What is an answering service?

Most industries have the traditional impression that an answering service just takes messages on their clients’ behalf. Though they certainly can provide quality message taking, they can provide provide plenty of other services, too. An answering service can benefit your business no matter what industry you specialize in. Read on to learn the “whats,” “wheres,” “whens,” and “hows” about answering services.

WHAT

What is an answering service?

By definition, an answering service is “a commercial service that answers telephone calls for its clients.” We at Contact One define an answering service as “a specialized call center that is focused primarily on the needs of the industry it is servicing.” This may include answering important calls on the clients’ behalf, collecting information from callers, and relaying that information to on-call staff. 

What does an answering service do?

Answering services are a valuable tool for sales representatives who can’t afford to miss leads because they’re away from the phone. The answering service gives the caller a human voice to interact with, and lends a much more professional appearance to the business than standard voicemail. 

What can answering services offer?

Answering services offer a variety of services: overflow call support, live online chat help, appointment scheduling, order taking, message taking, call forwarding, and information collection. 

Overflow call support is when the answering service will answer calls that would normally receive a busy signal of the office staff cannot get to the call in a timely manner. This is especially helpful when our clients have unusually high call volume or a staff member calls out sick, leaving you short-handed.

Because answering services can provide live online chat help, appointment setting services, and order taking for online stores, your business never has to miss a potential sale or new customer because you can’t get to the phone or the computer. 

In addition to the services listed above, a good answering service should be able to provide reports on any information that is collected. Reports are a way to find out very important information about the types of calls an office is getting, the exact quantity, or even what the busiest days or times are.

 

WHERE

Though it’s known that answering services and call centers can be located everywhere in the world, these services can still be located within the United States. Contact One, for example, is located in Tucson, Arizona. 

Customers, patients, and clients, however, can come in contact with an answering service over the phone or online. Online chat support is a great option when customers do not want to use the phone.

 

WHEN

When are answering services available?

Answering services are available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and on holidays.. Depending on your industry, the standard nine-to-five coverage may not be enough. When you outsource your calls to a call center, your calls will be answered and addressed appropriately no matter the time of day, week, or month.

 

WHY

Why would I need an answering service?

There are dozens of scenarios that could prevent you from conducting business at your office. This could be a simple phone system problem, power failure, or frozen pipes. Other threats could be a bad storm that doesn’t do damage, but prevents or delays you from getting to your office. 

Having an answering service could solve the problem by answering the phone when you can’t. They can take a message or transfer the calls to your home or mobile phone.

 

HOW

How can an answering service benefit me?

There are many was an answering service could benefit you.

An answering service can help you gain new customers and keep existing ones. If your existing and prospective customers encounter a busy line or when their calls go unanswered, they’re more likely to move on to a competitor. A dissatisfied customer may also share their negative experience with other people, which could translate to a bigger loss for your company. 

Another benefit is that it can help you contain costs. It improves the quality of your company’s customer service without hiring new staff and paying for additional phone lines. The cost for an answering service is just a fraction of what you would pay for a new employee and other related costs (such as training and taxes). 

Talk to your answering service about finding ways to streamline your call process. Sometimes the service does not need to collect all the information you do in your office; maybe you only need the callers’ names & numbers, not full addresses. 

Answering services are brand elevators! An answering service team is trained in the art of phone communication, and are provided with specific client information and protocols. The team can answer calls with any provided script, ensuring that your brand is being upheld while inquiries are being handled professionally.

Finally, another benefit is something that has already been mentioned: being available at any time of day. A customer service system that operates at all hours of the day will cater to any type of schedule imaginable. This will allow people who work nights to get the assistance they need, even if it’s not during business hours. 

How do I find a reliable answering service?

Hiring an answering service is like hiring a new employee. Take the time to outline what you want the answering service to provide for you. 

What role would you like the answering service to fill? Act as an overflow receptionist? Do you need triage support? Do you need sales calls transferred to field reps? Maybe the answering service can assist you with prioritizing service calls?

Ask about quality control, too. 

