Cheap Alternatives to After-Hours Support

If you need a way to engage your target market, think about upping the level of commitment your customer care department offers to your consumers. Are you a 9-5 office, with no after hour care? Or are you a service business that has trouble keeping up with incoming calls throughout the week because of staff issues?

There are a number of ways to help your office manage your service issues, ranging from hourly help from secretaries to free voice mail options that can help you organize your office and also improve your productivity. Here are some of the best options for SMB's to offer not only customer service, but in-house organization. 

Call Centers

Outsourcing to a call center is a great way for businesses to offer after hour services to your consumers. This is the cheapest alternative to having a live hotline, where any immediate questions can still be directed to the right departments, allowing users to find answers or put in their queries before the next business day. An independent call center will generally charge an hourly rate that ranges from $10-$25, depending on your inbound call volume or the type of help you require.

Different call centers have focuses on many different services, from simple answering services to detailed IT support. Depending on what you do, a telephone answering service can change the way your customers contact your business. Smaller businesses can offer the same type of support as larger, Fortune 500 companies, and even gain more consumer trust by being available throughout the week.

Virtual Assistants

There are a growing number of virtual assistant companies on the market, ranging from small personal assistant-like websites to larger business groups. 

The smaller assistant businesses are generally better for localized services, such as SMBs that require real-time customer connections for cleaning services or scheduled maintenance. The larger assistant groups, such as VirtualAssistant.org, operate on a national level and offer anything from remote receptionist support to web development and accounting help. 

The majority of these assistant groups charge by the hour ($7-$18/hour), which is much more affordable for smaller budgets and storefronts with time constraints. For larger contracts, monthly services can be offered at discounted rates, though a minimum monthly service may be required.

VoiceMail Services

If your business uses a business phone vendor, then you probably already have a standard voicemail system set up. Under most standard mail services, however, you may only have a general voicemail inbox, which only functions as a basic answering machine. 

If you want to personalize the process, or if your business can benefit from having more advanced features integrated into the inbox, then you can try a voicemail service. There are a good amount of paid services, such as YouMail and EVoice, which offer free trial periods for forwarding and voicemail transcription services that can email or text the messages to its users.

While these services generally run at affordable monthly rates, Google Voice is free, and offers a highly customizable voicemail service that can forward live messages, transfer calls to multiple lines, and even deliver voice messages back to the senders.

While not complete answering systems, these are all highly affordable alternatives that give your callers much more advanced options when they are trying to reach out to your business during your off-hours. Aside from call forwarding, and voicemail transcription, Google Voice also allows for multiple voicemail greetings depending on the time of day or type of call. Currently there is a submission form required to get in the queue for a Voice account.

Find the right alternative

Most of these management assistant programs all work as extensions of your current business, which allows  for more fluid customer care that can maintain a professional and consistent line of communication. An outsourced telephone answering service will answer and respond to queries under your company name, and virtual assistants can even act like extended customer service representatives if you need them to. 

Branding requires time and consistent communication with your consumers, and smaller businesses generally have a harder time getting their foot through the door. Taking the time to set-up a small hourly call center or a voicemail account can make all the difference, so do your own research, talk to vendors, and even try setting up your own answering system if you are adept with your current phone system.