You’re never too old to learn new things, or even to tighten up the screws on the skills you do have. By working for an answering service, you grow in a multitude of ways—both professionally and personally. In this blog, you’ll find just how working for an answering service can benefit you and your future.
Personal Growth
Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence is “the capacity to be aware of, control, and express [your] emotions,” as well as being able to handle personal relationships sensibly and with empathy (Google). When you work for an answering service, you receive calls from all sorts of people: some calm, cool, and collected, and here and there, some that are… not. That being said, you learn to see things from the caller’s perspective, and you’re able to build a sense of empathy for what they’re experiencing. A certain degree of patience and understanding is necessary, and those traits will only grow as you take more calls. Whether intentionally or unintentionally sought out, working for a call answering service will certainly improve your emotional intelligence, and it is something that you’ll begin to apply to your own personal relationships.
Communication
Between answering the phone and taking accurate messages, as well as cooperating with your team, your communication skills are sure to take off. Miscommunications happen all the time, and by working at an answering service, call by call, you’ll learn to minimize them. In time, you’ll find yourself truly listening for the point of what someone’s telling you, and you’ll come to respond more directly. Asking clarifying questions, speaking with intention, and even listening a little bit better will all become second nature to you. While this is important to the job, it is also a skill that you will come to extend when among friends and family.
Rewarding Work
No one likes to clock-in to a job they can’t stand. It’s a fact that gratifying work makes you happier all around, despite what your job may be. At a call answering service, you work to help people resolve various issues. When calls come in, you take the confused/upset customer, shed some light on their situation, and the call is ended with a solution to their problem. The feeling of hanging up the phone knowing that you made a positive change in someone’s world, even in just their mindset for the day, is rewarding; as a result, you come to appreciate your work. Thus, you lead a happier life altogether.
Professional Growth
Customer Service
If you intend to work with the public, customer service is a critical skill to have under your belt. Extending kindness and practicing patience are not trivial aspects of customer service jobs; they are the job. It is crucial that you know how to create positive interactions with customers that you don’t know. When working for a call answering service, your customer service skills will improve drastically. Consequently, your odds of landing any job that deals with the public increases significantly.
Teamwork
When you work for a call answering service, you learn to work with a team. Agents lean on one another for support when it comes to calls they’re unfamiliar with, or even when it comes to needing help with new technology. Working as a team means that a variety of perspectives are brought to the table when it comes to resolving an issue or improving your skills. To put the cherry on top, with a team on your side, morale is boosted exponentially.
Operating Technology
Living in the digital age, just about every job you have will require you to learn a new form of technology and working at a call answering service is no exception. As an agent, you will learn how to operate all kinds of high tech in a relatively short amount of time, including voice automation, customer relationship management systems, and different types of software. While having these technological skills is impressive, more than that, having them shows that you can learn, and are willing to learn, any type of software required for a job.
All in all, a multitude of transferable skills comes with working at an answering service. Personal and professional growth should be encouraged at any job you work at, and if that’s something you’re interested in, you should consider a position as an agent!