What does the answering service do to maintain quality they brag about during the sales process? Do they use independent quality control testing (secret shoppers)? How do they incentivize their employees? How do they screen, hire, and train their employees?

If possible, meet with the team in person and at their location if possible. This gives you an opportunity to meet the staff and make sure they have the right team for the job. 

 

 

A high quality answering service will identify your needs and evolve with you as your business grows. Contact One provides professional, 24-hour answering services, and we can customize our services to meet the needs of your business. Contact us today to learn how our services can help grow your company.

Benefits of Having a Medical Answering Service

Customer service is important in all industries, but it is especially crucial in the healthcare industry. Lasting patient-doctor relationships rely on continuous communication, and that includes after-hours. We all know it’s not fun being a patient because of the pain from certain symptoms. This is why it’s very important for patients to hear back from their healthcare provider in a timely manner — it gives them a sense of relief and support. 

If you have a growing number of patients, however, it can be a challenge to juggle your medical practice and maintaining that communication. This is where a medical answering service can be of great help.

Hiring a medical answering service for a doctors’ office is like hiring a receptionist to answer the phone. Incoming calls are routed to live, remote receptionists who are well-trained to handle calls in the healthcare industry. These receptionists know what information to collect and how to handle it, and they can handle basic customer service inquiries, make appointments, and forward emergency calls to the right parties.

A medical answering service can benefit your medical practice in many ways, from being HIPAA compliant, having 24-hour availability with quality service, and financial savings. 

HIPAA

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) is a law that aims to protect the privacy of your patients’ medical information. This includes: everything that that healthcare professionals put on a patient’s medical record (including conversations), any information within an insurer’s computer system, and billing information. HIPAA establishes national standards for processing electronic healthcare transactions and requires healthcare organizations to implement them. 

It’s important to ensure that your medical answering service complies with HIPAA rules and regulations, just as your practice does. There are serious legal and regulatory risks if your practice or your medical answering service isn’t HIPAA-complaint. Additionally, your practice or your answering service may face serious fines.

AVAILABILITY & QUALITY SERVICE

Medical emergencies can happen during any time of day or night. If one of your patients needs to make an appointment or speak with a doctor right away, they’ll be relieved to find out that your medical answering service is always available. Your medical answering team will be trained to answer calls at any time of day, and will be able to forward urgent cases to the appropriate extensions. Speaking with a live representative, regardless of the time of day, can make patients feel more confident about their care.

The longer you put your patients on hold, the more dissatisfied they become. Responding to patients in a timely manner is an essential quality to possess in the medical world. Another quality is promptness; it’s important to transfer information regarding patient diagnoses, medications, procedures, and other patient concerns so the information is where it needs to be for the appropriate person.

As a provider, you need to feel confident that your medical answering service is taking accurate notes and moving quickly to get critical information to you. Your patients also have to feel confident that the answering service is responsive to their concerns, knowing that it will act quickly to get their questions to the doctor. Your service needs to be part of a network that gets information to you efficiently, provides message delivery confirmation, and that has a reply capability.

The constant demands of the profession make it challenging for healthcare professionals to promptly answer calls from patients. This can yield negative feedback about the practitioner or the medical facility itself. 

A knowledgeable medical answering service will have representatives who can provide expert information on all kinds of medical services and practice. This will ensure that all of your patients are satisfied due to the quick, accurate, and personal attention to their needs because of the trained representative. This helps provide quality service to your patients, which can help improve your practice.

Quality service means being there for your patients, and this includes speaking their language. If you have any number of Spanish-speaking patients visiting your office, you should implement a bilingual messaging system to support them. It’s crucial to look for a bilingual medical answering service, where agents possess both written and oral Spanish communication skills. This will ensure that you receive accurate messages and are providing best-in-class care to your bilingual patients.

COST

Now more than ever, there is pressure on the medical industry to contain costs. Good medical answering services will work within your budget and help you find a solution that works without sacrificing quality. 

Hiring and training new employees to do what a medical answering service can do costs more time, money, and resources. A reliable call center trained in medical answering services has established systems and processes to get the needed work done. Utilizing the services of a medical answering service is a more cost-effective way to delivering top-quality customer service to patients instead of paying for an employee’s salary and benefits.

