Texting, tweeting and blogging are all the rage these days, personally and professionally. Much of the attraction is the immediate response that goes along with them.

Keeping Up With the Trends 

You can instantly comment on someone’s blog post, quietly text someone from a meeting or keep minute-by-minute tabs on your favorite tweeter. It’s part of a growing trend. People don’t want to wait for answers. That’s what makes 24-hour call centers increasingly popular. Businesses that move to this service find out a lot about what goes on in their office — and what business they lose — when voice mail is a caller’s only option.

The Benefits of a 24-Hour Call Service

Call center services and hours vary from company to company so be sure to choose one that’s a 24-hour call center. And don’t under estimate the after-hours activity your business might get. Just because you don’t deal with emergency calls doesn’t mean you aren’t missing business opportunities. Many people don’t have time to place calls until they get home from work or get the kids to bed. By then, “normal” business hours have ended. A 24-hour call center makes sure there’s a live person callers can talk to instead of only being able to leave a voice mail message.

Remember that while customer service hours may end at 6 p.m. Eastern Time, California customers may still be calling for another three hours. A 24-hour call center can provide customer support, handle catalog and online orders, screen leads and deliver them to sales personnel, and schedule appointments during your busy season or when you offer a promotion. And since it’s important to know what your customers think about the products and services you offer, you can choose to have inbound or outbound surveys done so you can adjust your products, services and customer support to meet client needs. The agents at a 24-hour call center also can help connect your customers to the closest representative from your company based on either an area match or query match.

If business is booming and you need additional staff, a 24-hour call center can do an initial job hotline screening to provide a group of qualified candidates to you for review. Agents can pre-screen inbound calls and follow-up with outbound calls to narrow the candidate pool and ensure potential employees meet your job requirements.

  • Be sure to ask if the 24-hour call center you’re interested in has any references you can speak to and if their agents have received any industry awards for their call handling. Industry awards are a good way to know how professional and efficient the 24-hour call center is.
  • Be smart and check into the cost and flexibility of the plan you think you’ll use. Make sure to ask if you’ll have to sign a contract and whether or not you have the flexibility to change your plan once you start your service with that 24-hour call center.
  • Be sure the center is equipped with the necessary technology to stay on the job 24/7. There should be backup systems to ensure a power failure or system malfunction doesn’t put the center offline.

Give your customers what they want on the first call — a 24-hour call center so they can talk to a live person. It’s a great way to start off your relationship with them. Who knows? They may even text someone about the great experience they had.

Learn More About Alert

If you are missing calls, stretching your staff thin, and not getting the right people answering your phones with the proper training, do not worry! Let Alert Communications handle all of these details so you can get back to focusing on helping your new clients. To get started, fill out our contact form or give us a call at 844-694-6825.