Every client of a telephone answering service wants to have every call answered by a person on the first ring and never place a caller on hold. I understand that.
When we make a phone call we don’t want to hear the phone ring. We don’t want to wait on hold. We don’t want any delays. We seek instant access.
While I understand this feeling, I can assure you that this goal is impossible. Even so, some answering services may promise you they will do just that. If they do, don’t believe them.
The reality is that the only way to completely guarantee a person will answer every call on the first ring and never place a caller on hold is to hire someone to only answer your calls – for all three shifts, seven days a week.
That would cost thousands of dollars a month. Who could afford that? But even with all this, what happens if a second call comes in when the person is already on a call?
While a quality call center will strive to answer every call as quickly as possible, they would never lie to you and claim they can always do this for every call.
Answering services work because they are a shared service. The person who answers your phone also takes calls for many other companies as well. Professional answering services project how many people they need working at any given time to answer the number of calls likely to ring. And for the vast majority of the time they do a great job with their projections.
A realistic and more reasonable standard that service providers pursue is to strive to answer a high percentage of calls within a few rings, such as 80 percent of all calls by three rings. This means the vast majority of calls will be answered quite quickly. That’s a reasonable goal to shoot for and one that leading answering services can readily track.
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