Voicemail vs Answering Service – BaseTend
When it comes to your business, which is more professional? Having someone who can answer your calls when you can’t or to let your calls go to voicemail?
Voicemail or Answering Service
Many businesses are starting to realize that they need a receptionist or an answering service to take calls. There are too many things that can happen if you don’t answer your phone. You might lose business and clients, you might not even get the message that was intended for you (ie. if your voicemail is full) or the business just might seem unprofessional to the customer who is calling if you don’t pick up your phone.
Forbes reported that 80% of callers that are sent to voicemail, will hang up and the New York Times reported that 30% of messages never get listened to for at least three days and 20% of people that have a voicemail, never even check it. So by those statistics, you could be losing out on a lot of business just from unanswered phone calls.
So what are your options?
It is a very smart decision to get a virtual receptionist. For the companies that only get a handful of calls a day a virtual receptionist makes for a better option than paying for a full-time receptionist.
An answering service is a live person who answers your calls as they come in. They are typically cheaper than an in-house receptionist. Some answering service companies charge a flat rate for the month whereas we charge per minute. Answering services can usually do multiple tasks for the business as well. At BaseTend we can book/cancel/reschedule appointments, take messages and transfer calls if need be. Along with taking calls, you also get a summary of each call sent to your email. It’s easy to keep track of your business and calls with the summaries we provide you.