There are two common ways that a medical answering service can bill. The first method is “per minute” pricing, and the second is “per call” pricing. When you look at various packages, 95 cents-per-minute is not always more expensive than 75 cents-per-minute. 

When comparing “per minute” and “per call” rates, many times you will find that the “per minute” rate is a better value. If you’re getting a lot of calls that last less than thirty seconds, then that one dollar ($1.00) per call is really costing you about two dollars ($2.00) per minute.

It’s important to do whatever it takes to maintain patient trust and confidence in your practice. A doctor’s medical answering service is supposed to represent the medical practice after hours. If it’s done right, the doctor will build a relationship with the service, much like they do with other employees. The most common reason a doctor leaves their medical answering service is because too many mistakes are being made after hours.

 

Contact One is a call center based in Tucson, Arizona that provides answering services to various industries. Our team is HIPAA-compliant, available at anytime of day, and will provide everyone on the end of the other line with high-quality service. Our highly-trained team of virtual receptionists will provide you with a variety of services. 

Call us at 1-800-278-3347 to find out more about what we do, and how we can benefit your medical practice.

A Guide For Small Business Owners

Entrepreneurs have great ideas for products and services, but it can be intimidating to start a new venture. Once that small business launches, that entrepreneur hopes that it will be successful. Though there isn’t a defined road map for running a successful business, there are some factors that should be considered while trying to get off the ground. When the small business proves to be successful, most business owners may not be prepared for how quickly his or her small business will grow. The best ways to enhance your business growth depends on the type of business you own, your available resources, and how much you are willing to invest. For example, choosing the best business growth strategy largely depends on what stage of growth your business is currently in. Additionally, the way you interact with your customers in positive and negative situations directly reflects your company and how the public views you. 

The following are tips, tricks, and secrets to help you start your business, grow your business, and maintain your success.

Starting A Small Business

1. Ask questions and do research.

Consider asking yourself some questions before starting a small business. What problem are you solving? Will you need a loan? Who are your customers? Your answers may prompt you to do further research on what more you can do prior to starting your business. Think critically about your funding, marketing, and potential customers amongst other things. 

2. Write a business plan.

A business plan is a document that will help keep you, the business owner, as well as investors and executive employees, on track for the first three to five years. It will provide an in-depth outline to help you set concrete goals, such as setting a time frame for when you will (or should) open a second location. There are many reasons to have a solid business plan; some of these reasons include prioritization, control, and funding. 

3. Take care of the details.

One of the first things that needs to be taken care of before your business is up and running is determining your legal structure. There are a variety of ways to structure a business, including LLC, corporation, and non-profit. From there, you’ll have to register for state and federal taxes, obtain a tax ID number, and any state or federal licenses/permits. You’ll need to set up a merchant account with your local bank to handle your finances. If you plan to accept payments online, you’ll want to partner with a PCI-compliant vendor who can securely process transactions.

4. Decide what position needs to be filled, and fill it.

One of the most important factors to consider before hiring anyone is the position you need to fill. Once that’s determined, take some time to decide what kind of employee you need so you can be sure to find the best candidate. One way to do this is by writing down the characteristics your dream candidate will have. Then, take these steps before moving forward with making job posts.

5. Consider outsourcing the position.

A possible solution to filling a position is outsourcing. There are companies that can handle customer service, reservation setting, and even e-commerce services for you. This article from PCG-Services covers the who, what, and hows about outsourcing.

Growing A Small Business

6. Make yourself available.

To build up your small business, you should understand your target audience and what they’re looking for. To do this, make yourself available to your customers. Listen to their needs and offer your support. This will help build relationships, which will ultimately turn into a growing following. If you’re already having trouble making yourself available, consider a call center that can handle customer service. Business growth is great, but may not be so great if you can’t keep up with the volume. 

7. Engage with your customers.

Thanks to social media, it’s easy to reach out to and engage with potential clients and customers. Think about what kind of business you have, and make accounts on the social media channels that make the most sense. Facebook is logical for most businesses. Putting out content on a consistent basis will help you show your customers that you and your business are continuing to stay relevant and that you want to continue engaging with them. Should a customer or client come to you with a complaint, be sure to follow up with them. This shows that you care about how they feel about the situation.

