4 Ways to Get the Most Out of PATLive’s Answering Services
Though plenty of businesses see the appeal of having an answering service to keep their phones from ringing off the hooks, many express one single objection over and over again… and it’s finding room in the budget.
The number one thing they’re worried about is that it will be obvious to the caller (often a customer) that they’re using an answering service, and that the live receptionist won’t be able to help said caller the same way their business would.
With some answering services, sure, that may be a risk. But not at PATLive. Here, we only hire the top 2% of all applicants, and all of our agents are experts in customer service before they even start our 60-hour training program, all geared towards empowering them to help your customers just like you would.
In this post, we’re going to look at 4 specific ways that you can ensure you’re getting everything you can out of our answering service, providing maximum benefits for your business.
What is PATLive and Why Do I Need It?
PATLive is a live phone answering service assisting thousands of clients nationwide, ready to take any calls you need us to 24/7, 365 days a year– including holidays.
Unlike other answering services, all of our agents are true experts in their field. We hire fewer than one in every fifty applicants and then they go through a rigorous training program on how to best serve clients like you (and customers like yours!). Once they’re done with training, they’re armed with top-notch technology that will help them help you even further.
How you use PATLive is up to you; if you want us to be the first line of defense for every single call your business gets, we can do that. If you only want us to handle certain types of calls, or to only take call overflow or those during specific hours of the day, we can do that, too.
That being said, there are things you can do to get the most out of PATLive, so let’s take a look at each one.
1. Always Send Overflow Calls To PATLive, Even During Work Hours
If possible, you’d never have a customer be sent to a voicemail system or be asked to call again, right? That would be the first choice for most businesses, since missed calls are an enormous cause of lost business. Keep in mind that around 85% of missed calls will not call you back, so you can’t afford to take that hit.
Because of this, it’s best to always send calls that are at risk for being missed to PATLive directly, even during work hours. Some businesses like to try to answer all calls first themselves, so the best option here would be to set down your calls so that they automatically go to PATLive after the third ring. This gives your team a chance to answer before we jump in.
Of course, if you want to be as hands-off as possible, you can also have all calls set to go straight to PATLive first across the board. Think about what would benefit your business most, and go from there.
2. Let Us Know How to Qualify Leads For You
When we take you on as a new client, we want to know everything about your business that you want to share. This helps us better serve your customers.
One thing that’s particularly valuable to share with us is what information you want when qualifying leads. PATLive, after all, offers lead collection and appointment scheduling as included services, so make sure you’re getting the most out of these perks by telling us what information you need us to gather.
Realtors, for example, may want to find out when potential clients are planning on buying or selling so they can know who to prioritize on their schedule first, the address of the home being sold so they can come prepared with basic information, or the client’s desired zip code to ensure that they can help.
We’ll send all call information– including leads collected– to your office in the delivery method of your choice, so make sure that we’re getting the information that’s most valuable to you from the get-go. The more time we spend qualifying your leads for you means less work for you later on.
3. Work With Us to Fine-Tune Call Scripts
Here at PATLive, we utilize advanced call scripting technology that guides our agents through calls based on how you want us to handle them. It’s important that for us to truly sound like we’re working as a member of your team instead of just an extension of it that you can help us fine-tune those call scripts so that they’re exactly what you need.
If, for example, you want our agents to begin each call with a specific branded greeting, let us know that, and we’ll incorporate it right away. This is where you can ensure that our team is sounding exactly like yours, so working with us upfront to ensure we’re delivering customer service exactly as you’d expect is worth the time.
4. Consider a Full Integration with PATLive
We mentioned briefly above that we’ll send you call logs with details of all appointments, messages for employees, lead information, and anything else of relevance. There are several different options for how we can do this; we can send you an email with the information, for example, but many of our clients are opting for a full integration with PATLive to get the most out of our services.
We can, after all, work with the CRM of your choosing to streamline this process even further. In these cases, our agents could add new lead information to the system or plug in messages or appointments that your team needs to see, giving them an alert. This prevents your team from needing to go through and log the information in themselves manually, and it ensures that nothing slips between the cracks, because sometimes a line or two of data entry can get skipped.
Need help with sales or help desk support, too? We can work with your ecommerce platform and ticketing system, along with your CRM. We’re all about making things easier for your business, so just let us know what you need and we’ll jump in and get started.
PATLive’s answering service will benefit your business no matter how you use it, but we recommend taking these four steps to ensure that you’re truly getting the most out of what we can do for you. We want every client to benefit as much as possible from the work we do, and we believe these are the best ways to ensure that you do.
