Local versus National Answering Services

For any business shopping around for an answering service, the question arises whether to use a national answering service or one based locally. Although most people initially feel strongly one way or another, there are tradeoffs involved with each one. Before even considering these, it is always important that the service be experienced and trustworthy. Professionalism needs to be evident no matter which route you choose because any of the benefits of either local or national answering service will not mean much to your customers unless the service is skilled.

Another aspect that may come into play, depending on your needs, is price. Many useful features are offered by most answering services, bust some companies both local answering services and national don't offer a few of them. When deciding which kind of service to use, consider that many national services have been around for a long time. Interestingly, a large number of these national services once started as exclusively local services and went on to become so successful in what they do, they became large enough to service the entire country.

National services frequently utilize call centers in a variety of areas across the country, which comes in handy when local power outages or phone line problems happen. Competent national answering services are usually better at managing these unforeseen incidents more quickly than local services that are very much tied to local conditions. For those who provide urgent, 24-hour, or emergency service you should consider the fact that it is precisely during these times when you'll need a service most. Wouldn't it be good if the service were located outside your community? Even though most call centers have generators and battery backups, it's better for your peace of mind that they be outside your area.

Another reason it might be good to use an answering service that is located outside of your community is that, for certain companies, privacy issues arise when using a local service. As an example, let's say that Suzy has been having some major tax problems so she has taken on the help of a tax attorney. This particular tax attorney has decided to use a local answering service and Suzy finds herself leaving a message concerning her personal matters in some way with someone who may be friends or family of someone else she knows. Despite the fact that the local answering service would probably keep her matters private, the problem of people close to her knowing about her personal business does arise. If her tax attorney had utilized an answering service located outside the community, say 400 miles away, the chances of someone knowing her coming into contact with her information are virtually zero.

Something to consider however is that for a relative few sort of companies, having a local answering service is important. Maybe the answering service has to give directions and the company using them wants a local outfit staffed with other locals answering their calls for this reason. This is very rare and most people in this situation work out some sort of in-house solution. By and large, when you are choosing an answering service, you would do well to concentrate on important areas and not worry about how close the call centers are. When possible, try out an answering service for a week or so before getting an account. Many answering service providers these days, the ones confident about their own work, are more than willing to offer you a free trial.