Learn how Smith.ai can help your business. Weâll address your questions about our receptionist, chat, and campaign services.
Every new communication channel offers an additional path for new leads to contact you. Be available for them to text, without adding any work to your own plate.
Put your Smith.ai texting number on a billboard, business card, or print ad. We'll respond immediately to leads who text you â plus you can track your offline marketing.
Your current clients can text your number to make or update an appointment. Weâll manage the administrative work â you just make the call at the appointed time.
Text messages can be read aloud and created by dictation, giving leads and clients with visual impairment access to your company. Our agents can qualify and book every client.
Calls, chats, appointments, and payments are automatically logged in your systems. Here is a selection of our many integration partners.
The best virtual receptionist and chat services do much more than pick up phone calls, answer chats, and take messages for you and your staff. At Smith.ai, we provide professional live agents who are capable of a wide range of services from call handling, to appointment booking, to lead intake, to website chat, and more. Whether you need live staff on duty 24/7, during daytime hours, for overflow support only, or just for after-hours (nights and weekends), here are the answers to the most common questions we receive about our SMS text answering services, specifically.
An answering service, like Smith.ai, can offer your business SMS text answering. In doing so, answering services can take over SMS text answering for your business so that clients and potential prospects have the option to text your business to learn more about your services, schedule or update an appointment, or submit an inquiry. This enables your clients to connect with your business how and when they want without the hassle of speaking on the phone or visiting in person. Text messages can even be read aloud and created by diction, allowing your business to connect with clients who may be visually impaired. Youâll be able to reach and track more offline leads and communicate with more clients, as answering services, like Smith.ai, can answer texts 24/7, whether your business is open or not. With text answering services, your business can exude professionalism at all times and grow more successful by the hour.
By enabling SMS text answering through an answering service, your business can:
A great text answering service can make all the difference for your business. It's important for businesses to connect with clients in a variety of ways and not limit your client outreach to just phone calls. Smith.ai can provide a professional SMS text answering service so that your business has the opportunity to reach and convert potential leads you may not have otherwise gotten through phone calls or emails. We can deliver exceptional service so that even if you aren't able to answer every text, clients can still have a great experience with your business and not your voicemail box or email spam folder, thanks to Smith.aiâs answering service.
Text message answering is invaluable to your businessâs success. Without limiting your communication options to just phone calls, you can improve your teamâs responsiveness and productivity and put your business well ahead of your competitors. Whether your business needs client outreach assistance, customer service support, or just help off-setting communication pressures on your team, a text message answering service can transform your business into the best version of itself.Â
As far as text message answering is concerned, call centers and in-house staff canât perform as well as an answering service. While they may be able to answer calls more frequently and consistently than employees with other duties, call centers and in-house receptionists rarely offer SMS text message answering and if they do, they tend to deliver sub-par quality on the texts they answer.
Answering texts isnât rocket science, yet still call centers and in-house staff canât seem to do so. In failing to provide more modern communication options, call centers and in-house staff miss the mark on prioritizing your teamsâ time and your clientsâ satisfaction. If they do offer SMS text answering, call centers and in-house staff are often not equipped to provide quick and efficient answers, leaving clients understandably annoyed.Â
Answering services like Smith.ai offer thoughtful accommodations, like appointment scheduling through text to adhere to your teamâs schedule. By paying attention to the details, Smith.aiâs answering service can relieve your busy team of call handling pressures, provide your clients with outstanding customer service, and help your business thrive. Hiring a call center or an in-house staff rather than outsourcing text message answering to an answering service may risk your reputation, your productivity, and your customer satisfaction.Â
If youâre a small business, this rings especially true for you. Over 89% of consumers want to text your business about becoming a client yet call center agents and in-house staff miss these clients by simply not offering SMS text answering. If they do offer it, they canât provide timely responses, as call centers and in-house staff arenât available 24/7, and when they do finally respond, they can often sound rehearsed, impersonal, and robotic. This can destroy any initial impression a client may have and erode any trust they may have in your business, which is critical to establish in the initial conversation with a potential client.Â
If a call center does offer SMS text answering, they often:
With over 82% of customers wanting their issues resolved quickly, call centers fall short of providing satisfactory service to clients. Text messages answered by call centers are often met with lengthy response times and unsatisfying answers. And with only 44% of clients reporting call centers to be helpful compared to nearly 76% of clients reporting non-call centers, like answering service, to be helpful, itâs clear to see that hiring a call center will result in longer response times and unsatisfactory customer service.
