Achieve an Easy 10% Bump in Ongoing Monthly Billing
Solving a Common Answering Service Problem Became a Revenue Source and a Service Enhancement
The Problem: Call Center Sales Pro, with the vast collective industry expertise of its team, identified an area of staff frustration and service disruption that is common to most all telephone answering services. This issue produced a common pain point for Call Center Sales Pro’s sales and marketing clients and a reoccurring issue with their consulting clients. Without a comprehensive solution to address this problem, errors would continue to occur on client accounts, resulting in a disproportionate number of customer service inquiries and eventual dissatisfied clients who would ultimately cancel their service. The Past: Common industry attempts to correct this have resulted in complex solutions that only somewhat addressed this pain point. An unfortunate side effect in doing so was increased labor costs, often by a couple FTEs, without any offsetting revenue to cover the increase in expenses. Sadly, these initiatives fell short of fully addressing the problem. An alternate approach was an attempt to streamline this issue by offering a one-size-fits-all solution. While this covered those clients with the most basic needs, it failed to provide an acceptable solution to those clients who didn’t fit into this one box. This was completely unacceptable in an industry that conditioned clients to expect mass customization of their answering service to meet their specific needs and exacting expectations. Service complaints escalated and client cancellations skyrocketed because of this failure. Furthermore, in an attempt to appease high profile (or loudly complaining) clients, exceptions were made to the standard solution. This resulted in staff confusion, an increase in errors, and the eventual disregard of the standard set in place, thereby returning the answering service to its original unacceptable situation. The Challenge: With this issue as a common one for answering services and an industry failure to adequately correct it, the team at Call Center Sales Pro set about to find a comprehensive solution that addressed the answering services’ frustrations and met the clients’ expectations. Their objective was to develop a clear process that would encompass the full variation of client needs, significantly reduce staff errors, decrease the number of FTEs dedicated to this issue, and provide additional revenue in the process. This was an impossible challenge, but the Call Center Sales Pro team thrives on finding solutions to impossible situations. And they succeeded: not once, not twice, but three times and counting. The Results: Call Center Sales Pro’s first implementation of a comprehensive solution to address this pressing need was for an established answering service on the west coast. Offering bilingual service and focusing on government and education verticals, they had a felt need in this area, especially for clients that fell outside of these two primary markets. Noticeable results occurred quickly with appreciative agents, relieved customer service staff, and happier clients. Because of this initiative, monthly revenue increased 11%. This is a month over month increase that will continue indefinitely. The second implementation, this time at a smaller answering service in the southwest United States, produced the same results for agents, customer service staff, and clients. Also a bilingual operation, they focused on the horizontal market of appointment setting. They, too, desperately needed a workable solution in this problem area. The corrective efforts of Call Center Sales Pro resulted in an ongoing monthly revenue bump of 9.8%. The overall revenue growth potential was restricted due to their smaller size. A third initiative is currently underway at a full service, multisite answering service operation, which resulted from several acquisitions. Of the three, their need was the most pronounced and produced the greatest consternation among stakeholders. Achieving the same results, the monthly revenue attributed to Call Center Sales Pro’s effort has already exceeded 10% and will grow well beyond that by the conclusion of the solution’s implementation. The Application: Most every answering service in North America struggles with the problems that this initiative addresses. While the implementation needs to be adapted to fit the unique culture and specific goals of each answering service, it is nonetheless universally applicable.