24/7 Live Help Desk & Technical Support

Our Customer Service Professionals field your first level support calls transparently as though they work directly for your company.

Separate your IT company from the competition by providing immediate live 24/7 support.

We may not be IT Administrators but we are live, helpful customer professionals that can log your clients’ issues and provide updates and assurances that their issues are being handled promptly and correctly.

The right questions can be asked, trouble tickets can be logged & updated as well as troubleshooting and escalations are performed. Our services allow you to provide support to your customers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

  • Help Desk & Technical Support Solutions

    We provide Level 1 Help Desk Administration via telephone, email, chat, etc. 24/7/365.

    If a customer has an issue, we believe that there is no excuse for not providing immediate response to their emails, chats or phone calls

  • Professional and Responsive Customer Care Embodies Everything We Do

    Our representatives listen and document issues in full detail and can set resolution expectations based on level of severity. You customize how your clients’ calls are handled, escalated and reported to you.

  • Services We Provide To IT Companies

    24/7 Tier 1 help desk administration includes, but is not limited to: triaging incident severity, reacting within SLA parameters, opening, updating and escalating support requests, performing troubleshooting steps, notifying of known issues, current statuses and expected repair times, resetting passwords, communicating regarding trouble ticket status, etc.

    Additionally, through API connections we can communicate directly with your software and platform.

AnswerFirst Google Reviews

“I had been with another answering service for twenty years prior to signing up with you. They don’t even hold a candle to you. You are great.”

Steven Kollander

“We are very pleased with the service we have received. The entire team at Answer First has been delightful. We are a small business and do not have a full time weekend staff. This solution allows us to provide service to our clients and callers without the expense of having to staff the office on weekends.”

Tracy Lobertini

“AnswerFirst has been absolutely fantastic to work with! Professional, courteous, and very detail oriented. I’d highly recommend Aimee and her team!”

Matt Lentz

“We have been using AF for a few years now and we love working w/them. They customized our account to fit our special needs from day 1. They respond immediately to any issues and ALWAYS follow through to make sure we are happy w/our service. The staff is professional and we could not ask for better service.”

Teri Bennett

You’ll Love Our Features And Pricing

100% U.S. Based

No Overseas Call Centers

Our Customer Service Professionals are all U.S. based.

Volume Discounts

Your Rate Decreases As Usage Increases

You are always billed at the lowest rate possible – automatically.

True 24/7/365 Service

No Hidden Fees For 24/7 Coverage

No additional charges for after-hours, weekend and holiday service.

One Second Billing

True One Second Billing

No rounding up to the nearest minute – pay only for what you use.

Our U.S. Customer Service Professionals Are Available 24/7/365

Would having a live Customer Service Professional, on your IT support line after-hours, set you apart from your competitors?

At AnswerFirst, we provide live call answering services and inbound call center services to software companies, hardware re-sellers, internet service providers, hosting companies and many other businesses in the information technology industries. Our Customer Service Professionals act as Help Desk Administrators, answering your calls, logging issues and creating tickets for your clients, as if they were our own. Our dispatchers can email, SMS messages, patch or page on-call techs based on your priority protocols, and place follow up calls to confirm your techs are receiving and responding to critical issues.

Benefits of Using Our IT Support Answering Services

  • Your calls are always answered by a live operator.
  • Your clients are greeted according to your specifications.
  • Your messages are delivered via whatever method(s) you choose: via text message, email, cell phone, fax, paging or voice-mail.
  • You only pay when we answer your clients calls. We don’t bill for minutes that you don’t use and you automatically receive discounts when your call volume increases.

Why Our IT Support Answering Services Are Superior

  • We do not outsource. Our call center is located in the U.S. and staffed with live U.S. Customer Service Professionals (CSPs) 24/7/365.
  • We always have management onsite so that any account issues are handled in an expedited manner.
  • Our CSPs are required to have a background in customer service and to complete our intensive in-house training programming.
  • We handle your calls and messages according to your specifications.

Learn More From Our Blog

When you partner with AnswerFirst your clients are provided with excellent 24/7/365 live customer service and so are you.

That’s right; YOU too are receiving that same level of service that you expect us to provide to your clients. We have management onsite at all times to handle any and all issue that you might have with your account.

Our nationwide inbound call center is a fully web-enabled, true 24/7 service.

All rates are 24/7 and include a local forwarding number.

Live Operator clients may additionally add voice mail options to either enhance their messaging capabilities or minimize their live operator costs. Live call monitoring and review of call recordings are all part of our comprehensive solution for specialized accounts.