In-house staff also regularly:
Even with a full-time in-house receptionist, over 62% of clientsâ questions or inquiries are left unanswered. Despite being their sole purpose, in-house staff still fail to communicate with clients, which can cost your business potential customers, as up to 50% of sales go to businesses that answer first. With many in-house staff having limited customer service knowledge, current clients are lost as well since over 71% of clients will end a business relationship due to poor phone etiquette. Hiring an in-house staff to answer calls is arguably counterintuitive to your businessâs success.Â
All of these common issues with call centers and in-house staff can encourage clients and potential prospects to take their business elsewhere, resulting in your company losing leads, customer loyalty, money, and time. By hiring an answering service, such as Smith.ai, instead, your team can avoid losing out on clients by having a knowledgeable and friendly representative available at all times to answer clientsâ questions, respond to interested leads, and schedule appointments all over text.Â
If that isnât enough, the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that on average, answering services cost only about 20% of what an in-house staff or call center costs despite offering more features and better quality services.Â
As a matter of fact, Smith.aiâs virtual receptionists can:
Outsourcing SMS text answering to an answering service like Smith.ai instead of a call center or in-house staff can save your business from overextended budgets, embarrassing client interactions, missed lead-capturing opportunities, and frustrating workplace complications. Rather than risk your revenue and client relationships on inexperienced or ineffective call center agents or in-house staff, trust Smith.aiâs reliable service to nurture clients, capture leads, and take the pressure off of your busy staff.Â
Donât just take our word for it. Check out some of our clientsâ reviews to see why so many businesses trust Smith.ai to handle their text message answering.
Cost is an important factor when deciding whether your business should sign up for an answering service or not. Many answering services often hide their true prices to trick you into signing up. Luckily, Smith.aiâs pricing is always clearly advertised upfront so that determining the cost for text message answering can be simple and painless.
When signing up for Smith.ai, there are:
No set-up fees
No cancellation fees
Free spam blocking
No hidden fees/pricing
You shouldnât have to go bankrupt to receive high-quality services that can set your business apart from the others. With Smith.ai, youâll never be charged with random, unrecognizable fees or stuck paying for something you didnât sign up for. You can rest easy knowing what you see is always going to be exactly what you get.
Even better â Smith.aiâs SMS text answering, among other features, are incredibly affordable. Monthly plans start at as little as $255/month or, if you prefer, you can create a customized plan that fits your business needs. No matter which plan you choose, youâll never have to spend more than you should, since Smith.aiâs virtual receptionist pricing follows a per-call rather than per-minute pricing model. That way, you donât have to pay for someone to sit around while your phone isnât ringing as you would with an in-house staff member. You only ever pay for the plan you sign up for â nothing more.Â
To save you even more money, Smith.ai offers 10% off when you pay upfront annually. Youâll be able to save money and receive the exact same services as you normally would on a monthly payment plan. Itâs a win-win.Â
If your business might benefit from bundling text message answering with live website answering, Smith.ai also offers a 5% bundled discount for receptionist and chat services. Thisâll put money back in your pocket and give your business the opportunity to take advantage of unique services other answering services donât offer, granting your business a leg up in your industry.
Whatever your business can afford, investing in an answering service that offers text message answering will be well worth it. While other businesses may be stuck spending massive amounts of time and money on front desk support or call centers, youâll be able to save both by utilizing an inexpensive and flexible service that provides your clients with their preferred communication method. Customers will run to your business for providing them options to choose from, reliable customer service, and quick answering.
To see if Smith.ai is the right fit for your business, sign up today risk-free with our 14-day money-back guarantee.
