Your business may receive a lot of calls, whether small or big. Perhaps you have just launched a media campaign about your latest product, or you’ve just completed a door-to-door flyer drop about your new business in the neighbourhood, or perhaps you’re holding a seminar or event where you are asking clients to pre-register – whatever, the case, when you’ve reached this point in your business’ life cycle, it is important to understand that there is more than one way of handling the calls. Sure, you could take them yourself – but do you really have the time? The next option is to hire a professional service to do it for you. But beware, you should know what type of service you’re buying before you buy it. This article will explain the difference between a telephone answering service and a call centre service – two very different types of service, often confused as being the same.
Telephone answering service – a telephone answering service helps a business phone line by offering a corporate identity as the first point of contact when a customer calls in. First impressions go a long way, and having a human ‘gatekeeper’ (so to speak) to direct calls to appropriate personnel increases the level of prestige and impression of quality to the public. A telephone answering service involves a receptionist who can give information, take messages, forward calls to any number (even internationally), book appointments or register callers for an event.
Callers never know their call is being transferred to another location and it always seems as if they have called your ‘actual’ office. Often a telephone answering service comes with a business mailing address and mail handling as well. Companies who offer telephone answering services usually also encompass enhanced virtual office services which are basically à la carte administrative support tasks to handle as much, or as little, as your company might need.
Call centre service – when you receive a call from someone asking you to participate in a survey, you can be sure that person is calling from a call centre. Same goes for when you call a major service provider’s customer support line to ask questions about your bill. Telemarketers, payment collectors, support lines, customer service lines – they all operate in call centres, and no, they are not limited to ‘big businesses’ only. A call center is a much less intimate way of handling your customer’s calls. Any one of hundreds of employees (sometimes located in another country) could be picking up the phone for every call your customer makes to that number. No voices are recognized and no one who answers the phone really knows the owner of the company or how they prefer their messages to be taken.
Often the call answerers are not knowledgeable about the company the caller is inquiring about because they are actually part of an outsourced service and work externally. Nowadays, it is more and more common that the ‘customer service representative’ is not even able to call a customer back if the phone line were to disconnect. Though the representative has heard the client’s story and understands the situation, if the client calls back, they have to repeat their story all over again to the new representative who randomly picked up their call ‘this time.’ And, as many of us have experienced, every person who answers the phone on behalf of that company seems to obey a completely different set of rules than the last person, causing us often to ask, “Can I speak to your manager?” (who of course isn’t there, but will surely call you back within 48 hours).
In short, a call centre can be a frustration to customer service. However, that is not to say that call centres are not useful for other purposes. For example, your small business may find it beneficial to hire a telemarketing service, or your non-profit may seek out donations or surveys through call centre services. This method of marketing may work for some businesses. However, a business working hard on its first impression could turn off a lot of potential new customers, if their phone calls are not being consistently answered by a friendly, clear voice handling the line in a professional manner.
