Move beyond a Mindset of Answering Calls to Facilitating Interactions
This year has been a challenging one no matter how we look at it. Our status quo as an industry—to whatever degree we ever had a status quo—has been shaken. Everything seems to have changed. Our response has been as it always has been, to adapt, to adjust, and to accelerate into a new tomorrow.
To do this, we re-examined our staffing, from hiring to training, from scheduling to supervising. We’ve sent people home to work, whether for the short-term or for the conceivable future. And we fine-tuned our sales and marketing efforts to redefine success in an unfamiliar environment where all the rules have changed. Coupled with this, of course, is morphing how we must manage our answering service and our staff in a way that’s consistent with these new ways of doing business.
It’s also an appropriate time to look at the why of telephone answering service.
It’s easy to think of ourselves as being in business to answer telephone calls for our clients. Though true, it’s also a limited perspective. A more insightful view is to think of ourselves as being in business to help people communicate. This may use the telephone, or it may tap other communication channels. Don’t lose sight of this.
People today communicate through email, text messaging, and social media. They also increasingly visit websites to solve problems, place orders, and safely and securely connect. None of these involve the telephone, which is an essential and predominant channel in our industry and much of what we do.
Yet when we reimagine ourselves as facilitating interaction instead of just answering calls, we open a door to new possibilities. We then become a telephone answering service that processes emails, handles text messaging, and monitors social media for our clients. We’re connected to their websites for text chat and assisted browsing opportunities. And, yes, we also answer the telephone.
This is our future, and our future is here.
Want an answering service that grows without burning out your team or your margins? In The Profitable Answering Service, Peter Lyle DeHaan draws on three decades of owning, running, and advising answering services.
Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD, has spent his career in and around the answering service industry. He’s owned, managed, bought, sold, and merged answering service businesses as well as consulted, written, and programmed for the answering service industry. Learn more at PeterLyleDeHaan.com.
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