The March 2017 Issue of TAS Trader

Startel

Three Keywords Describe the Business Benefits of Answering Services

By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD

As I consider business trends, specifically as it relates to the telephone answering service, three words come to mind. I think of these terms as keywords we can use to describe what we do and promote our business.

Author Peter Lyle DeHaan

Virtual: An answering service provides a virtual service. It’s been that way from the very beginning, some ninety years ago. We have never done our work on site, but remotely. Our presence is not tangible, but virtual. As the prior century drew to a close, forward-thinking answering services began promoting the concept of the virtual receptionist.

In practice, this was nothing new, but as a concept, it was. Today with many entrepreneurs and small businesses tapping into the parallel concept of a virtual assistant, as a money-saving means to accomplish routine tasks with speed and precision. Answering services need to capitalize on this trend by touting their specialized version of a virtual assistant, also known as a virtual receptionist.

An answering service is virtual.

Scalable: Often technology carries the label of scalable. This means its scope can easily increase or decrease to meet changing user needs. Though answering services often have scalable technology, they remain labor intensive. Labor is not scalable.

However, from the perspective of our clients, we offer a scalable service. If we normally take one call at a time and two come in at once, we “scale up” to handle the extra work. Then we “scale down.” They can’t do that in their office.

What happens if they close early, their receptionist is sick or on vacation, or they want everyone at a staff meeting? We automatically scale up to take their extra calls. Conversely, if they decide to extend their hours and stay open until seven instead of closing at five, we scale accordingly to meet their new expectations.

An answering service is scalable.

Outsource: Though outsourcing, especially as it relates to phone calls, was once severely tarnished by offshore outsourcing done poorly, the reality remains that outsourcing shines as a key concept for businesses. Outsourcing work provides flexibility and controls costs.

Businesses wishing to run a lean, effective operation know that outsourcing is a preferred way to do this. Another significant reason to outsource is that many businesses are reluctant to hire staff. They sight overhead costs—especially healthcare expenses—and the legal hurdles to un-hire staff when no longer needed. As a smart alternative, they outsource whatever they can, whenever they can.

An answering service is an outsource provider.

Next time you talk with a business owner about your service drop these hot keywords. Say that you are virtual, scalable, and an outsource provider. That should get you some attention and hopefully some new business.

Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD, is the publisher and editor-in-chief of TAS Trader. Check out his latest book, Sticky Customer Service.


Classified Ads:

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The Cost of Poor Performance

Why failing to train your employees costs a lot more than you think

By Evan Hackel

Many people have heard the story about the CEO who said, “What if we spend all this money training our staff and they leave?

The department head replied, “What if we don’t train them and they stay?”

A simple, but pointed, response. If you spend a lot of money on people and they leave, that’s not an optimal outcome. But if you don’t train your employees and they stay, it costs you a lot more. Consider the following:

Trained Salespeople Produce More Income: Statistically trained salespeople:

  • Close more sales
  • Generate larger average sales
  • Sell fewer products at discounted prices and more products at list price
  • Make fewer mistakes
  • Sell the right products
  • Build customer relationships that result in more repeat business
  • Generate more positive online reviews
  • Help keep morale and productivity high among all employees, because people don’t like to work with untrained coworkers who don’t know what they’re doing.

Training Is Not Just for Salespeople: Training has a major impact on customer service practices. Consider the often headache-inducing business of at-home product installation—one that would certainly benefit from customer service-focused training. The basics, such as explaining to customers the details of the installation process, an emphasis on clear communication prior to the start of the job, and of course, conveying the importance of punctuality can boost customer retention. Training staff to be cognizant of their customer service practices can also increase referral business, which can be worth extra hundreds, thousands, or more to your bottom line.

Every Untrained Employee Costs You Money: ROI on training is dramatically greater than most company executives believe. In simple terms, if a trained worker becomes 100 percent productive and an untrained worker is only 60 percent productive, you are losing $40,000 in value on every $100,000 of business you conduct.

In Closing: Not training is hugely expensive—far more expensive than training. In your company, you should look for all the opportunities where proper training can increase profits, reduce waste, and provide an outsized ROI for every training dollar you spend. If you look, you will find many more opportunities than you expect.

Evan Hackel is CEO of Tortal Training, a firm that specializes in developing and implementing interactive training solutions for companies in all sectors. Evan created the concept of Ingaged Leadership and is Principal and Founder of Ingage Consulting, a consulting firm headquartered in Woburn, Massachusetts.


Telephone Answering Service News

Telescan Announces New Hires: The Telescan Division of Amtelco continues to grow and advance the development of its Spectrum system in response to demand for a flexible, expandable software-based call center system. The Telescan team is growing to continue helping customers succeed. Paul Schulte joins the Telescan support services team in St. Louis, Missouri. Paul will provide phone support to Spectrum system users and assist in the internal operations of the St. Louis office. Brett Minster joins the software development staff in St. Louis. Brett will be developing applications for Telescan’s next-generation switch, Prism II. For more information contact Amtelco at 800-356-9148 or info@amtelco.com.

Send us your TAS articles and news for consideration in the next issue.


Quotes for the Month

“A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he thinks of himself. The larger the denominator, the smaller the fraction.” -Leo Tolstoy

“What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expected generally happens.” -Benjamin Disraeli

“Thieves who steal corn from a garden could be charged with stalking.” -unknown

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