Firstly, you should know what a message taking service is. These services are companies that specialize in handling phone calls and possibly emails for other companies. For fairly small companies, the owners tend to have very few employees. In fact, for many small businesses, the owner might be the only employee. This means that whenever the owner takes a vacation, he or she has to stay connected to the phone’s business line. However, if the owner does not carry a phone connected to the business line, he or she will have to just let the business go dark for the duration of the vacation. While this sounds undesirable, many people do not want to have to work while they are on vacation. A message taking service will answer the phone for you and collect your messages. They can also forward your messages to a certain location.
Small Businesses
Small businesses tend to have very few employees, so they are not sometimes not capable of handling the volume of incoming calls if someone is not available. Employees often take a day or two off because of illness, injury, or vacation. Whatever the reason may be, you will still need to perform all of your phone answering services. If you find yourself unable to handle your incoming calls, you can forward your business’ phone to a message taking service. The professionals at services such as Message Direct act as your business receptionist. Once the message is taken, it can be delivered using your preferred method. You can get your messages through SMS, text, phone call, or email. That way, you can take the message using whichever technology you have available. Or, you can wait and answer the messages after you get back.
Perhaps you are not missing any employees or going on vacation, but you just need someone else to answer the phone for you. When you are dealing with customers or potential clients, the receptionist often the first point of contact. Everyone who has worked with employees knows that sometimes they can be rude to customers. If you do not have a dedicated receptionist, you have to answer phone calls and take messages yourself or ask one of your other employees to do it. No matter the business you are in, you probably prefer to hire trained and dedicated professionals to perform specific tasks. Why should taking phone calls be any different? Employees who are rude on the phone can turn off customers, sending them to your competitors. When employees who are not trained as receptionists are asked to do receptionist duties, they tend to mess it up. They do not know the particulars of the job. You should hire professionals who will act as ambassadors to your business who will set a great first impression that encourages customers to order from you.
If your business is on the internet, you might find that you are gaining customers from around the world. Many people hope to gain customers from around the world, and so you are probably seeking to grow your business. However, this comes with a few problems that you might not have anticipated. Obviously, time zones are different in every part of the world, so when it is the middle of the night in your country, it might be the middle of the day elsewhere. If your customers are around the world, they might be calling or messaging your business at a time when you are asleep. A dedicated message taking service employs professionals who work around the clock. You also can choose when to answer your own phones and when to forward them to the message taking service. Therefore, you can choose to only send the phone calls to the service while you are unavailable. A message taking service can turn your small business into an international business that operates 24/7.
Big Business
Unlike a small business, big businesses likely have their own receptionists on staff. That is usually not the reason large businesses hire message taking services. Larger businesses usually employ message taking services for a limited time when the normal receptionist is out of the office due to illness or on vacation.
Much like the small business, you could ask your other employees to answer the phones when the receptionist is out, but this poses a few problems for a few reasons. Firstly, your employees are probably not trained in properly answering the phones. When dealing with happy customers, this is not so much of a detriment. But, dealing with unhappy customers is a careful skill that must be developed so that the customer is satisfied with the response and stays a customer. You have probably noticed that many terms and tones of voice that would be perfectly fine in person are seen as rude when spoken over the phone. The lack of visual cues when talking on the phone makes it a different form of communication. A skilled receptionist will know this and know how to navigate angry customers.
Seasonal Business
Some businesses such as shipping are very seasonal. They tend to have swells of business around Christmas time and the summer holiday when more people are shipping gifts than any other time of day. The same is true with many other types of business. So, if you are working in a seasonal business, you might find that you have an overflow of business for only part of the year. You cannot hire a full-time receptionist for a short amount of time. If you are experiencing more business than you can handle but only for a limited amount of time, you might look into hiring a message taking service. You can completely control how long and when you employ the service.
You can employ the message taking service for just the weekend hours so that you can give your employees the weekend off. Or you can forward your phone calls during the night-time hours when international customers might be calling. Another option is to forward your phone calls when you would rather not pay overtime to your employees. This would typically be during the off hours of your business.
