What Is An Answering Service?
Your standard phone answering service is setup to manage inbound and outbound communications like answering phone calls, responding to emails, replying to text messages, transferring calls, cold calling and more. But not all answering services are created equal. At Nexa, for example, we go above and beyond by providing our clients with agents that are expertly trained in their industry and sales best practices. So, we serve not just as an answering service, but as a real partner that’s equipped to help your business grow and scale. From answering customer inquiries to handling potential leads, Nexa's answering services offer specially trained professionals to handle your clients and business with expertise.
How Does An Answering Service Work?
Essentially, when you partner with an answering service, you hire someone to represent your business when communicating with customers or potential customers. Together, you create a specific script so that when someone calls in, it is as if they’re speaking directly to a member of your staff.
At Nexa, our answering service works to:
- Resolve customer issues
- Capture and convert qualified business leads
- Direct callers to the proper department or person within your company and escalate emergency calls
- Dispatch service technicians, if needed
- Schedule appointments and keep your calendar full
- Collect customer feedback, send reminders and answer questions
What Should You Look For In An Answering Service?
It's important to first ask yourself, where is the demand in my business? Suppose you have multiple incoming calls and lack staff to manage those queries. In that case, it may be time to consider an answering service. But you’ll also want to look at call patterns and see if there’s a rhythm to their timing—do you need a continuous 24/7 answering service, or just overflow and weekend support?
Keep in mind that customers are far more satisfied if they communicate with a real person, specifically a person who helps resolve their problem with empathy and efficiency. Agents providing your answering service should be experts in technology, and your business and industry. With Nexa, you improve the customer's perception of your business and provide a top-quality service experience.
Whenever adding a new process to your company workflow, the goal should be to improve your operations and customer service. So, whether you're looking to increase the number of calls answered, reduce overhead costs, or wish to remove language barriers, Nexa answering services can help enhance your business’ overall performance.
Why an Answering Service is Critical to Your Business
A virtual answering service improves efficiency and minimizes the strain on internal staff. Nexa provides 24/7/365 phone coverage for your company, making you available for every client or new business opportunity—no matter what time of day that next call comes in. With a business answering service, you can scale marketing efforts with confidence and rest easy knowing there is total coverage of phone calls, web leads and more. Increase the number of phone calls answered, better qualify leads, improve intake and scheduling processes, and even speed-up service technician dispatch, all with our phone answering service.
Our friendly and professional receptionists serve as an extension of your business. This means we don’t just answer calls and respond to web inquiries. We also work to increase your revenue. Nexa’s outbound calling services leverage our lead generation and customer acquisition experts to fill empty appointments, driving business growth and increasing customer loyalty through performance-driven outbound calling campaigns.
By working with a phone answering service, your business can provide expert-level customer service at a fraction of the cost of an in-house employee. This means fewer overhead costs and less operational stress for you and your staff. And Nexa’s receptionists perfect phone answering scripts and processes so that your customers will never know they’re calling in to an answering service. Anytime a client or prospect dials, they’ll think they’re speaking directly to someone in your office.
Our live answering service creates real human connection, showing callers that you genuinely care about their time. Nexa’s receptionists are trained in empathy and skilled in making angry customers happy again—and we believe these abilities are key to creating a better user experience, which, we all know, drives higher leads and better conversions.
There are many business advantages to hiring a 24/7 answering service. By partnering with Nexa, you can provide round the clock live coverage of your phones, offer bilingual answering, capture more calls and leads, and save time and money. So, whether your goal is to reduce overhead costs or bring in more support to manage the high volume of calls your business receives, Nexa is here to help with a team of experts that makes it possible to handle more calls quickly and with greater accuracy.
How Phone Answering Services Help Businesses Scale
As a business owner or operator, your mission is to find the most cost-effective and efficient strategies to improve the overall performance of your company. You’re constantly thinking about strategies that can help push for long-term business success. Phone answering services offer cost-effective measures that improve workflows and help scale your business operations, sales and marketing efforts.
Simplify Operations
Employing an answering service can help you scale up staffing quickly. It also saves on overhead costs and requires little onboarding since you are not hiring and training full-time team members. By cutting overhead costs and streamlining your expenses, you can significantly benefit your business in the long run.
The secret of a thriving business is to delegate when necessary. And with a Nexa answering service, you won't have to worry about missing a new business opportunity because your staff is trying to do it all. Eventually, you will have to consider a reliable answering service such as Nexa who offers trained professionals to manage your customer's inquiries with high-quality service on every call, 24/7.
Support Sales
Nexa's phone answering service can help you scale your business, boost sales and increase customer loyalty. Many companies rely on new leads for potential revenue, but we can’t forget the impact of building customer loyalty and looking for creative ways to cross-sell and upsell your existing customers. At Nexa, our inbound & outbound sales services capture, qualify and convert leads that come through the phone, chat, text, email and more, but we also offer outbound calling campaigns to resurrect lost leads and improve client retention. All of these efforts work toward generating more revenue and increasing conversion rates.
