Answering Service vs. Call Center: Which One Does Your Business Need?

An answering service is a system that handles inbound calls on behalf of a business or individual, typically by taking messages, routing calls, or providing customer support, often outside of regular office hours. They can handle other tasks, such as scheduling appointments or providing basic information via phone calls, ensuring that no call goes unanswered.

There are three types of answering services: live, automated, and hybrid.

• Live Answering Service: A human agent takes the call, providing a personalized experience for the callers.
• Automated Answering Service: This type of service utilizes tools such as IVR (Interactive Voice Response) menus to handle calls.
• Hybrid Answering Service: A hybrid answering service combines the features of both the live and the automated answering services.

The core functions of an answering service are call forwarding, appointment scheduling, and emergency dispatch.

• Call Forwarding: With an answering service, you can reroute incoming calls to a designated number, ensuring no calls go unanswered and providing after-hours support.
• Appointment Scheduling: Some answering services integrate with calendar software to automatically schedule appointments for clients based on your availability.
• Emergency Dispatch: Agents are trained to handle urgent situations, including medical emergencies and product issues. Calls are immediately managed and routed to the appropriate emergency responder or department.

Medical clinics, legal advisors, entrepreneurs, and small businesses benefit from using answering services. In these cases, a single person is sufficient to handle the situation.

• Medical Offices & Clinics: For managing after-hours calls, patient emergencies, or appointment reminders.
• Solo Entrepreneurs: For those who want to present a professional front without hiring staff.
• Small Businesses & Contractors: Preventing calls from being missed during or after business hours, even when the business owner is unavailable.
• Legal and Financial Advisors: To handle sensitive inquiries and schedule consultations without a full in-house team.

A call center is a centralized team that handles a massive volume of inbound and outbound calls, often across multiple channels. It’s a fully functioning customer service department that handles complex issues and orders, as well as provides technical support.

The core functions of a call center are inbound support, outbound calling, automated service, and multi-channel support.

• Inbound Support: It assists customers with inquiries, technical support, account assistance, and complaints.
• Outbound Calling: It initiates sales-related calls, appointment reminders, surveys, collections, and follow-ups.
• Automated service: It uses IVR to automatically handle calls and route calls to relevant agents based on customer issues.
• Multi-Channel Support: It engages with customers through phone calls, email, SMS, chat, and social media.

Here are some areas where adopting contact center solutions gives the best results:

• E-Commerce Companies: For processing returns, tracking orders, and upselling.
• Tech Companies: For offering tiered technical support and product assistance.
• Travel & Hospitality: For reservations, changes, and multilingual customer support.
• Insurance Providers: For claims processing, account updates, and policy sales.

Answering services differ from call centers in terms of automation, scope of services, call handling volume, techniques, tools, and technology.

For call center automation, several tools are used to direct calls to the appropriate department or agent without requiring human intervention. Call centers often integrate both automated systems and live agents to handle the workload.

In contrast, answering services primarily utilize limited automation to ensure that calls are not missed, especially outside business hours. Automation, such as call forwarding or voicemail, is often operated, but the primary focus is on providing a personalized service.

Contact centers provide technical support, handle billing issues, respond to inquiries, process sales calls, and conduct surveys. Agents are trained to handle complex interactions and provide multi-channel support through phone, email, chat, and other channels.

However, answering services handle specific tasks, such as taking messages, scheduling appointments, answering basic questions, and forwarding urgent calls.

Typically, call centers are designed to handle problem-solving interactions, which often result in longer calls (lasting five minutes or more). These calls are focused on resolving issues in detail rather than processing tasks quickly.

However, answering services focus on quickly gathering information and relaying messages, so calls are brief, usually one to three minutes.

Call centers often have longer hold times due to complex issues and call routing, especially at peak times. Many modern call centers have optimized systems to reduce wait times, including IVR systems, call routing, queuing systems, and callback options.

Answering services are designed to provide quick responses and handle a lower volume of calls, so they typically have shorter hold times.

Call centers cost more than answering services, as they require advanced technology, specialized staff, and infrastructure. They typically handle higher volumes of calls and have larger teams to provide full-scale customer service or sales support.

Answering services are more affordable and usually require fewer resources than call centers.
 

Comparison Table

Choosing between an answering service and a call center depends on your business’s size, needs, and budget.

• You need after-hours coverage. You can handle calls outside of regular business hours, ensuring no calls are missed, especially for businesses in multiple time zones.
• You have a tight budget. An answering service requires fewer staff, technology, or training to handle basic features, such as call forwarding, message taking, and simple customer inquiries.
• You have low call volume. It’s ideal for businesses with fewer calls that require quick and simple call management.

• You run campaigns in sales or support. It’s best for managing high call volumes, tracking sales, and providing ongoing support with CRM tools.
• You handle 100+ calls daily. A call center is designed to manage high call volumes efficiently, with proper infrastructure and staff.
• You need deep analytics. It provides advanced call tracking, analytics, and performance reports to optimize operations.

Answering services and call centers both play valuable roles in customer experience management, with distinct purposes. Answering services provide a cost-effective and personalized approach to handling routine calls, ensuring that no messages are missed. Call centers, in contrast, are built for scale, capable of handling complex inquiries, high call volumes, and multi-channel customer engagement.