A Better Answer Blog

It’s no secret that business picks up during the holidays. According to the National Retail Federation, sales in November and December of 2016 are expected to increase 3.6 percent to $655.8 billion. That’s higher than the 10-year average of 2.5 percent and above the seven-year average of 3.4 percent since the economy started to recover in 2009. Furthermore, NRF forecasts non-store sales to increase between seven and 10 percent to as much as $117 billion.

Regardless of the industry you’re in, it’s important to be prepared. You can make a list and check it twice, but if you aren’t ready for the number of customer calls you’ll get this holiday season, it’ll leave you feeling like a Grinch. Fortunately, an answering service can help. 

Here are some of the services an answering service can provide to help your business handle the holiday rush:

Order Taking and Processing

An answering service can take holiday gift orders from your customers and process them on your website or purchasing system so you can efficiently deliver them to customers. This is great for customers who rely on their phones or aren’t sure about the security of online purchases. 

Help Desk/Trouble Tickets

Handling holiday help desk issues and trouble tickets is second nature to the right answering service. They handle these calls with superior professionalism, efficiency and empathy, letting you focus on promoting your business and handling new customers.

Overflow/After-Hours Support

Don’t have enough time to handle all of your customer calls? A 24/7 answering service provides telephone support for your overflow and after-hours calls, meaning you can take advantage of every opportunity to make a sale or fix an issue — regardless of the time of day.

Customer Relationship Management

An answering service also provides web-enabled data entry from incoming calls, meaning they go into your system and log calls, whether it’s a trouble ticket or simply ensuring you don’t have to re-enter it. This is more of a back-end perk for the holidays, but it’s still helpful. 

Ad Campaign Call Management                                 

Running a TV ad, radio ad or some other outbound marketing campaign this holiday season? An answering service can manage calls related to it. That includes answering questions, taking messages and more.

Vacation Services 

Worried about your incoming calls while you’re on Christmas vacation? Let an answering service take care of your telephone calls and other services while you’re on vacation. Talk about “Peace on Earth!”

Don’t let the holiday rush take you by surprise. Make sure your customers are happy and give yourself the gift of less stress by hiring an answering service this season. 

P.S. You can use an answering service for just the holiday period. No long-term contract required!