Benefits of Call Answering
With smartphones, voicemail, and bundled services like Google Voice, you may be wondering whether a traditional call answering service still has a place in the telephone landscape of 2010 and beyond. Though these new devices and services can do much of what a call answering service traditionally offered, there are still benefits of call answering that aren’t available elsewhere.
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Benefits of Call Answering: The Human Touch
Though automated services can forward calls and take messages for you, they’re lacking when it comes to prioritizing these messages and screening the unwanted calls. Some systems let you screen calls, but the available criteria leaves much to be desired.
The benefits of call answering with a human involved are many:
- Priority: Everyone thinks their business is of the highest priority. In reality, however, this is rarely the case. A human answering your phone will usually be able to separate those who truly are a high priority from those who only wish they were. Without this buffer, you could end up wasting a lot of time listening to voicemails that are either irrelevant or can be dealt with at a later date.
- Tenacity: If a truly important call comes in, and you can’t be contacted via the arranged method, a human is capable of going the extra mile to see that you’re alerted. Whether this entails calling your hotel room directly or calling the restaurant you usually frequent, a human won’t give up until you’re on the line. For those whose business means they get several of these calls and are not always available, this could be one of the most important benefits of call answering.
- Delivery: A voicemail system delivers your message in the same, relatively useless order it always has: in the order in which they were received. A human who takes messages will learn your habits and know which messages you’d rather hear first and which can wait until later, or much later. It’s these relatively small things as well that can end up being huge benefits of call answering.
Benefits of Call Answering: Automated Services
We’ve come a long way from the traditional voicemail systems of the past. Now, there are services like Google Voice, which can do just about everything a human call answering service can do, without the human touch. While not perfect, these systems have several benefits of their own:
- Screening and Blocking: One of the biggest benefits of call answering services like Google Voice is that they allow you to block calls from any number you like. It can be a marketing company who won’t leave you alone or a customer who won’t stop harassing you.
- Call Routing: This service used to be available only at a premium price, but it has become much more affordable and widespread. The benefits of call answering and routing services are readily apparent. You can route calls to several different phones, depending on where you are and who is calling.
- Customized Experience: One of the benefits of call answering systems these days is that that they allow you to record multiple voicemail greetings for different groups of callers and then prioritize your messages by these groups. It’s a much more effective way to manage your calls than answering them in the order received.
