When we put into action our strategies for growing our businesses, this often includes expanding our reach into other geographical areas.
If you’re in Vermont and want to expand to Oregon there are time zone differences to think about. Compound that with expanding hours: perhaps instead of a daily closing at 5 PM, you want to extend your hours to 11 pm in order to help capture that west coast customer. And, don’t forget, extending your hours will also positively impact your local customer base as well.
How do you plan to handle all the new business you’re going get? How are you going to be able to deliver service and responsiveness to your customers considering the time zone differences and the extended hours?
One way, is to enlist the power of a solid telephone answering service that serves customers coast-to-coast, and operates 24/7, 365 days a year. One that is committed to delivering service no matter what obstacles it may encounter: electrical outage, snow storms, etc. You want a telephone answering service that knows it has to be there for you no matter what, and wants to be there for you no matter what.
Well, getting back to addressing the time zone differences and extended hours…you can buy an answering service package that can include local numbers for those new geographic areas which will then forward back to your lines or the lines of your telephone answering service. You can buy a service package that includes 800 numbers. The important thing you want to achieve is that your customers will receive the timeliness and quick response you want to provide, in an easy, seamless way.
Your telephone answering service can take calls, take and deliver messages to you, or forward the calls to you in a seamless fashion, and then provide you with documentation that will help you track the metrics you’ll want to analyze to see how the new locations are doing.
Another way to utilize the nationwide coverage of your telephone answering service is when you are launching new marketing campaigns. You can order a specific telephone number for your clients to call and make that the response number in your marketing blitz. Then, as above, when they call that number your telephone answering service can provide documentation to help you track the metrics.
If your expansion involves phone-in surveys, you can subscribe to a program, for which you set the duration time, during which the friendly, courteous, and professional answering service agents will take the calls for you, help your callers complete the surveys and then forward the results to you.
These are just some examples to get your own creative juices going. Understanding how to leverage the power and reach of a telephone answering service can help you grow and expand your business.
Call your representative at your answering service, and review your plans with him/her, and ask how they can help you grow. If they can’t answer your questions, then they’re not the right service for you. Keep trying. There are telephone answering services available that are in the business of helping you achieve your business goals – and it all starts with helping you to brand your business through the messaging delivered to your customers by a solid telephone answering service.
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