Article: All of us are familiar in some way or another with the decline of personalized customer service due to the growth of technology.  Over the past few years, we’ve come into contact with automated voicemail and automated phone answering services.  As technology continues to advance, the personal side of customer service is diminishing—but call center services preserves this important part of customer care and customer service.  Connecting your callers with a live receptionist is crucial to customer satisfaction and Call Centers serve as virtual extensions of your company that provide competent customer support.  Call Center Services make customer service available to individuals during and after business hours and enable companies to provide unsurpassed customer care, regardless of the time of day or night.

Call Centers ensure that their agents are trained to care for each caller’s needs efficiently and quickly, eliminating the need for callers to jump through hoops.  Your business can work with call centers to determine which solutions are necessary for accommodating various customers—each caller should be treated as an individual.

Call Center Services:  Customer Service Solutions

Three-tier solutions are available to accommodate varying needs from customers and callers: For optimum customer service, you’re going to need to get your callers in touch with the individuals who can provide answers to their questions and helpful information for their unique needs.  Work with your Call Center to set up responses or solutions for specific customers.  For example, decide which customer’s questions can be solved by the call center staff and which need to be forwarded on to others.  Your Call Center will be happy to work with what guidelines you set for call escalation protocols and some cases help you accommodate multiple lines of communication with web chat.

24/7 multi-lingual technical support agents: The Hispanic and Spanish-speaking market is a unique market segment experiencing unprecedented and explosive growth.  Call Centers focused on customer service will have Spanish-speaking agents available for your bi-lingual customers.  If you’re currently not reaching this market, strongly consider a Spanish language call center.

Online reporting and monitoring: Online reporting and monitoring of calls, information, and other data is particularly useful for the collaboration and exchange of information between your Call Center and your business.

Digitally recorded calls for quality assurance and training: For your records, and for future customer satisfaction, calls can be recorded.

An Inbound Call Center can save you time and money, while providing an excellent quality of customer service.  Businesses have discovered that when call center services assume responsibility for customers’ experiences and satisfaction, productivity and company image generally improves.  Call Centers also help to maximize sales and retain internal and external customers.

If you haven’t discovered what benefits Call Center services can provide, learn more about smart, customized Call Center solutions.  Consistent high-quality customer service isn’t hard to achieve, even in this day and age.

For three decades, Inc. has recognized and celebrated the remarkable achievements of today’s entrepreneurial superstars—the privately held companies that drive our economy.

Inspired by the compounding success of the Inc. 5000 and its community, Inc. brings you GROWCO: Grow Your Company Conference, a three-day event created for business leaders who want to achieve sizable growth within their organization. First introduced in the eighties as Growing the Company Conference, GROWCO harvests the rich network of seasoned executives and inspirational thought leaders whom Inc. has accumulated through three decades of in-depth business reporting.

 In 2010, Inc.’s GROWCO Conference pulls together a dynamic program with a curriculum designed specifically for the nation’s rising entrepreneurial stars, including smaller organizations that want to make an appearance on the Inc. 5000 and Inc. 5000 honorees that want to break the higher ranks of the list or repeat their success in years to come. High-profile growth experts teach seminars that will give attendees actionable information with which to develop or maintain their own growth initiative.

After our amazing experience at the last Inc. Magazine event, we are very much looking forward to attending our first GROWCO event.  Speakers from truly inspirational companies such as College Hunks Hauling Junk , 37signals, Knockout Entrepreneur , and many more will be attending this year’s conference. We can’t wait to learn from their experiences and hear what they have to say. 

We hope to see you there!

Article:

When people call your business and they’re greeted by a live receptionist rather then an answering machine, they see this as a lifeline.  In this day and age, individuals become tired when their call connects them with a voicemail or automated service.  It often takes a significant amount of button pushing and waiting to connect with a live person.  When your customers get shuffled around and directed to voicemail, they may hang up and never call back.  When you connect them with an answering service, they’ll feel confident that someone is listening, even if they aren’t always receiving immediate answers.