Having an answering service working to filter your calls saves you time and sends only the most qualified leads your way. As a result, your team can spend more time on the work that matters most to them instead of managing every sales prospect that dials your number. In short, Nexa's answering service staff is equipped to identify and act on high-quality leads that can boost your overall conversion rates.
Through their fast response times and prompt customer support, Nexa staff assures that no business opportunity is missed, all while increasing productivity, decreasing labor and operating costs, and maximizing sales.
Maximizing Marketing Efforts
Marketing and advertising campaigns are designed to (hopefully!) send a lot of leads to your business. But without the right amount of staff to field this influx of calls and queries, you miss out on those leads and lose the money you invested. Partnering with Nexa's answering service maximizes your marketing investment because we provide the expert staff to handle that increase in phone calls, emails, chat and text queries, and web form submissions so that you’re capturing every lead and converting the best ones into new business.
With the help of Nexa’s answering service, you can capture more leads and convert more clients by scaling your marketing efforts to attract the right customers and seize every opportunity that comes your way. Plus, you reach a larger audience in a shorter amount of time when you’re setup to promptly and effectively communicate with prospects. In turn, this can generate more revenue and increase conversion rates while building long-lasting brand loyalty.
Human-Powered Live Answering Services Vs. Automated Answering Services
The modern consumer wants their questions answered—and answered quickly. When customers reach out to their favorite brand, they want to be treated like the loyal shopper they are. Too often, businesses try to answer this need with automated services. That’s not to say that automated answering services don’t have their place—they can be very helpful for simple, impersonal and non-layered engagements. But bots often lack the empathy and problem-solving skills needed to resolve any issue beyond standard question-and-response.
A live, human-powered phone answering service allows businesses to interact with their customers in real-time and provide swift and effective resolution to any issue. More importantly, the trained agents answering those calls can drum-up new leads, close sales and cross-sell or upsell your existing clients.
Why Is A Human-Powered Answering Service So Attractive To Consumers and Businesses?
Customers are content to interactive with an automated service when they need basic information like location and hours, balance details, etc. But they want real-time human interaction when looking to address concerns or get answers to their specific questions. And a live phone answering service provides them that by enabling them to speak to a person immediately regarding their issue. Customers prefer to talk to a real person over an automated system because:
- More nuanced questions are answered immediately
- Customers believe they receive better service
- Live call answering provides a real human connection
Choosing the right phone answering service provider for your company is critical. At Nexa, we have live agents interacting with your customers. Our trained experts will answer questions and resolve issues appropriately. Plus, they'll communicate with them in a way that sounds like they’re an employee at your company, not an answering service.
By offering timely and reliable service, we help businesses convert leads and build better customer relationships. When you partner with Nexa, you can better focus on building your business. If you want to take your customer experience to the next level, a human-powered answering service is the way to go.
The Advantages of Using a Live Answering Service Instead of an Automated Answering Service
Using a live answering service shows your customers and potential clients that you care about their business enough to offer one-on-one human connection. Often times, callers are frustrated by an automated telephone answering service, especially if it takes too long to reach their desired department or find the answers that they need. When a real person answers, customers are more likely to get the support they’re looking for and fast—which not only creates a positive service experience, but also makes your business processes more efficient.
Be honest: How much do you love calling a company and being greeted by a robot? A live call answering service creates a more superior experience than an automated system, which can be inaccurate and infuriating to customers. By routing calls directly to a human being, you’re extending a personal connection between your brand and current or potential clients. This goes a long way in creating trust and brand loyalty.
Both a live answering service and an automated answering service are convenient for the business that leverages them, but the live option has the bonus of offering a personalized customer experience.
At Nexa, our team of receptionists is expertly trained to answer every call as if it were the first of their day. We work directly with you to create scripts and perfect processes that make our receptionists sound as if they’re an in-house employee. In fact, anytime a client or potential new business lead calls in, they’ll think they’re speaking directly to someone in your office.
Partnering with a live answering service like Nexa means you’ll never miss another call or new business opportunity. It also offers more customization options than an automated answering service. When you work with Nexa’s receptionists, you can choose whether to have our team manage every single call 24/7/365 or opt for overflow call support or even just our after-hours answering service. The arrangement depends entirely on your company size and specific needs. We tailor our services to provide you with the best possible solution, so that you and your staff can focus on the work you’re meant to do.
Creating a Positive Customer Experience with a Local, US-Based Phone Answering Service
Nexa is committed to hiring only the best professionals for our 24/7 answering service. By investing time and resources into our in-depth training program, we ensure that each team member can provide the same level of excellent customer service—no matter what type of challenge a call may present.
