Keeping your customers happy is priority number one for any successful business. But doing so gets trickier when inquiries come flooding in after your standard operating hours. Missed calls and delayed responses breed frustration fast in our always-on world. Implementing smart strategies for managing those after-hours customer questions is crucial.
The Risks of Being Unavailable
Calling a company only to get sent straight to voicemail is incredibly annoying for customers. Not only do they have to wait for someone to return their call and voice message, but that delay often forces them to disrupt their own schedules to resolve simple queries. Left too long, that frustration boils over into negative reviews, complaints, and taking their business elsewhere.
But having employees respond to every after-hours inquiry immediately just is not feasible for most businesses – it is expensive, taxing, and a fast-track to employee burnout. So how can you keep customers happy without exhausting your team?
Leverage the Right Support Tools
The key lies in leveraging smart, affordable support tools designed to field incoming customer calls 24/7 while intelligently triaging priority issues to on-call staff only when truly necessary.
Auto-attendant phone systems play a role by allowing you to program custom open/closed hours greetings and self-service options. But in most cases, auto-attendants should be limited to simple off-hours tasks like providing your address or choosing a language. For more complex queries, you need backup.
Enter: The Live Answering Service
This is where partnering with a professional live answering service like Apello works wonders. These services employ teams of virtual receptionists available around the clock to personally answer every incoming call in a friendly, professional manner.
Based on your custom scripts, their agents can resolve basic inquiries themselves, warm-transfer priority calls to on-call staff, or simply take messages and relay them discreetly later. No more nightmare scenarios of frantic customers being put straight to voicemail after hours.
Prioritize Urgent Matters
Of course, there are certain situations that warrant escalating urgent calls right away, regardless of the time. Maybe it is a major client having a technical meltdown that needs to be addressed ASAP. Or perhaps you offer emergency services that simply can’t be delayed until the morning.
Whatever your organization’s criteria, make sure you outline clear protocols for identifying and escalating these high priority after-hours calls to internal staff immediately. Your answering service can serve as the first line of defense to screen and properly route those VIP issues.
Implement the Right Technologies
While a quality answering service should be the core component of your after-hours support game plan, other complementary tools can further smooth the experience.
For instance, consider implementing call recording for after-hours interactions. This creates a record you can reference later if any details are unclear from a message. Similarly, integrating your answering service within a unified communications solution ties all your voice, chat, video, mobile and other messaging channels into one seamless platform.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, customers do not really care about limited business hours – they simply want their questions addressed promptly without any hassles. A professional live answering service provides that seamless experience by being available 24/7 as your business’s after-hours voice.
Rather than disconnected call trees and voicemail dumping grounds, an experienced team is there to either satisfy each after-hours inquiry directly or ensure it reaches the right person expediently. No more frustrated customers venting that they always get dumped into voicemail purgatory after hours. Their needs get fulfilled, your team stays sane, and your business reputation stays stellar, no matter the time of day or night.
