Service businesses operate in a highly competitive industry, and that list includes contractors, HVAC, plumbing, cleaning, and pest control. Customers have a short attention span and endless choices, which means they don’t want to wait for a business to respond. Either your business is constantly available, or you will continue to lose customers and potential leads.
The good news is that you don’t have to expand the team to manage incoming calls. Instead, just get an AI answering service from signpost.com. AI voice agents are flexible, customizable, and easy to use, and with Signpost, the entire onboarding process can be completed in less than an hour.
24/7 Call Coverage: Critical for Service Businesses
You cannot expect a customer to wait when they have witnessed extreme pest-related damage or have a flooded basement. Emergencies often happen at odd hours, and there is no room to delay the immediate support essential to resolve the problem. Service businesses often have limited staff members inside the office, and these people are already overburdened with admin work. With AI, you can ensure 24/7 call coverage but without the corresponding costs.
Limitations of Traditional Call Handling
As we discussed, in-house admin teams and customer care executives often juggle between tasks, and incoming calls only add to the pressure. Also, one executive can only talk to one caller at a time, which means others have to hold or remain in the queue. Customers would rather find another option than wait. The same is true for voicemail. Voicemail isn’t just outdated but also flat. As for field teams, they are already dealing with job-related issues and have no time to offer the proper response a caller may expect. Hiring full-time receptionists for call handling isn’t feasible and can be expensive, even for mid-size businesses.
How Does AI Call Coverage Work?
AI receptionists leverage artificial intelligence, natural language processing, and voice synthesis to understand a caller’s needs and respond to their requests. Contrary to what many business owners assume, AI is not robotic. Many customers cannot even tell the difference. Unlike real people, the system remains available 24/7, including weekends. If AI cannot offer help or when a customer needs bespoke support, the system can also transfer the call on an urgent basis. All calls attended by AI answering services are automatically recorded and saved for future training and use.
Benefits for Service Businesses
- First, your business will never miss leads. There is no need to check voicemail or calculate how many people need a call back. AI will record everything and capture lead information.
- For customers, you can ensure an unmatched experience. They don’t have to wait and will get custom replies, which boosts trust. With voicemail, that trust factor is always missing.
- AI can also book jobs directly on the calendar. Your admin doesn’t have to do the work of checking available dates or reviewing double-bookings. AI receptionists can take jobs even after usual business hours.
- With less work to deal with, expect your human team to perform better and be more empathetic to customers who need urgent support. You can free up the team to tackle more critical work.
- Lastly, there is the competitive advantage of being available in a niche industry. When your business works for customers around the clock with AI, you can expect more leads and revenue.
If you haven’t considered an AI receptionist yet, start by looking for service providers. Check all relevant features, whether you can easily use the service and update scripts, and the overall pricing. In general, using AI for 24/7 customer care will cost a lot less than hiring new people, and the savings will only increase with time.
