Having worked on the other side of the fence with a small business answering service I can give you the perspective on what to look for in a small, business answering service.

No when do you decide to go for a small business, this is the question uppermost on everybody’s mind. Do that early on in the business and not when you start losing client and business due to lost calls and messages.

If you are very serious about getting some professional answering service then make sure that you are going after a small size business answering service company. Go for a medium sized and adequately staffed agency. You would argue that the answering service company will not tell you that and you are correct on that one but the fact is that you can do some due diligence before hiring the services.

The short staffed companies will drop important calls for example like a patient’s call to a doctor in emergency or even catering companies where clients are calling for food and you do not answer the call.

Then there is the issue of cost associated with hiring a big company, but these costs will pay for themselves if your business is expanding as it will if you have good customer relationship and the answering service is really like customer service agent who would need to project a goof image of you and your company.

Due diligence as always pays and the best bet for you is to have a free trial for a month or so with the small business answering company before you decide on one agency. And believe me most companies will agree to your request of free trial.

As a small business owner you will usually get advice form several quarters that go in for hiring a virtual assistant as that helps in many ways. She or he is sitting at home and doing work for you so no extra space for her and also they will handle usually all paper work and other miscellaneous work for you.

But the arguments against that are many especially when you begin to get business calls at any time during the day and if you have business spread across time zones then that means that you will always have to have a virtual assistant which in turn mans that the person cannot leave the desk at any time during the day or night. It will be a burnout case eventually and you will have to find alternative solution.

The best solution is to hire a fulfillment services or answering services. Make sure to ask questions like where are the companies employees located unless of course you do not care if the employees are located overseas. The other thing to know is if the employees are bonded in case you need to take orders and then they will have to take down the credit card numbers etc.

A lot of small business answering services companies have the best of the both worlds that is the customized voice prompted menus and followed by live support. They also offer live support after office hours and in various time zones. Also voice mail services are important and a lot of companies offer that too.

Think now in comparison to a virtual assistant you will never be able to get these plethoras of services plus the need for a professional tone is a must and these companies provide that with extensive training to their employees. And do not worry if these employees are located overseas as these overseas employees are also trained well in handling the calls.

Answering services costs can usually vary and it all depends on the kind of infrastructure you are signing up for. The answering service companies usually have a ton of suite of products that can change the costs quite a lot.

But for very obvious reasons you need to employ a small business answering service. However obvious they may but they still are worth mentioning here as some business owners would still want to cut these additional costs without realizing the opportunity costs associated with having a professional service.

Fist and foremost is the reason that you need not have the people calling to you and the call into a voice mail. That is very very damaging for your business especially when you are very small business and every call is potential lead for bigger business contracts or future opportunities.

Image of a business big or small can be of great concern and that usually means that you need to have the people who could talk smartly and have professional values. These people will come in at premium. You next bet is to have an answering service which will help you get professional help at lesser costs.

These business services have after hours support too and that helps when you want to be tracking calls even after hours. Also these answering services track the messages inbound and outbound so that in case you need some message later it can be retrieve for you.

The bets part of these services for you as a small business owner is that rather than managing calls you can then work on managing a work life balance as most likely running a small business takes a toll on your work life balance and any extra time could go to your family.