Answering Service Pricing Explained: You Do Get What You Pay For

Posted October 19, 2011 in answering services pricing, call handling services, reliable answering services by admin

It happened again. We engaged another prospect who was skeptical about utilizing answering services. Why? Because he had a ‘bad experience’ with a prior service. A while back, he knew his business model would benefit from an answering service. He had talked with a couple of providers,
and he thought he had made a good decision. But, without knowing it, he had fallen into the answering service pricing trap.

What’s The Difference?

What he didn’t realize, is the fact there are several different types of answering services. You see, there is a low barrier to entry to start an answering service; so many different varieties of organizations have sprung up over the years, all with very different answering service pricing.

The three main groupings are the small shops, the virtual office providers and the professional answering services. The small shops started with some phones, a few computers and couple operators. The virtual office providers typically started as some other business support service and simply added phone answering as an additional option to their offerings. The professional answering services are the teams who have put forth the time, energy and effort to certify to industry standards, develop dedicated instruction and ongoing education for their employees and maximize the use of current technology to build flexible, customizable programs for their clients.

Ultimate Outcomes

Our new friend had the initial bad experience because he lost sight of his ultimate outcome in his decision process. The answering service pricing he received from the initial two vendors was very different. Of course, his thought was to go with the lower price. After all, how different could the two services be? But the ultimate outcome he was seeking was to grow his business. The lower priced answering service he engaged worked well for the first few months, but as more calls came in, and he added employees, he needed more bandwidth and a better process for inbound calls. The service he engaged simply could not keep up with his business and he ended up spending a lot more of his time and money to bring resources in-house after that initial engagement went south.

Do It Right The First Time

When it comes to answering service pricing, we’ve seen quite a wide range and have heard unfortunate stories like the one above. When there is a large difference in pricing, don’t be too quick to pull the trigger for the lower price. The better thing to do is to start asking good questions like: “If one price is lower than the other, what’s missing in the lower priced offering?”; “What are the costs we could incur down the road if we choose the wrong provider?”; and “Which provider lines up best with our overall goals and long term business objectives?”. Everyone wants to feel like they’ve got a good deal in the buying process, but don’t let that overcome your ability to get the best overall value for the dollars that your company spends.

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