Reason to Dump Voicemail System for Phone Answering Services

Once a very valuable business asset, voice mail, has now become a thing of the past. It has become the same as fax machines, obsolete. Let's suppose you have a small enterprise, possibilities are that you would be usually overwhelmed and just can't get to every phone ringing. You are left with two choices-either let these calls be taken up by the voicemail or build an in-house team and let me handle or outsource to a team of experts that are highly skilled with these services. You need to figure out which option is suitable as per your convenience. In this blog, we have suggested a few reasons, you can decide after that:

Advantages of voicemail

No Extra Fees - This is the most prominent advantage over answering services, but is it worth that saved cost? We will find this later. Another advantage is despite of the phone system your organization use, voicemail is usually incorporated in your monthly bill. This will ensure that you are free to receive as many voice mails, so don't need to worry about paying extra for either storing or answering them. 

Authentic message, each time- The message would most probably be always correct as it comes directly from the source. The only misconnection would be if you wouldn't be able to get what the caller wants to convey, or message disconnects due to signal problem, or you incorporate the information wrongly.

Let’s now look at a few drawbacks of this system, why it is becoming obsolete these days:

Disadvantages of Voicemail

Its Impersonal- It could be the case that your voice mail message is most lively one, but still, it's not a personal way to do a business. There would be scenarios that some of your customers would want to leave a message rather than speaking. But in maximum cases, people expect to speak to a human overcall, as in voicemail that personal touch is lost which could not be retained by any of the technology available. 

Response time delays- Suppose you are out on your job, indulge in a service call and during that period few messages have popped up and 1 or 2 out of those is an emergency. If you are not able to respond to those in time, very high chances are there that those customers will surely be gone with another company. If they are your permanent customer, they will surely lose faith in your services. So in either case, these delays in no way impart faith in your business. 

Voicemail Fills Up- This is a big issue with the voice mails. If they are full and you constantly don't check them, then you may not have any sense that your voicemail is brimming with customers’ queries. If you don't have time to clear these errors or have an alternate plan for your customers, they are left with only one choice either to call you constantly until you respond or find some other partner who can fulfill their needs. 

Let’s see now what phone answering service has you to offer and why are they being preferred over voice mail services. 

Advantages of phone answering services

Its Personal- What could be more satisfying than a live executive answering your queries? It will not only ensure that your customers hear a pleasant, helpful description but also in-call scripts could be customized to exhibit the specific image that you would present if you were answering the calls yourself. 

Advanced features- One prime benefit of outsourcing your phone answering services to an expert servicer is the exceptional features you get in return. They can help you with helpdesk support, setting appointments, e-commerce services, email or text notification of new messages, and more. You can even check their authenticity at your fingertips by visualizing the call details.

Round the clock availability- It isn't possible for a person to answer phone calls 24 hours a day. It's because everyone needs rest. But this rest could prove to be ineffective from a business perspective, as emergencies can come up at any time of the day. That's when the call center services come in handy. Organizations generally do not see fees for the 24*7 availability. These services are not just helpful in attending any customer but are even crucial elements for the business where emergencies have the potential to pop up at any hour.

Higher Revenue- When organizations look for service providers they look through various online sources to find the one that suits their business process the most. Not just this, when callers receive personal attention and top-grade service, they are likely to recommend you to their closed ones and word of mouth referrals can be a vital source of future revenue.

Data protection - the key to customer’s confidence

What do you think encourages customer’s confidence in an organization? Is it just excellent services and authentic information?

These are important from a business perspective, however, in the digitalized era are not sufficient enough to enhance your confidence in customers.

Every now and then, we are learning about the cases of data breaches across the globe. A survey by FORBES in 2018 gave a statistics that US businesses and government agencies have suffered $668 million security intrusions and data breaches. This is the reason why less than 20 percent of customers have complete faith in their organizations pertaining to the data safety. In practical terms, no industry is completely safe from data breaches, but that doesn't even mean that organizations have no power to protect them. By incorporating practical measures data security could be tightened or safeguarded. Here are a few measures an organization can take to guard customer data and win their confidence:

Encrypt sensitive information- Various industrial regulations demand some specific data to be encrypted. But organizations wouldn't mind safeguarding other types of data too, not then when almost everything could be encrypted. A few resources such as the user names, details, email, SMS, etc. Even some sensitive data such as the intellectual property and personal records of both customers and employees need to be encrypted. But, before taking a further step, you should ensure that storing these types of data shouldn't cause financial and reputational damage to the firm, in case it is manipulated. Encryption isn't 100% safe, but will ensure trust in your customers that the firm takes data breaches sincerely. 

Optimize backup and recovery- Data breaches do not come up with a notice, some can even go undetected for days, weeks or even months. Hence, organizations need to keep a backup plan always ready by adhering on some sort of disaster recovery technology. Although, it's a complicated process but radical and purposely build technologies could easily help in resolving data to its original state and will also empower firms to bounce back rapidly even after a breach. 

Transparency- There's nothing more harmful from the business perspective then lying to your customers about their data or covering it from them. Be clear, transparent and fair as possible with your customers about data security and endpoint security efforts. Even if a failure drives to a breach, accept your blunder despite hiding or blaming on technology or other aspects and clarify how such mistakes could be prevented in the future. When it is about the customer's personal data they began to be more cautious and hold businesses more accountable. As customers these days are more aware of data security, hence ensuring them that their information is protected becomes more vital to an organization’s future growth.

Consider cyber insurance- A research by Ponemon, evaluated the total expense that organizations have to bear over cybercrimes averagely is $ 4 million in 2018, which is around 6.5 percent more than the previous year. This has prompted many business firms to invest in cyber insurances. Organizations generally opt for policies that cover reimbursable expenses. This includes monetary loss form business interruptions, legal expenses, regulatory penalties, crisis management costs, and more. Although, we hope you don't face any of those issues but having insurance helps in keeping a better peace of mind for both the businesses and customers and hence it’s worth the cost. 

Try communicating openly with customers- Explaining your customers the way their data would be used is an initial step to begin your communication with them. Clearly describe where the information would be stored and the way it would be handled. Avoid using complex data languages and easily explain them, and recognize a third party that might access this data. Outline the entire process from the beginning and update whenever any change in the terms and conditions has taken place. 

Evaluate your service providers- It isn't obvious that how determined you are about protecting your customer's data the same would your vender and partners be. Due to the inefficiency of your partner, if the data is compromised, it will reflect your business image. Hence, before signing a deal with any other firm make sure to observe whether they are as determined as you are in enforcing data security. By setting up high standards in data protection, you can easily rule the inefficient vendors.