8. Build your brand.

Consumers place a high importance on brands. Is it trustworthy? Reliable? Take some time to really think about what your business does, what your business values, how you do it, and the way that you want to interact with your customers. Once you have a firm grasp on what you plan to do, you can start to figure out the best way to brand it. This includes developing a logo and color scheme. Brand building and brand maintenance can be as simple as maintaining social media. Brand-building can also include the other content you give or receive on the web: blogs, posts, reviews and/or testimonials. Increasing your web presence by working on your brand helps people see why they should be part of your company in some way. 

9. Budget carefully.

Since it might take some time for your business to take off, you should be as careful as possible with your budget. If you don’t think you’re quite ready for a receptionist in the office, a call center could be the right choice. This is an affordable alternative to an in-house employee, which means your finances won’t be so tight.

10. License your product.

Licensing is an effective, minimum cost growth option, especially if your product or service is branded. Compared to starting your own company or business, licensing allows you to minimize your risks while still profiting from your brand or product. If you are interested in licensing, you should first find a licensing partner by researching types of companies that provide services similar to yours. 

11. Diversify.

Diversifying allows you to acquire multiple income streams which can lead to increased sales and profit margins. Common ways to diversify include selling other products that complement your core product or service, and importing/exporting your products. If you found success in your current market, you can also begin looking toward other markets that might use your product.

12. Retain an excellent team.

It’s much easier to expand your business if you have a qualified, efficient team. But don’t hire based on resumes alone—make sure that you evaluate a potential employee’s personality and attitude in interviews. (Remember what we said about making a list of characteristics?) Having an excellent team will also reflect the kind of customer service you’re providing. If you want to continue to offer your customers the best services, it is very important to make sure you are up to new customer service challenges. Hire more customer service representatives and get them properly trained so they can continue to keep your customers happy.

13. Open another location.

Like many business owners, opening a new location can be a great option if you are confident in the level of control in your current location. However, it is crucial that your current location is running smoothly financially and with the right staff. If you don’t want to personally manage the new location, you may want to consider franchising. This allows you to grow your core business while maximizing your time spent improving your business in other ways.

14. Moving forward…

As your business grows, you should develop a plan that helps you manage this growth without major issues. Create a new business model to include any new services you plan to offer to compensate for the growth. Hire more employees if you need extra manpower. You might even want to outsource some areas of your business to ensure that your company can handle the demands that come with the growth. Be careful that you don’t spread you or your business too thin.

Maintaining Success

15. Always consider your brand.

You started your business for a reason. Your clients and customers remain loyal to you for a reason. Part, or all, of that reason is because of your brand. You are putting something out into the world that people believe in. By remaining focused on that, you can and will maintain your business’ success.

16. Make yourself different.

If a customer sees six companies that offer the same service(s), it will be difficult to entice them to come to your business. The key to success in the small business world is to make yourself different from your competition. You should constantly research your industry to stay on top of trends that helps you stand out.

17. Focus on your products and services.

Enticing customers to use your products and services will only get you so far. If you want to enjoy the benefits of repeat customers, you have to offer quality products and services. Make an effort to give your customers quality products and services that will keep them coming back and inspire them to tell their friends and family about your business.

18. Utilize available technologies. 

Implement new technologies and services, like secure messaging and live chat, to enhance your level of customer service. Taking advantage of these technologies will give you a better relationship with your client base. Promoting customer loyalty can help you to increase the lifetime value of each customer.

19. Continue to make room for growth!

Implement strategies that allow you to scale. Partnering with a call center is a great way to prepare for rapid growth and transition in your company size, and can help your business handle an influx of phone calls and orders when you don’t yet have the manpower to support the additional volume.

 

As a small business owner, you should always be on the hunt for new ways to succeed in business. This list of newsletters is a great way to stay up-to-date and ahead of the curve. With convenient and easy-to-read articles, you get the information you need about money, marketing, and even how to manage your employees.