There are various businesses across multiple industries that customers need help from on a moment’s notice. These businesses include doctor’s offices, pest control services, locksmiths, and more. If you run a company that may call for the use of 24/7 services, you should know how important it is to answer every call right away, no matter the time of day or day of the week. Every call that isn’t answered is a task that you may lose to somebody else.
Therefore, you should consider hiring an answering service. Here are all the emergency services that a good answering services should have to help any and all of your patients or customers.
24/7 Live Answering
Of course, every answering service needs to have representatives standing by to answer phone calls at any time. No matter if it’s 5:30 P.M. or A.M. there should be somebody on the phone to answer and help the caller with what he or she needs. This is the main job of an answering service, so live answering is always a must-have for companies with customers or patients that call at unexpected times as well as at the same time. It’s not realistic for your business to try to run your own 24/7 staff, so a good answering service is the next best thing.
2. Bilingual Representatives
It’s true, bilingual answering services are also important when handling certain customers or patients at any time of day. If you have patients that are Spanish, Chinese, French, or another nationality, it might be better to try to communicate with them in their native language, especially in urgent matters. Even if these patients can communicate in English, it might take more time for them to tell you what they need, which is not ideal for emergency situations. If they can talk to somebody in their native language, it’s all the better for your business, and the representative can interpret to you in English what the foreign language call was about.
3. Instant Appointment Scheduling
When an emergency arises on your end and requires a lot of your attention, odds are you won’t be able to fulfill many appointments that day, if any. What an answering service can also do is provide your customers or patients with appointment scheduling. They can call for an appointment whenever they need to call, whether they call at regular business hours or in the middle of the night. Should a change in scheduling be necessary, the answering service will call the patient to arrange a new appointment time. This allows you to focus on what is urgent at the moment while also notifying patients of changes in your schedule.
4. Backup Power Sources
When the power goes out, many businesses are not able to work. Thus, you would like to have an answering service that always has power whether it is through a main electrical source or a backup source. If the answering service suffers a power outage, that makes two businesses that aren’t able to answer the phone when a customer or patient calls. Other backup equipment such as backup generators and batteries should also be available to prevent data loss.
Conclusion
The best answering services offer around-the-clock coverage in order to help every patient that calls. You would like an answering service that always works, can help patients no matter the obstacle in the way, and will prevent new problems as often as possible. Best of all, you won’t need to hire and pay this staff yourself. With that said, what are you waiting for?