The Cost-Effectiveness of Answering Services for Startups and SMBs

Startups and small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) need to find ways to optimize their resources as they grow. When your phones start ringing constantly throughout the day, that’s a strong sign you need to use your resources for better customer service. Call answering services can be an excellent way to save on hiring costs while offering customer support over the phone. 

Small Business Communication Challenges: The Why Behind Answering Services

Startups and small businesses face the challenge of balancing customer service needs with resource management. Communicating with customers and leads is essential to growing your business, but maximizing your resources is often complex.

Answering calls is a big part of the customer experience. Whether callers want to book an initial consultation, learn about a product or need help with their service plan, many high-value conversations start over the phone. Startups and SMBs are often working with small teams, so it’s hard to answer every call. The result is missed calls and missed opportunities. 

With a cost-effective answering service, your team can keep up with every phone call without stressing your resources.

How Cost-Effective Are Answering Services?

Let’s consider the alternative to call answering services — hiring a full-time receptionist. The median salary for a receptionist in the United States is $40,163, as of 2024. This number alone may feel considerable, especially for a small business or startup working with a small budget. But the costs don’t stop there.

Beyond income, you have to consider benefits. The average cost of benefits is $14.41 per hour per employee. Annually, this rate amounts to nearly $30,000 just for benefits. Plus, add the cost of recruiting, which is about $4,700 on average. There’s also a chance your full-time hire may decide to leave, which results in additional expenses to fill that position again.

Call answering services offer a more cost-effective solution for communicating with your customer base. At AnswerHero™, you could pay as low as $39 per month or about $470 per year with our smallest pricing plan. Even our largest plan is $21,540 per year, which is still about half of the median receptionist salary.

AnswerHero™ is completely contract-free, making it even easier to save. Adjust your plan every month as your needs change and easily scale our support based on your company’s growth.

How an Answering Service Helps Startups and SMBs

Working with a call answering service for startups offers high-impact benefits for your growing organization.

Increase Availability

A call answering service like AnswerHero™ gives you increased availability for your customers. As your startup or SMB grows, your team has to adapt to a growing list of responsibilities. In startup environments, it’s common for one person to juggle multiple roles to keep up with the pace of growth. Add answering the phones to that list of responsibilities, and calls are more likely to be missed.

With our team of bilingual call agents, you can reduce the number of internal tasks while maintaining regular contact with leads and customers. Instead of being greeted by voicemail, callers get to interact with real people and take the next step — whether that’s setting up an appointment or being routed to someone who can answer their questions.

Boost Productivity

When you count on your team to answer the phone at every ring, they have to put another task on hold to do so. Answering every call means team members are interrupted throughout the day, resulting in a decline in productivity. Ultimately, your team shouldn’t have to choose between picking up the phone and completing other mission-critical tasks.

With call answering services from AnswerHero™, our team fields your business’s phone calls, taking care of tasks like message taking, appointment setting and much more. As a result, your team can focus on other high-value responsibilities that contribute to the growth of your SMB.

Improve Lead Generation

Lead generation is a key part of growth for any SMB or startup — and it often occurs over the phone. For many potential leads, their first interaction with your business is a phone call. If you miss that call, you run the risk of losing a customer, especially if they are sent to voicemail. 

Lead capture answering services from AnswerHero™ ensure your company’s initial interaction with every prospect is professional and productive. Our call agents are an invaluable part of your lead generation efforts, creating a positive first impression for every potential client. We can also gather relevant information about each caller, like how they found out about your company and their contact information, so you have everything you require to build long-lasting relationships with your customers.

Features of a Call Answering Service for Small Businesses

AnswerHero™ is designed to make calls more manageable for your growing small business, with features like:

• 24/7 operation: Your SMB may have defined business hours, but call answering services don’t have to. AnswerHero™ operates 24/7 to help you capture leads and connect with customers, even when you’re out of the office. This round-the-clock support is valuable after business hours during the week, on weekends and during holidays.
  
• Custom scripts: Your business’s needs are unique, and the first step is creating custom scripts for our call agents. The process helps you determine what actions our call agents should take in various scenarios. For example, you can decide when an agent can provide a quick answer to a question versus when the call should be routed to someone on your team.
  
• Message taking: Whether you’re unavailable during business hours or a customer calls outside of the work day, call agents can take a message. Your SMB gets a new lead to follow up with, and the caller gets to interact with a human over the phone — a big step up from an answering machine.
  
• Appointment setting: Face-to-face or virtual meetings may be an important step in your sales process. AnswerHero™ call agents can set up meetings for you based on your availability. Check your messages, appointments and more in our secure web portal.

Help Your Small Business Grow With AnswerHero™                  

AnswerHero™ is your partner in business growth. With our quick and easy onboarding process, we can start answering your phones shortly after you contact us. Explore our plans and get in touch today to book a consultation.