Owning and operating a small business is full of both challenges and rewards. If you are successful, you will eventually reach a point where you will need to grow – and you can grow your business either by hiring more employees, or by contracting out services. One of the services you may wish to contract out are answering services. But how do you know if you really need them?

There are lots of reasons and why a small business owner would choose to hire an answering service, but here are three of the most popular ones.

You’ve got more work than your team can handle but not enough to hire additional staff

If your team is overloaded, it not only makes for a stressful work environment but it can mean things start to fall through the cracks. Quality and customer service can eventually become compromised – or you simply have to turn customers away.

You could hire a full-time receptionist, but if the extra calls coming in don’t amount to high enough revenues for the company, then it’s difficult to justify the extra salary.

Hiring an answering service is often the ideal solution. The costs are significantly lower than that of hiring another employee, and it takes pressure off your existing team.

You want to offer emergency or off-hours service

Depending on the industry you are operating in, it may be necessary or desirable to offer emergency or off-hours service to stay competitive. For example, many contractors such as plumbers and electricians offer emergency 24/7 services. To stay competitive in these types of industries, this is becoming increasingly common.

Even if you don’t want to offer emergency services, you may wish to offer your callers the convenience of 24/7 availability to make appointments, place orders, etc.

While it would be impractical – and exhausting – to have your own phone turned on all the time, it is a simple matter for a professional answering service to ensure that the call is answered whenever anyone wants to contact your business.

You need to make more time for yourself

Especially in the early stages, small business owners need to hustle. To become successful, you likely had to network, work long hours, and live on a limited budget. Perhaps now though, you’ve reached a point where the money is flowing in fairly well, but you’re still working long hours and always seem to be pressed for time.

If that’s the case, then hiring an answering service may be the solution. By hiring an answering service, you can let the bulk of your calls go to the call centre. If you are expecting certain important calls you can have them transferred to you or another person in your company.

Having an answering service allows you to take more time for yourself and not have to worry that you might be missing an important call.

Growing a small business can be a challenge – but for many this challenge is made easier when they hire a call answering service. If you think that this solution might be right for you, we invite you to contact Touch Communications today to find out more!  Or view Touch Communications on our Facebook page!