By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD With the new year often comes change. The first step to establish a change-oriented culture in your healthcare call center is to minimize employee fears towards change. Employees can accept change if: 1) the change is incremental or small, 2) they have a degree of input or control over the […]
Tag: Peter Lyle DeHaan
By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD Although it’s not my intention to relabel the answering service industry, it is my goal to redefine it to better understand the potential that exists. Instead of calling yourself an answering service, let’s adopt the mindset that we are “information processors.” So stop thinking calls and start thinking communication. Yes, […]
By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD It doesn’t require much of a look at the telephone answering service industry to know that the number of answering services has been dramatically decreasing in recent years. While I don’t have an exact number and doubt that anyone does, I think everyone agrees that we have fewer players in […]
By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD Does upper management consider your healthcare call center a profit center or a cost center? Are you under the control of another department, such as telecommunications, IT, or marketing? Who does your call center director report to? Does that person understand the critical role the call center plays in your […]
By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD By classification, a telephone answering service is a call center, a centralized place from where calls are made and received. Yet many of today’s call centers are neither! They are not centralized, nor do they deal with just calls. The label contact center more accurately reflects the current reality of […]
By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD There is nothing wrong with being a generalist, but if you are a broad-based telephone answering service, you might decide to grow your business by pursuing strategic niches. But how do you determine which niches to pursue? Look at the types of accounts you currently handle. Do you see any […]
By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD I’ve never seen an answering service that didn’t have seasonal traffic fluctuations. Most experience an increase in the summer months. This is likely a result of vacations at their clients’ offices and those clients using the answering service more. Or maybe they are on summer hours or more of their […]
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How Was Your Holiday?
By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD In the United States we celebrated a holiday a few days ago. Though the official date was on Saturday, most businesses closed on Friday to give their staff a three-day weekend. A few tacked on Monday as well, giving their employees even more time off. Telephone answering services (TAS) aren’t […]
By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD It used to be that telephone answering services (TAS) could function as a generalist – serving all clients – or specialize in specific niches. I now wonder if a niche strategy might be needed in today’s marketplace. A huge answering service niche is the healthcare industry. Within this focus, there […]
By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD Since its beginning, every year brings changes to the telephone answering service (TAS) industry. And the scope of change seems to increase each year. However, not everything changes. Some things stay the same. Though these four keys may fluctuate in importance from year to year, they are always at the […]