Allan and Peg Miller purchased their first investment property two years after graduating from college. Today, they own a small property management company that includes twelve units in three buildings. Surprisingly, they credit the success of their small company to their telephone answering service. We bought our first rental property when we first got married,” … Continue reading Answering Service Case Study: Apartment Tenants Get 24/7 Service →

Smart answering service managers make strategic rate increases each month, adjusting the rates of their least profitable clients. This is preferable to making annual across-the-board increases, which affect clients unevenly. And it’s certainly superior to not doing any rate increases, which could move an answering service toward insolvency. Here are five reasons why an answering … Continue reading 5 Reasons Why You Should Pursue Strategic Rate Increases →

Unless you operate an outsource call center, your business’s purpose is not to provide effective communication; it’s to do something else. Your organization exists to deliver a product or service, and you built your core competencies around that effort. Telephone communication is a secondary issue, perhaps even a distraction from your central business mission. Though … Continue reading Use an Answering Service to Improve Your Communication Quality →

Whenever expectations fall short with a vendor, any vendor, the first reaction is to find a new one. Though this may offer short-term gratification, changing vendors may not achieve the results we hope for. We all know of business executives who churn through every possible vendor until they have tried and subsequently fired everyone. Then … Continue reading When Not to Change Call Centers: A Broker Can Tell →

Ask telephone answering service salespeople to identify the most important concern buyers have when selecting an answering service, and they will say: “Price.” And they won’t even need to think about it. However, ask the buyers of answering services the same question and you will receive a far different answer. It isn’t price, which in … Continue reading The Price For Answering Service Isn’t As Important As You Think →

Does your company have a call center? Before you say “no,” let’s give this some careful consideration. You might have one (or more) call centers in your company and not even know it. Consider these areas that qualify as corporate call centers: a team who fields phone calls a group that handles customer emails staff … Continue reading Optimize Your Corporate Call Center →

Danita Foster, an accomplished professional, made a decision that changed her life. After her second child was born, she decided to leave her job as a corporate communications officer for a public utility and stay at home full-time. “It was so hard to leave my first child and go back to work, I just couldn’t … Continue reading Answering Service Case Study: Communications Professional Hones Skills While Raising Family →

Finding good employees can be a challenge. On one extreme are jobs that are hard to fill, with a shortage of qualified candidates. The opposite scenario are openings, typically entry level positions, that produce a deluge of applicants, some qualified and others, not so much. While help wanted ads in newspapers and trade magazines were … Continue reading Use an Answering Service to Screen Help Wanted Inquiries →