What happened to prompt customer service? Why aren't businesses willing and able to give you a call when you need to speak to someone? I recently ran into this issue when purchasing a home. I chose to seek financing with a lender that I've used as my bank for several decades. I was shocked to discover [...]
Whether answering the phone or responding to email inquiries, in today's fast paced business climate, failure to respond to customer inquiries in a timely fashion, could be the difference between success and failure. Your customers don't want to wait days or even hours for responses to their questions or help with their problems and, in most [...]
Call patching (also known as "live transfer" or "warm transfer") is a common way for an answering service to hand clients their calls. There are three ways to do call patching with our answering service: Using Your PBX (addressed in a previous blog) Regular Patch Blind Patch Regular patching is when a Customer Service Professional [...]
Most attorneys invest a great deal of money in advertising to keep their phones ringing. In most legal fields, potential clients call lawyers and law offices at any time of day or night, weekends and holidays, because legal issues often demand attention outside of normal business hours. When attorneys don't make themselves available, potential new [...]
Internet Telephone Service Providers (TSPs) like Google Voice, E-Voice and Ring Central have gained popularity over the last few years. These solutions are either free or cheap, which makes them attractive to budding entrepreneurs. However, there are inherent problems with these services that entrepreneurs often don't consider before committing to use them. If you wish [...]
Do you struggle keeping up with inbound phone calls? Does your office fail at taking messages in a professional and appropriate manner? Is important work getting delayed because you are answering the phone? Do you lose business because you or your staff are not around to pick up the phone? Would it be better to [...]
In the contact center and answering service industries, billing clients by the minute is referred to as time billing. Time billing is simple: pay for the time you use, as you use it. The beauty of time-based billing is that it is precise, affordable and fair. AnswerFirst uses time billing in one second increments - [...]
There are over 230 million active users on Twitter. Are people Tweeting concerns, compliments or inquiries about your business? Do you even know? Who is looking after your company reputation on Twitter? In this age of social media, Twitter has become an important and necessary means of communicating with your clients and prospects. The inability [...]
Do you use software to help you run any aspect of your business? In this day and age, the answer to that question is almost always, "Yes." From cloud-based solutions for scheduling and customer relationship management to inventory management and accounting software, there are ways to manage, perform or document almost any business process with [...]
When we talk about customer service in our weekly staff meetings, we typically discuss what we expect from the companies we do business with as individuals. Doesn't it make sense to gauge the level of service that we provide our clients by the level of service we expect to receive as customers of other businesses? [...]
