By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD
My wife and I plan to move in a few weeks. The last time we moved was twenty-seven years ago, so the process of preparing, packing, and loading isn’t too fresh.
Yet the enormity of the task has never left us and is now being reinforced. Moving represents new opportunities, a new start, and new friends. It also means saying good-bye to the present and to longtime friends.
We’ve only moved our household a handful of times. What I’ve experienced more frequently is moving a TAS; I’ve lost track of how many. For my company, sometimes the moves were the result of an acquisition, while others were to a new facility.
Often I’d be involved in every aspect: preparing the facility, scheduling staff, ordering telco services, communicating with clients, forming an action plan, physically transporting equipment and furniture, and cutting over – ideally all without any downtime.
Of course, this takes a team of qualified employees to pull off, and I was fortunate to be surrounded by some truly great people.
As a consultant, sometimes I focused just on the technical aspect of the move. Other times I merely developed the plan, with other people to carry it out.
Moving a TAS is intense. There is diligent planning, careful preparation, long hours of work, possibly a night without sleep, lots of pressure, and often the need to respond to the unexpected at the worst possible moment.
Yet when the move is complete and call processing has returned to normal, there’s time to take a break, survey the situation, and realize it was all worth it.
May I say the same about our move in a few weeks!
Learn more in Peter Lyle DeHaan’s book, How to Start a Telephone Answering Service.
Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD, is the publisher and editor-in-chief of TAS Trader, covering the telephone answering service industry. Check out his books How to Start a Telephone Answering Service and Sticky Customer Service.