Telephone Answering Service vs Live Chat Service – Which Service is Best?

Let’s face it: while you always want to be there to provide customer service to your clients, the truth of the matter is that you can’t be glued to your desk. Answering everyone’s questions and concerns could mean having a 24/7 job – without time to sleep or eat. This is why answering services and live chat services come in handy. You can hand over the responsibility of customer service to someone else so you can focus on other tasks and maybe sneak in a sandwich. But when deciding on which type of service is best, you’ll need to take several pros and cons into consideration before you choose the one that’s right for your business.

what is the better solution to support your customers via live chat or call center support?

Telephone Answering Service Pros

Telephone answering services provide you with the ability to make sure there’s always someone there to take a customer’s phone call, day or night. While that customer may not get to talk to you right away, it’s an excellent way to assuage customer dissatisfaction while filtering out some of the unnecessary spam calls that often come with a business line. Using an answering service means that customers get to talk to a live person – not a machine – which can help increase customer satisfaction as well as offer a professional impression 24 hours a day, 7 days per week.

Telephone Answering Service Cons

While an answering service can definitely help improve customer service by allowing clients an outlet at any time during the day or night, it may not be the perfect solution for every office. Unfortunately, while answering services may have access to rudimentary client information, they won’t have the same personal relationship you have with each and every customer you deal with. While they’ll get a live persona to talk to, clients may still want to talk to you. Therefore, an answering service is really best for taking non-emergency phone calls and filtering them to the right people.

Live Chat Service Pros

When it comes to the customer service of the future, live chat is a handy tool that you might want to consider adding to your website. After all, there’s a good chance customers are already visiting your site to get contact information – why not chat with an agent instead of calling? It’s a service that cuts down on the cost of running 24/7 customer service and it makes questions and answers simple for online storefronts. Live chat also allows flexibility, since the chat agent can be online anywhere and in any time zone to answer questions. For customers who hate contacting customer service, it’s a low-stress way to get answers without having to leave the computer.

Live Chat Service Cons

It’s difficult to find a few reasons why live chats may not be the most appropriate way to serve your customers, but there are a few downfalls. Live chats are often less personal than talking to someone on the phone, which can be a problem for some customers who prefer more detailed attention. What’s more, it’s sometimes hard to decipher tone and intent over the phone, which means that customers may have a different perception on how they were served. And, since websites are open 24/7, your chat should have long hours as well, which can increase the cost of your services. Both live chat and telephone answering services have their place in customer service. By using either one, you offer customers the ability to connect with a live person any time, day or night. Depending on the type of business you operate, one may be more appropriate than the other, but they’ll both offer top-notch services that will keep your customers happy.

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Writer Biography This is a guest post by Lindsey Mcmahon. She likes to travel, play and read in her free time. Her main interests are tech, business and health, but she is constantly extending her field of view to incorporate interesting news suggested to her by her readers. If you like her articles, make sure to follow her on Web Design at her Company's website.

4 Responses to “Telephone Answering Service vs Live Chat Service – Which Service is Best?”

  1. TCI

    Mar 01. 2014

    One of the other advantage some chat programs offer is that your customers can live a message for you and you can answer them when you are online. This can allow the business owner to spare half an hour at the start of the day and half an hour at the end of a business day to answer the left messages and contact the people if necessary. These days people understand that you cannot answer every call immediately. Also, you can give your Skype details or phone number to important customers to keep them happy.

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  2. Steve

    Mar 20. 2014

    Very precisely and briefly mentioned the difference between Telephone Answering Service and Live Chat Service, along with their pros and cons. Just want to add that live chat services are more preferable than telephone answering service as in this internet era people prefer to chat online or send emails rather than speaking on phone.

    Thanks for sharing the information.

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  3. Chat

    Mar 20. 2014

    Thanks for sharing this blog citing the pros and cons as well as distinguish between Telephone Answering Service & Live Chat Service. In my opinion, Live Chat Services are more preferable than TAS, as people prefer to chat and send emails rather than talking on phone.

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  4. Siddhant Paryani

    Sep 28. 2017

    Agreed with the point that Live Chat is less personal than talking someone on the phone, but nowadays there are some Live chat support solutions which also provide Voice as well as Video calling within their platform, and Tagove is one of some which provides seamless Video & Voice chat even on the iOS Safari. So, what can be better than having a text chat and on the go, you can shift to Voice or Video call.

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