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Home-Based Answering Service

 GETTING STARTED |  TYPES OF HOME-BASED ANSWERING SERVICES |  HOW TO OBTAIN CLIENTS |  YOUR "HOME" OFFICE | TEN EASY STEPS TO ORGANIZE YOUR BUSINESS | THE ART OF NETWORKING | MARKETING YOU MUST DO | ADDITIONAL TIPS FOR SUCCESS | START-UP COSTS AND HOW TO FUND THEM | FINANCIAL AND LEGAL CONSIDERATIONS

TYPES OF HOME-BASED ANSWERING SERVICES

Now that you’ve identified the system and volume of business you are trying to acquire, let’s review the type of home-based answering services you can provide.

This booklet has already noted the importance of your phone "personality" as the main key to your success. The better you are at handling people on the phone, the greater the number of services you can offer, from straight message-taking to complete customer service. Your grammar must be sound, your diction easy to understand. To improve in these areas, there are many self- improvement courses available through local community colleges and other learning outlets for a nominal charge.

Businesses have a variety of phone needs, depending on their size and complexity. The phone can save them time and money in communicating with their customers. They may be looking for any of the following services which you could provide:

· Incoming Message Services, both during and after normal business hours; · Complete Answering Service where customers believe they are calling the actual business office; · 800 Number Service; · Order Taking Service where customers call in to order a specific product or service they’ve seen advertised; · Call Forwarding Service where the business forwards calls to you only when their personnel leave the office; · Message Delivery Service where you not only take messages, but you also call people for your business client; · Voice Mailboxes where you have lines that record messages, but also call people for your business client; · Beeper Service where you take the call and then page the client via a beeper ; · Computerized Telemarketing where you hook up a computer to a standard phone and program it to dial telephone numbers to help a business prospect for clients or advertise; · Appointment Setting Service where you call a list of individuals furnished by a business to set up appointments for the firm’s sales people; · Phone Sales where you are calling on behalf of a business to sell a specific service; and · Surveys where you call designated people to obtain answers to an opinion survey.

All of these services are possible via the phone. You don’t have to offer every single service, simply the ones you can comfortably perform. The phone skills required differ widely depending on the service.

Once you select the services you wish to provide, you can begin looking for clients.

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