Easy Money
By Paula Ford
Once, when visiting another answering service, I found this
shocking situation. Their check-in line was receiving 4,000 calls a
month, taking about 8,000 minutes time. Even at 50 cents per call, that
amounted to $2,000 per month of lost revenue just waiting to be
collected from existing customers. If they were charging by the minute,
the lost income would be even higher. At a rate if 75 cents per minute,
this would add up to $6,000 a month!
One thing most telephone answering services discover is that
their biggest “user” is not a client at all, but their own check-in
line. Clients quickly realize that if they call in on their own DID
number they will be charged for the call, but if they call the answering
services’ business number, sales line, or check-in line, the operator
will merely ask for their account number and give them the messages.
Using a check-in line causes your client call count and
minute count to be inaccurate, making it much lower than it should be.
Fortunately, with most answering service systems this can be easily
fixed. Sometimes the solution is found in how the account is
programmed; in other cases, it requires training operators on a new
procedure; and sometimes it is a combination of programming and
training.
How do you get your operators to comply? Make your operators
understand how much more you could pay them if customers paid
you more. Do call logs on your check-in account daily and find the
operators with the lowest number of calls on the account. Then reward
those operators with cash, lunch, or a gift card. If you have an
operator who just “can't remember” or won't comply, give her a week off
without pay to think about it. Educating your staff to be on your side
is better than threatening or firing, but if they still don’t get it,
remind them that they can’t make more money or get promoted if your
business doesn’t make a greater profit. In this case, firing one bad
operator will get everyone else’s attention.
A quick work-around fix that involves neither reprogramming
nor retraining is raising prices to offset lost check-in revenue. Many
clients will shift away from live operator message pickup once they
realize they have to pay for it, but that creates a huge labor savings
that could allow you take on more accounts without hiring new help.
Plus, it will absolutely reduce your overall hold time.
You’ll always have some calls on the check-in line, but watch
for operators making outgoing calls on the check-in line or other
business lines that will not be charged back to the client. Sometimes
this is because of poor training, while other times it is because of a
misguided effort to save some money for a “favorite” client.
Even worse is operators that make outgoing personal calls.
Hint: doing this is not working for you. If you can’t
train them not to do this, then again, firing one bad employee will get
everyone else's attention.
Lastly, if your operators have idle time, have them go
through local phone books and make lists of potential customers for you
to contact. Have one of your good operators make the calls, politely
asking for permission to mail out a price list and brochure; faxing or
emailing it is even better. Most people will give out that
information. If you can fax or email the information instead, you’ll
save on both time and postage. This also eliminates any companies that
have gone out of business. While this isn’t the most productive way of
getting new clients, it familiarizes them with your name, and that's the
first step.
Paula Ford's answering service is Answer Center in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
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