Cheap Answering Service – Lowest Cost Discounts For Any Budget
The lowest pricing for live telephone answering services and only the very best clear speaking receptionists.
Looking for low-cost Affordable Answering Services and live messaging services? Select Answering Service works with call centers that can help deliver US-based customer support 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Never miss an important call or paying customer again. SAS can help you find solutions to support medical professionals, legal, contractors, government, higher education, and thousands of other large and small businesses. No high-cost rates, just high-quality solutions at cheap answering service prices as low as $1.80/day that deliver customized scripting, call patching, and appointment setting services.
5 Actionable Tips for Choosing a Cheap Answering Service
An answering service for your business is a great way to save money, operate more efficiently, and adapt to seasonal demands.
However, it’s easy to take the first package that falls on your radar — and this could end up costing you far more in the long term. Hidden charges, extra out-of-hours rates, or inefficient services can all add to the cost.
Here’s how to find a cheap answering service — and how to keep your ongoing costs as low as possible, too.
Get The Best Price – Compare The Price
Answering services offer a range of packages to suit your budget. The average cost of service for a medium-sized business is between $150 – $250 per month. The actual cost will depend on the company’s requirements and how savvy they’ve been in finding the right supplier.
However, instead of looking at the monthly or annual cost of the service, it’s better to look at the savings they offer overall.
For example, an answering service may have several people dedicated to taking calls for your business every day. When you compare this to the average $34,800 annual salary of a single receptionist, it’s easy to see that even a comprehensive answering service still offers value for money.
In addition, your answering service makes it easy to stick to a budget and analyze your business requirements. This is because the service will operate on a single task (answering calls) with set goals (such as qualifying inbound leads).
Over time, you can change the package you require with your answering service or change provider altogether if you feel you’re not getting value for money. This is much cheaper than hiring and firing in-house staff for not reaching targets.
The task-led service also saves your in-house team time and money as they only deal with qualified leads or legitimate customers. There’s less time wasted on re-qualifying leads only to find they’re unsuitable, which means your work processes become extremely efficient.
24/7 Affordable Answering Service
The one huge advantage of an answering service is that you can use it to offer your customers 24/7 support.
The cost of doing this with in-house staff is astronomical. Not only do you need to pay the salaries and employee benefits of night and weekend staff, but you also pay the running overheads to keep your office open for them.
An answering service, however, gets paid for the calls they take — and that’s it. There are no additional overheads, salaries, taxes, or employee benefits for you to worry about.
That means if, for example, you only receive one call at the weekend, you’ll only pay for that call. You won’t be paying to operate a 24/7 business.
Which Is Cheaper: Pay By The Minute or Pay By Call?
Call services offer two types of packages: pay by the minute and pay by call.
There are advantages to both options — it all depends on your business requirements to determine which is the cheapest option for you.
A pay-by-the-minute package is ideal for a small business without many incoming calls. It’s also suitable for a business new to using an answering service as it can help to determine how many minutes are required each month.
However, this option can scale up your costs if there are a high number of calls made to your company every month.
Pay by the call is a more efficient option for most businesses with a medium to a high volume of calls. A call could be one minute or 20 minutes and the cost is exactly the same.
The cost for each call is usually higher than an average per-minute charge, but if your average calls are longer than a minute, you’ll see a significant saving.
Deep Discounts – Too Good to Be True?
We’ve all heard the adage “If it’s too good to be true, it usually is.” Notice the word “usually” in there, though?
Sometimes, if something is too good to be true… it’s still true.
The secret here is that finding an affordable answering service isn’t always about what they can offer. It’s about what you ask them to do (and what they can leave out of their service to save you money).
If you streamline your requirements for an answering service, it’s possible to reduce your costs to as little as $1.80 per day.
5 Easy Tips to an In Expensive Answering Bill
The benefits of outsourcing to an answering service can be outweighed by the perceived high cost of such an offering. That’s because many business owners aren’t sure how to reduce the requirements of service to streamline the process, minimize the use of minutes, and improve business productivity.
Follow these easy steps to make sure your answering service bill is as low as possible.
1. Record a Short Pre-Answer Message to Minimize Call Times
Many calls to a company can be handled without the customer ever speaking to a real person.
If, for example, you only operate your business within a certain area, you can eliminate calls from customers outside of that area with a pre-recorded message. Or, if your customers can complete the same action online as speaking with someone, your message could direct them to your website.
This will significantly reduce the number of calls your answering service handles and is also a great way to pre-qualify leads at no extra cost.
2. Compare Prices Regularly
New price offerings pop up all the time from answering service providers. Keep your eye on the ball and shop around at least every year, if not every quarter, to make sure you’re getting the best price.
Check your service usage, too. If you’re paying a set fee for a high number of minutes, but only using half, you’ll save a lot of money by reducing the package with your current supplier.
3. Email Your Service (Instead of Using Your Minutes)
Whether you want to update the service package, gain insights for a board report, or simply check in with your answering service, email them instead of calling them.
It’s a simple thing to do that many people forget! If you call your answering service, you’re paying them to answer your call. An email won’t use up your package limits or add time to your invoice.
4. Opt for Flexible Packages
Choose a service that allows you to ramp up and scale back your answering service requirements on a month-by-month basis.
This will give you more budget control as well as help you to cover seasonal peaks and troughs for your business.
5. Minimize Your Call Script
The more questions your call agent has to ask during an initial call, the longer they’re going to be on the phone.
Minimize the call script for agents to make sure you’re getting only the essential qualifying information. This will significantly reduce the amount of time spent on each answered call. It will also prevent your callback staff from irritating customers by asking the same questions over again too.
Search for Answering Service Quotes
Now that you know how to reduce call times and minimize spend on your inbound calls, it’s time to find a cheap answering service that suits your needs.
There’s a wide range of packages available from answering services across America. It all depends on whether you need a flat rate, per-minute package fee, 24/7 support, seasonal fluctuations, or a high volume of daily calls managed.
Find the most cost-effective answering service for your unique business needs. Request a quote today and receive a number of relevant options for your company.
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