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Telephone Answering Service

A Possible Messaging Opportunity

By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD Two common ways to grow a telephone answering service are through acquisitions and via sales and marketing. A third way is to provide additional services. With the announcement that Frontier will offer texting on business landlines, TASs will have the opportunity to offer more services. In some cases, the need […]

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Telephone Answering Service

Memories of Moving

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, […]

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Telephone Answering Service

Two Ways to Grow Your TAS

By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD There are just two ways to grow your telephone answering service. One is through sales and marketing; the other is via acquisitions. Any other strategy is merely a subset of one of these two methods (usually a variation on marketing). I enjoyed doing acquisitions. And I was quite good at […]

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Telephone Answering Service

The System’s Down

By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD On Monday I called a vendor about my invoice. “I’m sorry,” the rep said, “but we’re doing an update, and I can’t access your records.” Given that they only operate sixty hours a week, doing an update in the middle of the day was strange timing. The evening would be […]

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Telephone Answering Service

Do You Like Snow?

By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD In Michigan, as well as in many other parts of the United States, winter has wearied everyone. It’s lasted too long, been too cold, and piled on too much snow. Everyone I talk to longs for this season to end. Even those who adore winter weather have ceased their praise […]

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Telephone Answering Service

Evaluating Change

By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD In the March issue of Medical Call Center News (check it out if you serve medical accounts), I wrote about implementing change in your operation. It reminded me of the change TAS Trader went through in January when we switched from a PDF format to an email format. Though making […]

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Telephone Answering Service

Two Ways to Grow Your TAS

By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD Although there are exceptions, most TAS owners want to grow their business. (Even those who want to keep the operation at its present size need to add new accounts to make up for cancellations.) To grow your TAS, there are but two ways: through sales and marketing or through acquisition. […]

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Telephone Answering Service

Welcome to the New TAS Trader!

By Peter LyleDeHaan, PhD As I announced last month, TAS Trader begins its sixth year with a new look to meet readers’ changing needs. With more people reading emails on their smartphones than not, the old PDF format of TAS Trader has been retired in favor of this new mobile-friendly version, ideal for smartphone and […]

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Telephone Answering Service

The New TAS Trader Coming in 2014

By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD As TAS Trader wraps up its fifth year, many changes have occurred since our launch in early 2009. As an industry, we’ve seen a great deal of consolidation. Although it’s just a guess, I suspect the number of telephone answering services in the United States now stands at about 50 […]

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Telephone Answering Service

TAS Opportunities from the Affordable Care Act

By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD Though some people have a wait-and-see attitude toward the Affordable Care Act (ACA), most hold polarized views, either loving it or hating it. Many business owners and managers, including telephone answering services, are wary. They see the ACA as one more item pressuring their business’s viability and threatening their future. […]