We also continually evaluate call quality and provide comprehensive feedback to each receptionist, so that they can identify and work on areas of opportunity. Finally, we commit the same level of quality control to industry-specific, continuing education for our receptionists, making them not only skilled at their administrative duties, but also highly knowledgeable in the terminology, software, technology and subject matter specific to your business.
Speaking of technology, it’s truly at the core of the Nexa answering service experience. Our team members are trained in the latest industry-leading software and regularly learn new programs as the needs of our customers change. Our continual training and dedication to emerging software across the industries that we serve is what sets us apart from the competition. In fact, most U.S.-based call service providers don’t train their employees to the same degree that we do here at Nexa.
At Nexa, we place emphasis on consistent customer experience. For every account that signs onto our live answering service, we create customized scripts and processes for our receptionists to follow when fielding your company’s calls. Our expert team members may not always reside in the same state as your clients, but callers will never know. Because we work hard to create high-quality customer service across the board, your clients and potential new business leads will think they’re speaking directly to an in-house team member.
When it comes to our hiring philosophy, we’re especially focused on seeking out the most motivated, organized and positive talent-people who aren’t afraid of hard work, individuals who enjoy problem-solving and tackling everyday challenges on your behalf. These principles are front-and-center throughout our interview process and we use them to evaluate every potential candidate. Other skills that we require include a stellar aptitude for communication, technological know-how and, perhaps most importantly, a natural ability to feel and display empathy. Because when an angry customer calls into your business, this trait is the one that can turn even the most heated conversation into a positive result.
Do I Need My Call Answering Service Provider to Be Near Me?
Not in this day and age! The beauty of digital transformation is that you can now hire almost any business service provider based on skills, expertise and budget rather than location. This is the case when it comes to finding an answering service provider. Now, you can shop around for a phone answering service that’s trained in your industry, has the staff and resources to scale as you need it to, and has technological capabilities that are matched to your industry and preferred platforms—no matter if they’re down the street or halfway across the country.
At Nexa, we have locations in Arizona, California and Texas, plus remote staff, so we service customers in any and all geographies. This creates an immense advantage for Nexa customers who used to be relegated only to local answering service providers that didn’t have all the advanced integrations or ability to provide 24/7 coverage that Nexa does. Whether you’re located near a Nexa office or not, as a customer, you’ll still get complete access to our capabilities, including:
- Phone answering and appointment scheduling: Our 24/7/365 phone answering service is powered by real people, expert agents trained to handle customer questions and concerns just like you would. Leave calls and appointments to us—so you can focus on what matters.
- Inbound and outbound sales services: Sales professionals work to boost conversion rates without increasing overhead. Maximize efficiency and revenue with lead qualification, inbound sales services and outbound sales calling campaigns—creating brand loyalty every step of the way.
- People-powered live chat: The easiest way to empower growth without adding to your overhead, our people-powered live chat service keeps your business running smoothly while converting web traffic into happy—and paying—customers.
- People-powered live text: Your customers text, so should your business. Nexa live text allows you to communicate with your customers wherever they are. Improve lead conversion and customer experiences without lifting a finger.
- Client & patient intake services: The intake process is important, but it can be tedious for new clients and patients. For you and them. Accelerate your intake process to supercharge your practice, save time and create a streamlined process.
- Integrations: We fit into your workflow. Nexa uses industry-leading technology to bring valuable data to you in real-time and integrate with your chosen software for total efficiency. We’ll send call, chat, text and client data directly to you so that you can make empowered business decisions quickly.
Which Industries Get The Most Benefits from an Answering Service?
All of them. If you’re a business with customers, you’re a business that benefits from hiring an answering service. Here are just a few of the industries that we specialize in here at Nexa:
- Home Services: Whether it’s 3 in the afternoon or 3 in the morning, customers come to you when they need you most. Make sure there’s always someone available to help at any time of day or night—even holidays.
- Healthcare: Your callers are patients and caretakers, not clients or sales leads. Speed, accuracy and sensitivity are essential to a positive interaction. Provide an attentive and empathetic experience with our HIPAA-compliant service offerings, powered by real people.
- Legal: Divorce and DUI’s don’t just happen 8 to 5, Monday through Friday. Create an impeccable client experience and capture every lead with our highly-skilled and empathetic agents trained to handle sensitive matters with competence and professionalism.
- Real Estate: You work when your clients need you—nights and weekends, too. Qualify leads, schedule showings and move more listings with an expert who works as hard as you do.
- Retail & eCommerce: Brands with a well-defined omni-channel service experience have a customer retention rate of 91%. Meet shoppers where they are and exceed ever-changing consumer expectations to grow revenue.
Nexa provides industry specialized call answering services in Chicago, NYC, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Diego, and more cites across the US. Call today to set up your call answering service.
