Customer support and after-sales service are as important as selling top-notch products. But many businesses undermine the importance of customer support when they can’t develop a high-quality, in-house CS department. 

That’s where phone answering services come into play. One such service can take care of all your customer support needs. 

If you’re in a dilemma trying to figure out whether you need a phone answering service for your business, ask yourself the following questions. 

Questions to ask yourself

Are your customers complaining about your customer support?

To judge your existing, in-house customer service’s quality, you must take input from your customers. And the best way to go about it is to conduct surveys. 

You can set up a survey after a support session ends, so the customer can give feedback on how their experience was. Store the information and analyze what most of your customers are saying about your service. 

Are you struggling to establish contact with your customers?

If your customers are facing difficulties finding you, or you’re having problems getting back to them, your CS infrastructure needs some serious work!

One of the fundamentals of customer support is that customers should be able to reach you with minimum effort. If they have to go through tedious processes just to talk to an agent, that’s a problem. 

Do you feel that answering calls prevents you from moving forward with your other activities?

If your customer service department is taking too much of your office resources, you may face problems taking your business forward as a whole. That’s especially noticeable if you are a small business that doesn’t have a lot of resources to spare on customer service. 

If you spend too much of your time, money, and other resources on CS, you won’t be able to invest in other important factors like R&D and marketing. 

Do your clients tend to look for you outside of your working hours?

If your customers are trying to get in touch with you while your customer service agents are not working, you may need to take outer help. 

Customers don’t care whether they’re contacting you during work hours or not — they need answers or solutions, depending on the reason for their call. Pay close attention to how many voicemails you have each morning. If there’s plenty of them, you need a phone answering service. 

Are you missing opportunities by letting your calls go to voicemail?

Analyze the voicemails you’re getting and see what the customers are saying. Many customers would abandon you and go looking for alternatives if they can’t get to you quickly. If the voicemails showcase a similar behavior, you need help!

The bottom line

Taking care of your customers is super important — and many businesses take a lot of time understanding that reality. In most cases, providing mediocre support using a small, in-house customer service team won’t work. 

If you’re struggling to figure out whether you need a phone answering service, ask yourself the questions mentioned above. 

If the answer to all (or most) of these questions is “Yes” — you do need a phone answering service.