Answering Service & Call Center Articles

Answering Service / Call Center Article Archive

The following article was written by Specialty Answering Service (visit the answering service website). Please check back often for more articles.

How Does A Call Center Utilize Call Forwarding

By Specialty Answering Service

Many businesses let their clients calls to go to voicemail or a message machine after the business has closes. By activating call forwarding on your business lines and automatically forwarding your inbound calls to an answering service, this won't be your business. With call forwarding, your clients are forwarded to an operator rather than to an answering machine.

Call forwarding is a service provided by your telephone company where calls that come in are automatically forwarded to a number you provide. This can be an active service (you can turn on and off call forwarding when you want) and a passive service (called no answer call forwarding where the phone rings a set number of times and forwards to another number if the call does not get picked up). Call forwarding is the method you route your businesses telephone calls to an answering service or call center service you have contracted with.

Sales and customer satisfaction are the two most important things in the service world. With call forwarding, both of these are managed by live call center operators when you are unavailable. At any time, you have the option still using the your call center or your own employees to answer your phone calls by activating or disabling call forwarding (usually *72 to activate and *73 to deactivate). After you & your employees leave for the day, it is recommended you get in the habit of turning on call forwarding when you leave the office to ensure 24 hour customer service.

With call forwarding, your business is constantly connected with the consumer, creating a more personal feeling and thus more successful relationship with your customers. If you are using an answering machine instead of utilizing call forwarding to route your calls to a live operator, know that the impersonal answering machine uses a standard greeting that leaves the caller with no choice but to leave a message or switch to a competitor. With call forwarding to a call center, questions can be answered, messages taken, and urgent calls can be routed to a person of the proper credentials to manage the call. This choice not only poses more options, but also can gain you sales "after hours" and keep current customers your customers.

So, when posed with the problem of not being a twenty four hour business and having to field calls at all hours during or after business hours, think of activating call forwarding on your phone and employing an answering service. This will create a more personal and helpful relationship with consumers, while costing a fraction of a wired system. The consumers will be able to have questions answered, leave messages, and even order a service, while you'll be able to leave work with a clear head knowing that all your consumers are being answered by a real human, and not a message machine or by the representatives of an opponent in this competition for business.

Find more information on our answering service or call center and how we can customize your account to handle your calls properly, contact Specialty Answering Service.