It’s becoming easier and more efficient to outsource telecommunications, especially for small businesses.  Answering services are often a perfect fit for medical offices, real estate agents, and other consultants, both financially and professionally.  For a small monthly fee, answering services provide exceptional and highly trained agents, minus the expenses and challenges that go along with hiring new in-house staff.  These can include training time, payroll, and issues such as illness, lateness, or other unforeseen problems.

If you aren’t familiar with answering services, they provide virtual receptionist agents who are fully trained to deliver professional customer service while receiving all incoming calls.  The benefit of hiring an answering service is that all calls are fielded by live people and not an impersonal automated service—this is ideal for small businesses who need to keep professional contacts and communication with customers.  With their help, you’ll stay in informed of interactions via cell phone, home phone, voicemail, fax, email, or however you choose.

For doctors, it’s unreasonable to believe that one receptionist could efficiently manage all in-house calls from existing patients and new patients at all hours of the day and night.  The best solution to this is an answering service—especially if you need to handle a high call volume or calls during after hours.  Services like those are vital to a successful business—you won’t be neglecting patients and they’ll feel they are a priority.  You have the option to tailor your service directly to your needs—live receptionists can be instructed to provide any information you’d like them to.

For your office or business to remain efficient and to save you as much precious time as possible, answering services are invaluable.  Put yourself in you patient’s shoes—the best alternative to speaking with you or your staff are live receptionists for the retention of your potential and long term clients.

This situation may be a bit extreme, but it’s safe to say everyone has had a personal experience or knows someone with a personal experience similar to the one above.  Having just one negative experience with even the best company, can result in detrimental damage to the reputation of the company.

Here are a few tips to making sure your call center  agents are avoiding scenarios like the ones above:

-          The customer is always right – Although most companies will admit that this isn’t always the case, a good customer service professional will know how to respond to a customer properly without further upsetting the individual.

-          Honesty goes a long way – Not overpromising customers can make a lasting impact in your sales and customer service.  Setting reasonable expectations for your product and service and sticking to these promises can help avoid problems before they arise.

-          One Call Resolution – Individuals don’t want to jump through hoops with your call center agents to get their problem resolved. So make it a point to provide them with resolution on their first call.  Some argue that first call resolution is the call center metric that matter most.

-          Consistent training – Proper training is so important to the health of your call center. An inconsistent customer service experience can result in angry customers.

-          Effective listening – Although obvious, not all call center agents understand the art of effective listening. Knowing how to read customers and deciphering exactly what their need are will provide a rewarding customer experience.  Effective listening skills are a must.

Have your own terrible customer service experience? Tell us about it.  For more information on call center customer service solutions, visit Answer Center America’s  website www.goacanow.com

At one point, David asked the crowd how many people had their Twitter handle on their business card. Only a few hands shot up in response.  Despite its widespread use during the presidential campaign in 2008, Twitter was not yet embraced by the mainstream.

 I bet that if you asked that same question today, every person in that room would have their hand held high. The world of social media exploded in 2009 and a whole new vertical for many businesses emerged.  

Companies are now using social networking website like Twitter and Facebook to engage their customers faster.  

For example, Dell  announced that as of July 2009, they sold over $2 million dollars in products and can attribute it directly to Twitter.   

It’s not too late to jump on the wagon, but make sure you have the right cowboys and cowgirls escorting you down the trail.

 Stacy Jill Jacobs   currently works at Answer Center America as an Implementations Specialist within the Client Services team. In a past life, she is a survivor of the late 90’s Dot-Com Boom, and has worked in Marketing and Promotions for many years.  In her spare time, she is a writer, event producer, marketing nerd and self-declared geek.

Here’s an interesting article from Crain’s Chicago Business.  Being a Chicago based call center, I keep an eye out for news that hits close to home.  As this article proves, local Chicago businesses are realizing the benefits of outsourcing thier customer service agents.  Red Box announced today that they will be closing their office in Dowers Grove, Ill. And begin outsourcing their call center operations.