Emergency setup is available – additional fees apply.

Messages may be delivered in a variety of ways:

  • hold for call in
  • call out (to cell phone, home phone etc.)
  • digital page
  • alpha-page
  • e-mail
  • fax each as taken
  • voice mailbox
  • fax summary
  • e-mail summary

Benefits Included With Every Account

  • True 24/7/365 Service
  • 100% U.S. Based (No Overseas Call Centers)
  • Pay As You Go with No Contracts
  • Simple & Affordable Pricing
  • Dedication to Customer Service
  • Integration With Your Business Software

Trusted by Hundreds of IT Businesses Around the Globe

You’re dedicated to making life easier for your customers, and providing great customer service.

You offer plenty of resources for your customers to turn to when they’re having issues with your product – help features and tutorials in your software, a dedicated knowledge base with hundreds of articles and FAQs, video tutorials and blog content – and even product documentation for developers and more technical professionals.

But you still get calls every day from customers who need more support and clarification – despite all of your efforts to make your product intuitive.

And this has led you to contemplate whether or not outsourcing technical support may be worth your while – and a good solution to this ongoing issue.

Not sure?

Wondering if it’s really worth it to hire a technical support service and a call center to help your customers with their issues?

In this guide, AnswerFirst will help you understand all of the benefits of investing in a technical support service, and help you solve this issue, once and for all.

Here are 5 major reasons why investing in a technical support service is a good idea for companies of any size.

1. Connect with Your Customers

Some customers may wish to interact with your business exclusively through your website, chatbots, email, customer support tickets, and other such online communication methods. These have a number of advantages – so you should be using them in your business too – but there are always going to be some customers who want to interact directly with a human being.

Why?

Because, although customers who are tech-savvy, patient, or love troubleshooting products or software will be willing to go to great lengths to figure out their problem on their own, and may find satisfaction from doing so, you still want to provide all of your customers with the option to talk to a real human being. This allows you to provide a final “last resort” customer support option, which your customers can use if they are struggling to use your product or service, and they can’t find their answers online.

In addition, if you allow your customers to connect with a person directly, they’ll be able to connect with your brand on a deeper level – and get a more personalized, customized service experience. If you can ensure that your team of customer service professionals focuses on a positive experience, and your interaction with a customer goes well, they will feel like they’ve truly been taken care of.

This will increase their brand loyalty, and make them more likely to continue using your products. In contrast, if they try to contact a real support person, and they just go through an endless cycle of “robo-answering” and sending in online support tickets, and never get to talk directly to a real person, they may become more dissatisfied – and stop using your products or services altogether.

This is important because word of mouth is still one of the best ways you can market your business – so if you’re able to satisfy your customers and keep them happy, they’ll share good things about your company. The opposite is also true, though – unhappy customers tend to be loud. So make sure you have the right systems in place, like technical support service, to make sure that you can serve customers of all types. Doing so will help you outpace the competition, and increase customer satisfaction with your products and services. We call that a win-win!

2. Boost Sales

As mentioned above, word-of-mouth-marketing is a powerful way to boost the reputation of your business – and it can allow you to boost sales, as new customers will be influenced by those who have had a positive user experience.

How much of a difference can it make?

Let’s take a look at just a few word-of-mouth marketing statistics that show the power of great service when it comes to boosting sales and business growth, based on this collection of statistics by BigCommerce.

  • 92% of people believe suggestions from family and friends more than advertising. By impressing a single customer, you can easily get more recommendations and attention from their network of friends and family members – which can enhance sales.
  • A 10% increase in word-of-mouth attention (both online and offline) translated into a sales boost of between 0.2-1.5% – meaning that, if you can manage to provide a stellar customer experience and impress your customers, this can translate directly into enhanced sales and revenue!
  • A 5% increase in customer retention can boost a company’s profitability by 75%. In other words, you aren’t just trying to impress your current customers because they’ll share their experience with others – you’re also trying to keep them around! And if you do so, you’ll have a lower customer “churn” rate, and you’ll also benefit from better brand loyalty.
  • 85% of consumers trust online reviews and ratings as much as they trust personal recommendations from family, friends and colleagues. This means that maintaining happy customers (and getting good reviews) is very important for your word-of-mouth marketing strategy, and your sales!

This is really just the tip of the iceberg – but we think you get the point. Basically, by impressing both new and returning customers with a great technical support service, and helping them resolve their issues quickly and easily, you’ll be able to market your company more effectively – and enjoy higher levels of brand loyalty and sales.