Keeping a business up and running is no simple task. Thatâs why itâs easy to see how quickly businesses can run into problems they struggle to resolve themselves. Common problems that indicate your business may benefit from text message answering are:
Business calls can bombard your staff. For businesses that rely on phone calls as their one and only form of client communication, the amount of phone calls that need to be properly answered can be overwhelming to say the least. Staying in contact with clients is crucial for your businessâs success, but with phone calls being clients only option, team members might have to neglect more important work to connect with them on calls, leaving your staff with a growing list of tasks they canât seem to get done.Â
Front desk support, whether itâs in-house receptionists or call centers, can cost tens of thousands of dollars and with slimmer budgets set in place, business can often be left desperate for assistance communicating with clients and capturing leads. Paying more than you can afford for services you need can put your business in a dangerous position and trying out free services can be just as detrimental to a business as having nothing at all. Without client communication and lead conversion support in some way, shape, or form, your business can lose out on leads and dismantle client relationships.
Staff members may not have the time or expertise to convert leads from text messages. When a representative is unfamiliar with SMS text messages, is unsure of proper text etiquette, or canât seem to display friendliness or confidence to clients via text, especially when tone can easily be misconstrued, clients may lose interest quickly and feel less secure about entering into a relationship with your business, costing you not only your clients and revenue, but your reputation as well.
The only way a business can succeed is when clients are satisfied so when clients inevitably have questions about their services or concerns about their products, businesses need to be prepared to answer them. Businesses, however, frequently struggle to find the time to answer clientsâ questions in a quick and efficient manner, especially over a relatively new business platform such as texts. Whether staff members have limited availability and either canât get to the phone in time or leave clientsâ waiting, clients can get irritated and head right on over to the next company they find in their search results.Â
If your business is facing one or any of these challenges, an answering service that provides text message answering can help you convert more leads and deliver excellent services to clients who prefer to text your business. An answering service, such as Smith.ai, can take the pressure off of your team and allow your business more flexibility in time and in budget without compromising your client relationships. Smith.aiâs virtual receptionists can assist your clients by getting them the answers they need quickly on the platform they prefer and help your team connect with leads they may have otherwise missed out on without any additional work. Smith.aiâs answering service offers the fastest, easiest, and most affordable way to resolve your businessâs issues and leave your clients with a smile on their face.
Businesses of every size can benefit from outsourcing call handling and enabling text message answering, whether it helps to take the load off of a small, family owned business or to increase efficiency in a large corporation. For example:
Small businesses are often up to the necks in tasks that need to be done. They donât need to spend more of their restricted time answering every call or their narrow budget on hiring front desk support. Text message answering gives small businesses the opportunity to reach new leads and communicate with clients without having to dedicate limited office time to answering calls and speaking to clients themselves. This allows small businesses to maximize their productivity without sacrificing their much-needed time, money, or outreach towards current and potential clients. No more relying solely on phone calls to connect with clients and convert new leads.
Balancing daily tasks with call handling and lead capturing is difficult for any company, let alone a company with limited staff, availability, and resources. Outsourcing call handling and permitting text message answering allows for medium sized businesses to broaden their outreach and enables them to place the responsibility of customer service and lead capturing into the hands of a trustworthy agent so that their team can get back to running daily operations without worrying about neglecting clients.
Many larger businesses have staff that are far too busy to regularly communicate with clients themselves. It can be tedious for sizable staff to focus on the smaller details, like providing personalized one-on-one customer service, when there are such vast operations to run. Itâs also very costly to hire in-house staff and, for companies at the enterprise level, scaling at lower cost is a core objective. Text message answering can make it easier for large businesses to function at a high volume without neglecting the details that can separate a good company from a great one. By allowing answering services like Smith.ai to answer questions, schedule appointments, and capture new leads via text message, larger businesses no longer have to choose between interrupting work to answer calls or abandoning clients.
Having a well-informed team of virtual receptionists who are trained in customer service and who can represent your company when youâre busy can transform your businessâs efficiency for the better, no matter what size your business is. Whether you want to improve your companyâs customer service or increase your businessâs lead conversion rate, an answering service that delivers superior text message answering can help accomplish your companyâs goals and get your team focused on their work again.
Use our best practices to hit the ground running with Smith.ai virtual receptionists, and achieve results from Day One.
