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Using an Answering Service to Schedule Appointments

If you’ve never done business with an answering service before, there is a good chance that you’re underestimating all the ways that one could benefit your business. One of the most valuable services that may be offered is appointment scheduling. There are many departments within most companies that can benefit from this service, but it is often especially helpful to those working in either customer service or sales.

From large teams down to a single sales person, having an answering service schedule appointments for you can ensure that no prospects ever fall through your fingers without a proper effort being made to convert them to a sale. It can also save your sales people a great deal of time. Even in some mid to large sized companies, sales people do not have dedicated reception teams, and have to field their own calls and manage their own calendars. Using an answering service can provide you with the benefits of a receptionist or reception team, at a fraction of the cost of a full time employee. Even when a team does have a receptionist, the answering service can help during overflow or holiday hours, ensuring that appropriate appointment are still being booked even when the receptionist might not otherwise be available.

 

Answering Service Quotes

Customer service reps, especially those working in the field, can really benefit from having an answering service scheduling their appointments. They simply block out a section of time where they will be in the field making service calls, and allow the answering service to schedule appointments as necessary. This frees them from the hassle of having to juggle their calendars or from having to constantly check back with someone at the main office in order to find out where they are needed next. Modern technology coupled with an answering service can automate the entire process.

It is really modern technology that makes answering services so valuable in this regard. By giving the answering service access to your sales or service teams’ calendars, the answering service agents can see what time your team members have designated as open for appointments. Then, they can simply update the calendars with requests from callers as they field them. The appointments will be synced automatically to the software used by your team members, so there is no lag in between a caller requesting an appointments and the sales or service professional seeing it in their schedule. This real-time updating leaves your staff free to spend as much of their time as possible doing what you actually hired them to do, instead of juggling their calendars.