Friday, April 24, 2015

An Answering Service is a must for any Service Company!

I was recently reading an article by the Air Conditioning, Heating and Refrigeration news regarding how a call answering service is still relevant.  Of course being in the answering service industry I completely agree with the article but I wanted to share some points from the article. 

According to Mike Agugliaro, owner of a HVAC company in New Jersey, he was able to generate an additional 5.4 million in revenue from using an answering service.  Mike began using an answering service 3 years ago not only to help with after-hour and emergency calls, but to answer over flow calls during business hours.  Overflow calls are handled when a call can’t be answered during the day due to either nobody in the office or if their phone is busy.  The call after a certain amount of rings will forward to the answering service.  Mike stated, “Nobody’s calling a plumber, HVAC company, or an electrician solely to chat about their weekend,”, “Something bad is really happening. When you’re in the middle of something really bad, the worst thing is to call and get an answering machine.  We recognize when people are in a time of need, they need a human being to talk it through, calm them down, and help them through the situation.”

Mike also saw a huge impact to his business when hurricane Sandy hit and their phone lines were down but the answering service was still answering his phones.  “If we didn’t have this backup system in place, we would have lost millions of dollars,” Agugliaro said. “But since we did, when our phone system dropped out, the call center was picking up, and we were able to survive.” 

An answering service can help your business in many ways and these two examples show how invaluable the answering service is to this heating and cooling company.  Once you understand the reason why an answering service is invaluable to your company you must determine which answering service fits your business needs.  Just like the HVAC industry, no two answering service are alike. 

Some of the criteria you should use when searching for an answering service includes; does the answering service you are looking at answer every call live?  This is important because some answering services claim to answer the calls in 2 rings, however they don’t claim to answer the calls live within 2 rings.  If an operator doesn’t answer every call live, some services use a recorded greeting to answer the calls within 2 rings only to tell your caller to stay on the line for the next available operator.  This is a tremendous difference.  Does the answering service you are looking at meet the needs of your employees with how they like to receive a call?  Make sure the answering service can dispatch the way you and your employees like to be dispatched.  Texting, emailing and calling should be able to be done for every individual that may take a call.  One employee may prefer a text after hours while another employee doesn’t like texting, but rather receive a call.  Make sure the answering service meets the needs of your business.  Does the answering service have people answering the phones that sound professional and empathetic to the needs of your customers and treat your customers like you would expect your own employees to treat them?  Ask for references from the prospective answering service and call their references.  Ask the reference about the people answering the phones.  Does the person answering the phones exceed your expectations in terms of tone and professionalism?  Ask the answering service if they record their calls and then ask for a sample recording of their operators handling an emergency no heat call.  The person answering the phone is the face of your business.  Make sure the impression that is left with your callers is positive.

One answering service that should be considered for your call handling needs is All City Communications.  All City Communications exceeds the expectations of their customers’ needs in terms of ring count, dispatch customization, and operator quality and has done so since 1979.  Don’t lose revenue by not being available to answer your phones or by settling for an average answering service.  Exceed your competition and your customers’ expectations by utilizing the perfect answering service, All City Communications.   

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Being Eco-Friendly as a Funeral Industry Supplier

We recently exhibited at the ICCFA conference in San Antonio and had a wonderful time meeting our current customers and introducing our answering service to other funeral directors.  As I was looking around the convention I kept seeing the words eco-friendly and green with many exhibitors.  I began to speak to companies within the funeral industry about what those words mean to their product or service.  I found that there is a movement within the industry to go green.  Some of the products I learned about included; eco-friendly caskets made from 97% recycled materials, eco-friendly urns that are water biodegradable and even natural/green embalming chemicals.  This made me examine how an answering service can be eco-friendly as a supplier to the funeral industry.

There is many simple strategies a funeral industry supplier can do to be more eco-friendly.  Most eco-friendly strategies take little effort that any office can adopt.  Some of the changes we have adopted to make us more eco-friendly includes;

11) Become more digital oriented.  We have focused on becoming a paperless environment.  Contracts are emailed over to our potential customers.  We do not need to print out a contract or price list to get it to our potential customers.  We can email over the digital copies.  Sure you can purchase greener, recycled paper which I encourage everybody to do, however there is nothing greener than no paper at all. The more you do online, the less need there is for paper.
     
22) A simple change during lunch can go a long way to reduce waste.  Bring your lunch in a reusable container instead of purchasing a new container from a restaurant.  A statistic to put it in perspective is “Once: the number of times that most of the more than 25 billion cartons manufactured in the U.S. are used.“  

33)  Reduce power consumption.  In our office the computer is used regularly for call handling.  A positive change for a computer is to utilize a green hard drive.  A green hard drive will have a spindle speed that is slower but will perform the same as a higher speed non green hard drive.  Another eco-friendly computer change is to use an eco-friendly power supply.  Some eco-friendly power supply providers can reduce power consumption by 33%!  Also, you can shut down lights that are not in use to reduce power consumption.  If office workers forget to turn off the lights, put a little reminder on the door so they see it on the way out.  Finally, replace your bulbs with compact fluorescent light bulbs qualified with the energy star.  These bulbs use 75% less energy than incandescent bulbs.   
44)  Recycle.  Start a recycle station at your work.  Make sure there are recycle bins for copy paper, newspapers and envelopes.  You should also make sure you have bins for cans, soda bottles and sandwich bags. 


These are just a few simple steps that we use at our answering service that any office can utilize.  After all, greener workplaces are not only efficient; they send a message of resilience, diligence and care to everyone at your business and to every customer you provide a service or product to.