24-hour call answering is one of the many professional services used by businesses all over Ireland. It’s a very popular service among those who require their calls to be answered on a 24/7 basis. As this type of call answering is usually outsourced, escalation procedures are agreed with businesses in advance where calls require action to be taken outside of normal business hours.
Who Uses 24-Hour Call Answering?
There are a number of business sectors for whom 24-hour call answering is essential for their business to function. Emergency response and utility repair companies are the largest categories in this group. The urgency of these calls could range from getting an engineer on-site to release people trapped in a lift, to get your shattered windscreen replaced. Alarm activation response companies also use this type of call answering service to help deal with alarm emergencies. No one likes a house alarm going off and it’s particularly a nuisance when homeowners are away on holidays. These are usually emergency calls which need to be dealt with swiftly and calmly.
The second category of companies requiring 24-hour call answering services is global companies that may have an office in Ireland. These companies generally have offices all over the world and in order to ensure their Irish office remains in contact with their colleagues in the US as well as Asia, they use a 24-hour call answering service to redirect calls to employees’ mobiles when they have left the office.
A third category comprises a broad range of Business to Consumer type companies. These are companies whose clients are private consumers who expect to be able to speak to a customer service representative at any hour of the day or night. These may also be global companies and hence the need to have their calls answered promptly and professionally 24/7.
The final category are those companies who need to have a 24-hour call answering service in place as part of their Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery plan. As we all know, when Hurricane Ophelia hit Ireland recently lots of companies put their Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery plans in to place. In locations where telephone lines were down and electricity power outages were prevalent in Ireland, having a 24-hour call answering service on standby was essential.
Although used mainly for the above businesses, 24-hour call answering is also used by:
- Event booking and registration companies
- Software support and back-office services
- Online appointment booking services
- Direct/media response lines
- Consumer order lines
What Are The Benefits of 24-Hour Call Answering?
The biggest benefit of using a 24-hour call answering service is how cost-effective it is for most companies. Having this facility in place means that out-of-hours calls are filtered and only those who are really urgent are transferred to the engineer or employee who is on call. Non-urgent calls are dealt with by customer service representatives or messages are sent to the relevant staff member for the following working day.
Another advantage of using an outsourced service is that a company can virtually remain open to its clients 24/7 because the customer service agents can handle all telephone or online inquiries.
One final advantage of outsourcing to a 24-hour call answering service is that of avoiding having staff on-site at your business premises at night and the security issues that may arise as a result of this.
If you would like to discuss your 24-hour Call Answering requirements, give us a call on Freephone 1800 848 666 and we are happy to discuss the options.