After Hours Call Answering Service in South Africa
Below, you'll find a list of suppliers providing an after-hours call answering service in South Africa, ensuring your Australian customer enquiries, sales, and support calls can be answered 24/7 by a live person, as well as optional email support and live chat services.
In modern times, the traditional 9 am to 5 pm opening times for most businesses are no longer enough to service their customers.
Society is now becoming used to businesses' high availability, and if you're not open, the next business they contact will be the competitor who is.
However, providing 24/7 customer service in Australia can be expensive, so the advantage of using suppliers in South Africa is cost savings—at least 50% cheaper than running the same service here in Australia.
How After Hours Call Answering Services in South Africa Works
For larger businesses, it may simply be a matter of continuing to offer the same level of service offered during the day and extending that across a 24/7 period by using additional resources from an outsourcing partner.
If your business has large call volumes after hours, this can be achieved with full-time dedicated staff. For businesses that only have low call volumes, your calls may be combined with other campaigns run by the after-hours call answering service provider based in South Africa to save you money.
But it's not always required to provide the full level of service to your customers.
Many businesses just operate a message-taking service, enabling the call to be answered by a live agent who takes a message and relays that to the day shift team for follow-up the next day.
Ultimately there is no "one size fits all" solution - most providers of an after-hours call answering service in South Africa have flexible models to help you achieve the right solution for your business.
How to Choose an After-hours Call Answering Provider in South Africa
Engaging any business to handle your customers is a big decision. If you are looking to use a call answering service in South Africa to answer some or all of your after-hours calls, some of the questions you can ask include:
- Are they currently handling any after-hours campaigns for other clients?
- How many staff work on the night shift?
- What level of security is available at the centre?
- Do they have experience in your industry vertical?
- Do they specialise in B2B or B2C?
- Do they have experience in handling other 24/7 campaigns for Australian clients?
- What type of technology do they have?
- Can they handle more than just telephone calls? Many providers now offer social media and live chat support 24/7.
- How do they relay messages for further actioning?
- How do they charge?
- Are calls recorded?
How Much Does After-hours Call Answering Cost in South Africa?
It's difficult to provide an accurate estimate because a number of variables, such as the ones mentioned above, can greatly influence the price.
Some providers are happy to provide a 'per call price', others charge a fixed hosting fee plus a per-call rate, some may offer a fixed hourly rate, etc.
It will also heavily depend on whether your business needs full-time resources or if they can spread your calls across calls for other businesses to reduce your costs.
Regardless of the solution that works best for you, generally, using offshore suppliers in South Africa will save you at least 35% off the cost of having your calls answered here in Australia,
Where to learn more
We have lots of free resources on the Australian Customer Experience Professionals Association website, including:
- The Complete Guide to Call Centre Outsourcing
- The Real Cost Guide to Outsourcing Your Call Centre
- Call Centre Calculator (learn how to calculate how many staff you need to answer calls within a certain time frame)
Search 24/7 Call Answering Service Providers in South Africa
The providers listed below all provide after-hours call answering services in South Africa or use the filters to search by other countries and outsourcing functions. Some related categories you may specifically be interested in are:
Virtual Reception and Message Taking services | Overflow Calls Solutions | Live Chat Providers
