When you decide to outsource your healthcare call center to an outsourcer, selecting the right vendor is just the first step. Signing the deal is only phase one of the transition. Phase two is orchestrating a smooth migration. While the details of a migration plan will vary with the scope and comple…
Most every business owner and manager is eager to oversee a growing, expanding operation. It’s exciting to go into work each day and grapple with the challenge of meeting the growing demand for your products or services. The place is palpable with anticipation. Things are going great, and those in c…
We’ve already discussed that a call center is “a centralized location where calls are answered or made.” The distinction of answering calls and making calls is significant. Consider these designations for three types of call centers. Inbound: When a call center answers calls, it is referred to …
The purpose of a call center is to serve callers. It’s that simple, but in the day-to-day battle to staff and run a call center, managers and supervisors can too easily lose sight of this critical distinction. Here are four all-to-common scenarios that trip up too many call centers. Apathy Tolerate…
Agents are key for call center success. Good agents produce good call center operations and having good agents depends on hiring the right employees to start with. However, between agent hiring and agent success sits agent onboarding. The goal of agent onboarding is to provide newly hired agents wit…
Quality assurance programs exist in many industries. In general a quality assurance (QA) program is a formal assessment of the overall value of a product or service with the goal of maintaining current quality levels or boosting future quality levels. But it’s not cost-effective to scrutinize every …
A telephone answering service is a great resource to answer your business phones while you and your staff take time to celebrate the holidays. Though holidays occur throughout the year, the biggest need to balance work and festivities occurs toward the end of December. This can include holiday parti…
A string of holidays is coming. First there’s Thanksgiving. A few weeks later comes Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, followed by New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. And don’t forget the long four-day weekend associated with Thanksgiving and the days between Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve. Altogethe…
Answering services must have a website. This is the first step for successful marketing. The second step is getting people to visit it. This can happen through paid advertising or organic search. The first option can be expensive, while the second option has no direct cost, but you can’t leave organ…
For many healthcare organizations a ringing telephone is an interruption that distracts from the main goal of seeing patients and attending to their needs. In these cases it makes great sense to outsource the call center function to a company that specializes in addressing the healthcare concerns of…
Chuck Pierson, owner of Pierson Truck Center, credits his afterhours answering service for his business’s growth. Pierson Truck Center is located just off the exit of a busy four-lane highway, across the street from a popular truck stop. Because truck drivers work all hours, Pierson offers 24-hour s…
The traditional, literal definition of a call center is “a centralized location where calls are answered or made.” However, with today’s advanced technology, a call center no longer needs to be in a centralized location, but there are still some compelling reasons why it should be. Consider these be…
If you’re thinking about selling your answering service you will first want to optimize your business for sale. This will help you obtain a top selling price. Another step, that many business owners neglect, is strategizing options for who to sell to. Overlooking some of these prospective sales oppo…
Does your business take orders over the phone? What happens if no one’s in the office when the phone rings? Most people don’t know that a telephone answering service can handle phone orders, too. Here are some of the ways an answering service can help your company with telephone orders: Provide Fle…
Alice Lamar is a successful composer for television. She is well known for her work on children’s programming, especially animated features. “I work closely with the creator of one show in particular, who also happens to be the executive producer. He has a clear vision for how every episode should t…
The economy, markets, and commerce continually move in cycles. There are periods of expansion and times of contraction. To remain viable, businesses must navigate these ever-changing conditions. As a result, businesses grow and businesses shrink. Being at the helm of a growing business offers excite…
In the post “ How to Train Your Answering Service Sales Rep” we covered five options for training a telephone answering service sales associate. One of the ideas was job shadowing. While job shadowing in itself will not fully train a new sales representative, it can be a viable element of a compreh…
The telephone serves as an essential tool for most businesses. It’s the primary means of communication with prospects, customers, vendors, and employees. The telephone provides the potential for immediate, direct communication with these important groups. As far as effectiveness and making personal …
Summer is an incredibly busy time for Weyden Dozier. His company, Dozier Prop Works, offers propeller and fiberglass hull repair services to recreational boaters. Dozier’s business is nestled on the bank of a major waterway and reservoir popular with fishermen, water skiers, and vacationing families…
Many people, especially in the corporate environment, use the terms “call center” and “contact center” interchangeably. Most of the time this is okay, and no one will object. After all, both are centralized places that serve as communication centers, but from a strict definition, they differ in term…