Feb 3 2011
Answering Services Relying on Backup Power More than Ever
Category: News
Electric utility workers are busier than ever, and that’s because ice storms across the United States have brought down electric lines leaving thousands of businesses and homes without power. Many answering services are experiencing outages within their own offices. Unfortunately, answering services need to stay open and constantly have power. With their power down, answering services must generate their own electricity, allowing them to remain open 24 hours a day.
Feb 2 2011
Answering Services Beware: Storms to be an issue in 75% of the United States
Category: News
If I were to check the weather forecast in your part of the country, there would be seventy five percent chance that it would not be something sunny and pleasant.
Feb 2 2011
Call Center Operators + Bad Weather = Food Delivery
Category: Funny (We Think So)
Working at an answering service is a tough job. Even under normal circumstances, the job can be stressful. But when the cold weather hits, look out. With many of their clients offices closed due to weather conditions, an answering service is often overwhelmed. Sometimes, especially, in these instances the staff will order food to be delivered.
With circumstances dictating that an operator must work through their lunch, a food delivery driver can be the call center employee’s best friend. Nothing lifts a worker’s spirits more than entering the office, seeing a fax from a local restaurant touting the specials of a day. So next time you call a business and reach the answering service, ask the operator, “what’s for lunch?”
Feb 1 2011
Answering Services Using IVR as an Interpreter
Category: Technology
In today’s global business environment, more and more companies are finding a need for their answering services to be fluent in languages other than English. For many years, a small percentage of answering services were actually bilingual. While the need for Spanish / English call centers has never been greater, a new need has surfaced and continued to grow. If I had a dime for every time a potential prospect leads with the question “Does your answering service speak Mandarin Chinese?” Or “Does your answering service speak Russian?” These are real needs in today’s world. Yet, staffing a service with multilingual operators is costly and not very practical.
IVR or Intelligent Voice Response is an excellent way for any answering service to provide call center services in a variety of different languages. IVR is a technology that allows a human to interact directly with a computer through the use of DTMF keypad inputs or voice recognition technology. This technology can be trained in a variety of different languages for a variety of different applications. By programming an IVR to work hand in hand with an answering service operator, people who speak in different tongues have the ability to communicate.
Feb 1 2011
The Answering Service Industry Embraces Twitter Marketing
Category: News
Twitter is quite the phenomenon. It has become one of social networking’s most popular mediums. Tweeting has helped many businesses explore and discover growth opportunities. These opportunities are there for major corporations as well as small mom and pop operations. Where businesses would spend thousands upon thousands of dollars on radio and television advertising, they now can spread their message via Twitter for free.
The answering service industry has joined the Twitter revolution, both as a marketing strategy and a way to communicate with their client base. Tweeting specials, offers and information to potential clientele is a great way to keep an answering service in front of its audience. While countless businesses are able to benefit from Twitter, an answering service is able to even more so. Social Media, and answering service share a common bond; communication.
