The Importance of Understanding Billing with an Answering Service

Knowing what you are being billed is only a part of understanding the cost of an answering service to your business.  The real key is understanding how you are being billed.

An important question you must ask your answering service is what is their billing periods.  Is it a month to month billing cycle or is it every 28 days.  There can be a huge difference over the course of a year between the two.  A 28 day billing period accounts for a partial billing period for every month.  In a typical non leap year, six months of the year have 30 days and 6 months of the year has 31 days.  In a 28 day billing cycle you will have 6 months of the year with 2 days unaccounted for and you will have 6 months of the year with 3 days unaccounted for.  The total of all the days unaccounted for is 30 days.  Those extra days will be billed as an extra invoice during the course of a year which also means you will receive an additional base rate during the course of the year.   All City does it differently.  We bill you on a month to month basis with 12 invoices in a 12 month period.  There are no hidden costs with us.

Another question you must ask your answering service is what their rounding rate is.  The rounding rate is the fraction that the call is rounded to.  An example is a call that lasts 34 minutes.  Is it rounded for billing purposes to 40 seconds or is rounded to the next full minute which would be 1 minute.  Some services do the next full minute of rounding.  This would greatly affect your usage rate so you wouldn’t be comparing apples to apples when deciding on an answering service.  At All City Communications we only round to the 1/10^th of a minute, so a 6 second call will only be rounded to 10 seconds.  This can be a great savings for your company. 

Finally, review any additional line items for services that you currently use.  Examples of additional line items may be texting charges, patching charges, and any term a specific answering service may use for an additional surprise service charge.  All City Communications is upfront with pricing and offers an extremely competitive rate.  We have many customized packages that will fit your needs so you will not be paying for additional minutes you may never use.  

Never Miss a Call and Why That Matters to You

I think we can all agree that availability to your customers and potential customers is a key component of business growth and success.  Whether you are in the funeral industry where being available to your families is paramount or in the service industry where many people will search for a specific service such as plumbing or heating in their area, it is extremely important to be available to answer the call.  As important as availability is to your business it is almost impossible to always be available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year including Holidays to your potential customers and current customers.

All City Communications provides a solution to that problem by being available to answer your calls by a dedicated group of customer care specialists 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.  We can answer as your business without the caller ever knowing that we are not in your office no matter what time the call comes in.  After speaking to the caller we have multiple options to dispatch the call to you.  These options include; texting, patching, calling and emailing.  Additionally, you will get a report of the call history and the dispatch result to help manage your employees and to keep record of the caller’s information.

Ensuring that you will never miss a call is essential to the success of your business.  All City Communications has professional, dedicated customer care specialist that will handle the needs of your callers and address their concerns immediately.  Do not let your competitors be more available to potential customers that you are.  Contact All City Communications and we will give you the competitive advantage. 

Live Answering, All City’s Essential Difference Maker!

Just a few a days ago I found myself in customer service limbo with a prominent supplier of television service.  I was on hold in a phone loop with another automated phone system, known as an IVR (Interactive Voice Response).  This system is all too familiar to all of us in which you are instructed to press a certain button on a phone tree where you press 1 for billing issues, 2 for tech support, etc.  I finally made it through to a live person that was able to answer my questions and address my concerns, but not until I was extremely frustrated and mumbled to myself about switching to a competitive provider of the same service. 

In a 2011 Consumer Reports survey, 71% of those surveyed said they were “tremendously annoyed” when they couldn’t reach a live customer service rep over the phone.  Customers hate IVR automated phone systems and it is not a good practice to anger your customers or potential customers from the start of the call.  Not all companies use an IVR system for their customer service processes.  In fact the #1 internet retailer, Amazon utilizes live answering for their customer service processes.  It is easy to understand why companies that appreciate customer service such as Amazon utilizes live answering representatives. 

Here at All City Communications we will answer every call live with no recorded greeting telling your callers to remain on hold or no frustrating IVR phone trees that your customers and potential customers have to navigate through to have their concerns and questions addressed.  An answering service that provides a live answering environment is crucial to making your customers happy and satisfied and will definitely have an impact on the level of customer service you provide on the phone.  After all, communication is essential to being able to effectively address the concerns of your customers.