When Running any kind of business, you are going to need some form of incoming calls strategy. That much is obvious! Even if you run the majority of your firm online, it’s pretty safe to say that keeping a line or two open for your customers and clients is going to be beneficial for all their ongoing needs. After all, people do often prefer speaking to a human being if they can help it!

However, there are plenty of different ways in which you can accept incoming calls in this day and age. The most obvious way, if you are a sole trader or an entrepreneur, is to simple route calls through to your main line, which might even be a mobile phone. However, as your business grows, you’ll probably need to start thinking about getting more lines open so that you can start fielding more queries.

Therefore, in this post, we’re going to ask the question – is running your own call Centre, or small call handling team, necessarily better than outsourcing to a call Answering service off-site? We know the answer – and we’re sure you do too – but let’s take a closer look and consider the differences.

Running a Call Centre

Running your own call centre is a fantastic idea if you are a small franchise that’s part of a bigger whole, or if you are a well-known brand that’s looking to set up new offices. That’s because the money you invest in these centres will pay for itself in the short term. It’s also fairly common that bigger businesses will go the outsourcing route, in the sense that they will choose an outsourcer expert to manage their calls for them, at various locations across the UK and even around the world.

However, as stated, this is all well and good if you are already well-established company and brand. There’s a number of costs and considerations when it comes to setting up a call centre which might not be too comfortable for smaller firms. For example, for each agent you employ, you are naturally going to need to consider sickness pay, benefits, pensions, and more. You have a duty of care to them as an employer, and this often means that you have to take on plenty of extra admin.

Not all businesses, especially the smaller brands out there, have the ability to set up stringent HR practices. The fact is, running a call centre takes extensive planning and will need extensive funding over time. Unless you can be sure that you are making enough money several times over to fund the running of a centre, it’s probably not going to be worth your while.

Using Call Answering

On the other hand, call answering provides an intriguing alternative. Much in the same way that you’d outsource call handling through a specific centre or call handling specialists, call answering is a way for you to hire a team of call handlers, off-site, who can simply man the frontlines for you while you are unable to answer queries and process incoming calls on your own.

This means you are only ever paying for the time and the calls that you actually need taking. There is never any need for you to pay for employee contracting, absentee hours and the like. You only ever pay for the calls you need, and on top of all that, as you are essentially paying for a service outright, there’s no need for you to go through the rigmarole of onboarding new employees, registering for PAYE or otherwise.

Call answering is an ideal solution for those entrepreneurs and businesspeople who are finding that their smaller enterprises are starting to pick up interest, and that it is to such an extent that they need extra help on the frontline to receive calls. The fact is your callers and clients are going to feel better looked-after when they talk to a human being – who is actively taking messages – rather than having to leave a query with an impersonal answering machine.

Yes – answering machines and voicemail services are fast, efficient, and everyone’s familiar with them. However, to really convert on that first contact, the best thing you can do is offer a personalised approach. It could make all the difference when it comes to converting on a contract that really drives home the revenue.

Why is It Worth Using a Call Centre or Call Answering At All?

No matter where you are in your business ownership journey, there is likely to come a time where – in a period of growth – you are going to need more help on side to tackle increasing call numbers. While it may not seem as though you are taking too many calls on right now, it remains to be said that if you cut yourself out of this market early on, you are going to potentially miss out on some serious revenue.

Setting up a call answering service effectively allows you to capture all of those calls and queries which might otherwise fall by the wayside. The fact is none of us truly know what the next incoming call is going to be about. If you are taking and handling only around a third of your incoming queries, that’s going to impact heavily on your reputation as well as your revenue potential. Therefore, make a point of getting a system in place so that you are taking as many calls and queries as you possibly can.

If you’d like to know more about setting up efficient call answering for your business, it’s time to reach out to a professional team of outsourcers who always has your back. Planet Numbers offers friendly, professional call answering you can be proud of – let us ‘be your brand’ at the point of first contact and save messages for you that you can convert on in the months to come. Call us now to find out more or get in touch via web form.

The post Call Answering Or Call Centre? How to Make the Right Choice first appeared on Planet Numbers.