7 Ways To Reduce Your Answering Service Bill

2 min


As a business, your answering service takes care of your overflow during busy times of the month – or takes care of your after-hours service. Even though answering services are drastically less expensive than paying an employee full-time, it’s never a bad move to calculate your bill and see exactly where the dollars are going. Who enjoys paying for something they’re not using? While it’s perfectly normal to expect a rather high bill, you’ve got to ask yourself: Is your answering service bill too high? Here are 7 ways to see if you can cut down costs.

1. Answer Calls Fast

When someone calls you and you aren’t available, it’s considerate to respond to them as promptly as possible. When calls go unanswered, clients and customers are likely to call again – costing you even more phone time.

2. Reduce Operator Minutes

Outgoing telephone calls are expensive – not to mention time-inefficient. This is because the clock starts as soon as your staff dials the number. When your staff takes messages by phone, expect 2 minutes or less for writing down messages per caller. Time that could be spent elsewhere – not to mention your bills keep piling up for writing down those messages. Minutes add up, especially when it comes to operators who are dealing with multiple clients who may be less than caring about the time, they’re costing you. You can avoid this by contacting your clients and customers with text tech.

3. Essentials

You will want to keep your message tickets to the essentials. This means gathering only the information you need to determine whether or not the call is urgent or not. This is because your answering service most likely asks callers a series of questions, which they’ll then have to repeat or re-ask for clarification’s sake.

4. Protocols

How simple is your on-call process? If it involves a series of steps for your team to figure out who to call, as well as which communication method is ideal, it is probably too expensive and prolonged. Do what you can streamline on-call procedures.

5. Go Online

You most likely have a rotating shift for on-call procedures. This means the answering service requires up-to-date information. Otherwise calls go wrong and your bill is driven up due to relayed information calls. In most cases, you’re charged for time spent entering on-call info into the systems of certain call centers. A medical answering service that uses on-call apps eliminate these climbing pile of charges.

6. Reach More

Everybody on the staff’s roles are constantly revolving around in an endless cycle. Appointments are canceled, made, then canceled again in a heartbeat. This is why texting/emailing several contacts at once saves everyone a lot of time and money. Least of all is because of hourly reminders that Client A called with urgent information regarding the medical call. Text or email messages to several contacts at once – instead of calling them one by one.

7. Urgent Messages

Your healthcare answering service will be inundated with an onslaught of calls. Some of these will be urgent, others will not. It’ll become a hurricane of a mess to try and keep track of these messages by phone – even with the use of management software such as Trello or Excel.  Information may be relayed incorrectly, resulting in cataclysmic, potentially fatal circumstances.

Conclusion

These are a few techniques you can use to reduce the bill for your answering service. Keep in mind, however, that an expensive bill may also be the result of popularity. If your business is successful—and it’s a busy season—more operator minutes will be tallied into the bill. This is not cause for worry.

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