“After considering a number of options, it was determined that using a third party to manage our customer service operations was the best business decision for the company,” Redbox said in a statement.

Read more  here.

Studies show that the number of Americans who work remotely at least one day per month has increased from approximately 12.4 million in 2006 to 17.2 million in 2008-a 39% increase in two years and a significant 74% increase since 2005.*

If this trend continues as expected, more and more people opting to work from home will need better communication and conference call services. Currently five million Americans work from home the majority of the time and another seven million do so at least once a month. These individuals prefer to do their jobs in the comfort of their own space and companies encourage this as it allows them to cut back on unnecessary costs and spending. Working remotely saves both businesses and employees money, as there’s no need to spend a daily $20 or more on gas, travel expenses, and expensive lunches. This flexibility is a win-win situation for both employers and employees.

Now that business is being conducted from people’s homes and across different time zones as well, the number of conference calls is increasing significantly. People need to remain in touch with coworkers, bosses, and individuals in different locations. Conference bridges are among the available services that make conference calls easy for those who choose to work remotely, and are extremely affordable solutions for businesses and individuals.

How Do Conference Bridge Services Work?

A conference bridge provides a link between telephones, connecting multiple callers in a conference call. Conference bridges serve as an easy way to facilitate conversation and communication between employers, employees, and other individuals, saving money, eliminating the cost of travel, and allowing for decisions and results to occur faster.

Conference call bridge services provide the necessary support and 24/7 service to keep employees connected, and can accommodate a large amount of people in a conference call. Once an ID is assigned to each conference, the number can be given to each designated conference guest. After a “host” is assigned, they are provided with a security password and can initiate the conference. After the conference has been established, parties can join at anytime by calling a special phone number and when prompted enter the assigned conference ID.

Conference bridge services are efficient and effective, and result in better remote communication for businesses and individuals. Learn more about how conference bridge services can help keep your remote employees and meetings connected!

*WorldatWork Telework Trendlines 2009.

Walker holds 15 years of leadership experience in strategic planning, telecommunication, system design and human resources management. She comes from Rush North Medical Center where she worked as director of telecommunications for more than 10 years.

“Walker’s experience in the healthcare industry will be a tremendous asset to our organization.” says Trey Bynum, general manager of Answer Center America.

 As manager of call center operations, Walker will oversee the operations team. Major responsibilities include implementation procedures, managing daily workforce, tracking team productivity and additional responsibilities.

In addition to Walker, Troy Berry is a recent addition to the ACA team. Coming from Navagon as director of customer service, Troy Berry brings a wealth of knowledge to the table.  For more than 15 years, Berry has managed operations, new business development, CRM and technical support in call center settings. 

“It’s rewarding to enter a position with such an enthusiastic team,” says Berry. “The environment here fosters a strong sense of commitment and innovation. I look forward to collaborating with my team to offer ACA customers the ultimate customer service experience.”

In his role at ACA, Berry is responsible for managing account development, implementations and management.  These three functional groups outline the strategy for ACA’s entire relationship with their business-to-business client base.

“In response to the growth we’ve experienced in the past year, we realize the value of bringing in external employees to accompany our growing family of clients,” says Bynum.  “Their fresh perspective and previous experience is sure to bring innovative ideas and solutions to the table.”

Berry is a graduate from the University of Iowa with a Bachelor of Science in sociology.  He was raised in Ottumwa, Iowa. Walker attended DePaul University and earned her certified telecommunication technician license through AT&T. She is a native of Evanston, Ill. 

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 About ACA Inc.

 Based in Chicago, Ill., Answer Center America, Inc. is an experienced partner in providing seamless call center and answering solutions. Founded in 1995 by Janet Livingston, ACA has proven itself as an industry leader through cutting-edge technology, unwavering customer service, and customized services. For additional information, please visit www.goacanow.com or call 1-800-270-7030.