trained team members.  Our focus remains on reducing costs and contributing to profitable growth.  Companies can expect a WOW customer experience and measurable returns in our contact call centers.  

AnswerNow solutions offer:

• A multi-touch contact center with bilingual engagement 24/7/365
• Full service staffing and training
• Quality assurance and recorded interactions
• Immediate data access that leads to actionable information
• Sophisticated reporting to identify trending and alerts 
• Customizable applications for all service types and levels 
• Personalized service and dedicated account management 
• Demand forecasting and overflow 
• A branded extension of a company’s in-house team 

To learn more about how you can create the WOW! experience for your customers, download our latest white paper or call 1-800-226-0491.

When considering outsourcing call center services, you should find a provider that offers a quick and easy way to calculate the savings from your investment.  A simple-to-use online calculator will help you see the results you can expect by working with a specific service provider.

Addressing Outsourcing Goals

By outsourcing your call center services, you have two major goals:  adding revenue and improving productivity.  Companies that have chosen to use a call center services provider have reported significant increases in revenue.  These businesses attributed more generated revenue because they were able to schedule more appointments. 

For example, the right service provider will be able to scale to a company’s requirements as needed.  A well qualified call center services provider can assist by adding staff during your peak times.  They can also provide 24-hour scheduling if you need to better serve your patients, clients or customers.

Next, the right call center services company will take your business operations to levels you haven’t seen before.  After outsourcing, one company said it was scheduling an average of almost a dozen more appointments each day.

Calculating the Impact

Experienced providers of call center services will know how their solutions will affect your revenues and productivity.  By providing an online calculator, they can estimate the impact to your bottom line for you. 

To begin the process, the calculator will ask you to input just a few figures and then it will calculate all the other costs that will make up your total annual call cost of running your call center.

For example, AnswerNow, a premiere answering service and bilingual call center service provider, developed a sophisticated call center calculator that’s available on the company’s website.  This tool helps companies determine the investment they’re making in outsourcing call center services. 

In addition, the calculator allows companies to more easily evaluate various call center solutions.  Each organization should experience top and bottom line results from working with their chosen provider.

How the AnswerNow Call Center Calculator Works

AnswerNow’s call center services calculator asks for three annual cost items:

1. Your total call center labor cost
2. The cost of your call center manager
3. The total number of call center employees

Then, the calculator uses your figures to automatically calculate your annual call center costs.  Using its experience, industry standard metrics and best practices, AnswerNow develops mathematical equations for each cost item to arrive at realistic and accurate figures.

Based on the three figures above, the cost item categories calculated are then added to arrive at a total annual cost of operating the call center.  The total outsourcing cost would include items such as:

• Payroll Incidentals
• Insurance Benefits
• 401K or Benefits Program
• Paid Time Off
• Paid Holidays
• Incidental Bonuses
• Headsets
• Chairs
• Computers
• Phone / Internet
• Hiring Costs
• Training
• Overhead
• Utilities

Why Outsourcing Call Center Services Makes Sense

Companies outsource call center services for a number of reasons.  They may not have the internal staffing to support the call center function.  They may want to save time and money.  Or they may want to remove the call center function so the company’s managers and employees can focus on more strategic initiatives. 

Whatever the reason, organizations outsource because they gain clear and measurable advantages.  Some of these benefits include:

• Expertise and Speed – When companies outsource call center services to a third-party provider, they’re enlisting the help of experts in the field who have the latest tools to help do the work.   These capabilities enable providers to often work quicker than what can be accomplished by the company’s in-house staff.

• Internal Productivity – Because the call center function is not being conducted in-house, employees and managers can devote their time to more important projects.  With productivity improved, everyone within the organization can work together to achieve corporate goals.

• Shared Responsibility and Risk – When you move call center functions to a service provider, the vendor shares the responsibility for running the operation.  Along with shared responsibility comes shared risk.  In other words, someone else becomes responsible and assumes the operational risks.  And by selecting the most qualified provider, you greatly lower the risk.

• Operational Costs – Using a call center services vendor eliminates the hiring of call center personnel.  Staffing and managing a call center can be very pricey.  In addition, companies don’t have to invest in the technology and facilities necessary to run an advanced call center.  The ability to significantly lower costs is the major benefit to outsourcing call center services.

Working with AnswerNow

Certainly cost and productivity advantages make using a call center a smart choice for most businesses. For these results to be achieved, you must select the right call center services provider.

By partnering with AnswerNow, the company’s clients were able to improve performance considerably, including adding more revenue and boosting productivity.  AnswerNow offers:

• A highly qualified, trained staff
• A team committed to your company and growing with you
• Bilingual capabilities
• Real-time accessibility to serve customers, clients or patients 24/7/365
• Advanced technologies to support your call center functions
• Proven quality assurance programs, monitoring and reporting

Once you determine your call center provider has the capabilities and services you require, you can focus on developing a true partnership.  The call center should be an extension of your in-house operation that delivers a top-notch first impression!

To calculate the costs to outsource your call center, visit AnswerNow’s website.  In addition to the call center services calculator, you’ll also find an abundance of other tools and resources readily available.