3. Exceed Customers’ Expectations

Exceeding the expectations of customers is always a good thing – and this means you have a great chance to go above and beyond, especially if your competitors are not using a technical support service or a dedicated customer service line. Your customers are more likely to share information about your company if they have had a great experience, and the entire process of getting support has been smooth.

Whenever customers speak to your call center representatives, you have an opportunity to exceed their expectations and resolve their issue with fast and friendly service.

However, this does not happen automatically. You need to partner with the right technical support service, train your IT help desk employees well, and make sure they understand the proper way to interact with customers – patience, friendliness, and care are key. If you don’t work with the right call center company, you may not be able to offer the best possible service for your customers.

By exceeding your customer’s expectations, you can make sure you retain them as a customer – even if they were calling because they were angry and wanted to complain about your product. The right team of customer service representatives can calm down angry customers, provide them with great service, and leave them happy and satisfied with how their issue was resolved.

4. Assistance with Product Development

Even angry customers can help your business – and, in fact, they can be a very big help for you, as you continue to iterate on your product or service, and make it better. Yes, angry customers can help with product development!

How?

Think about it!

Whenever a customer calls in with a question about how to use your product, complains about an issue they keep facing or even compliments your service or product, you can use this feedback to make your products even better.

As an example, let’s say that you’re part of a small software company. You just released one of the latest versions of your software, and you’ve started to get a few calls about a glitch that can happen, where the customer’s mouse cursor can disappear and won’t come back, unless they restart their computer.

Your customers are, understandably, not too happy about that – because it’s an inconvenience when they’re working and using your product. And, of course, your technical support team helps them resolve the issue. But, in addition to that, your technical support team also asks questions about the problem itself. Were other programs running? What operating system is being used? What computer are you running the software on?

After getting a few of these calls, you’re able to narrow down the cause of the bug. Then, using the information gathered from your customer support team, you ask your developers to track it down – and squash it before the latest software release. Then, the system is patched, and the bug is fixed for your customers.

In this example, if you didn’t have a technical support service, it may have been much more difficult to get to the root of the problem – because you may not have had a consistent way to report it to the rest of your staff. But, because you invested in the proper technical support service, you were able to solve the issues for your current customers, and ensure that it does not recur for future customers.

Of course, you may not work in a software company. But the same principles apply to any business. By listening to your customers and making sure you learn everything you can about their issue, you can do everything in your power to solve the problem – both for them, and for all of your other customers, through future product development efforts.

5. Provide Peace of Mind

Finally, a technical support service can provide you, as a business owner or executive, with great peace of mind. Why?

Well, if you don’t have a technical support service or call center, chances are that either you or someone else in your office is handling support tickets and queries – and they’re probably overloaded with work.

Responding to customer service issues is a full-time job – not just something you can add to another employee’s duties or responsibilities. Unless you work at a very small startup, the demand for customer support will quickly outpace what you can provide in-house.

But with a technical support service, this is no longer the case. You now have a professional, expandable, and flexible team of support employees who can speak to customers, address their issues and concerns, and provide resolutions – no matter how severe the problem is.

And if you choose the right call center partner, it will be easy to train your workers and make sure they understand your products and services, and can provide a great experience to your customers.

Best of all, you can easily add more workers and staff as you need them, and your company continues to grow. Doing so is easy, and allows you to quickly get more support if your business is growing more quickly than you anticipated.

For all of these reasons, a technical support service can give you powerful peace of mind. You’ll know that you have the right workers in place to help your customers with their problems, which helps enhance the reputation of your company, and keeps your day-to-day work stress-free.

Invest in Technical Support Service Today

As you can see from these 5 reasons (and there are many others) investing in a proper technical support team is absolutely worth the investment.

If you choose to enhance your business with a technical support team, you’ll be able to increase the flexibility of your own team of employees, provide a better customer experience, add more workers whenever you need them, improve your products – we could go on and on.

Of course, you’ll only get these benefits if you work with an experienced, outsourced technical support service company like AnswerFirst. We’re leaders in the industry, and we can offer high-quality, 24/7 support for all of your business needs.

We’re 100% U.S. based, with no overseas call centers. Our team of technical support professionals is always ready to help your business, and we’re dedicated to your success. If you’d like to learn more, please feel free to visit our website right away, and learn more about what we do.

Ready to learn what AnswerFirst can do for your business?