Posts Tagged ‘call answering service’

Meeting the Needs of Hospice Care Agencies

Monday, March 28th, 2011

Home-healthcare call answering Hospice care centers have their own specialized needs when it comes to call handling but one thing is certain — every call must be answered. 

 ”Our clients need to be able to talk to a live person 24 hours, 7 days a week,” says Michelle Garcia, Office Manager of Pro-Care Hospice in Oxnard, California, “So Alert covers our phones after hours, on the weekends and sometimes during regular business hours if needed in case of an emergency.”  Hospice and home-healthcare callers can be patients or family members reaching out for advice and counsel during very stressful times. Alert’s agents are specially trained to treat these callers with great care, understanding and respect. Not only are they knowledgeable about the industry, but our agents understand the different types of questions and concerns hospice patients and their caretakers have. We also provide bilingual services at no extra charge, making it easier for callers to communicate needs or concerns. 

Alert’s customized call protocols ensure agents capture all critical information and handle each call appropriately, based on the callers answers to questions. We also provide customized client call reports that show the caller’s information and needs, who was contacted and the response time. 

“The customized reports are a great way for our agency to have a tracking system that corresponds to our on-call nurses notes to make sure all situations were handled in an appropriate time and manner”.

Alert’s trained agents are a critical link between hospice care centers and their clients. Our services are only a phone call away, 24 hours a day, for hospice patients and their caretakers.

Frances Starr, Director of Sales & Marketing for Alert Communications.  Alert Communications provides 24/7 call answering support including: physician answering service, hospice answering service, home healthcare answering service, and medical equipment supply answering.

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Go Ahead, Cross the Line — to Call Center Services

Monday, February 28th, 2011

Have you ever thought about where an “answering service” ends and a “call center” begins? It is not just a numbers game. While a high call-volume certainly requires call center services, you also may need that service if you want agents to do more than simply take a message.

At Alert Communications our call center agents can handle order entry and management via your web site. We develop scripts and protocols to qualify leads 24/7 to  drive higher sales, while up selling and cross selling. Agents can even submit leads to your sales professionals via call transfer, e-mail or fax. Alert agents also support your direct-response advertising on the Internet or on billboards, radio or television.

Our call center agents are skilled at managing emergency-response calls for a variety of industries. For national chains such as Roto-Rooter® and Aire Serv® Heating and Air Conditioning to smaller HVAC businesses, plumbers and electricians there is the need to respond quickly to customer calls and coordinate repairs. Our call center agents follow your specific instructions to contact repair contractors, schedule appointments and manage the repair process through to completion.

You can customize Alert’s call center services to meet your business’ requirements, knowing you are working with agents who receive specific training to gather the information you need quickly and efficiently.

If you need more than just what a basic message provides or your call volumes are growing quickly, talk with Alert to learn more about our call center support services.

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Don’t Let a Lack of Staff Lead to a Lack of Business

Tuesday, February 8th, 2011

You can’t afford a full-time receptionist in your small business, but you also can’t risk missing a call. Is there a fix? Yes. Alert Communications’ small business answering services eliminate that risk.

We use advanced technology and trained agents to mirror the job of your on-staff receptionist, intake specialist, appointment scheduler or emergency dispatcher at a fraction of the cost. No matter what industry you’re in, we can tailor our services to meet your financial and business needs — without signing a contract.
—Emergency calls – Our agents follow your customized escalation protocols so each call/message gets to the right person, right away. We also provide reports so you can track your calls.
—Work-hours calls – Alert agents can handle calls during lunch times or whenever you don’t have coverage in your office.
—After-hours calls – We provide 24/7 phone answering service 365 days of the year, so your calls are answered on sick days or during vacations.
—Bilingual calls – Alert offers 24/7 bilingual answering services at no extra charge.

With our options, you have the flexibility to choose when to forward your calls to Alert. We also can work with you to combine your existing automated system with our live services for customized answering. Take advantage of the small business answering service options Alert Communications offers, and never miss a call again.

Frances Starr, Director of Sales & Marketing for Alert Communications.  Alert Communications is a 24/7bilingual inbound call center, specializing in professional attorney answering, virtual receptionist, Spanish answering and business answering solutions.

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Live Answering Service for Santa?

Tuesday, November 30th, 2010

live answering serviceAs I started thinking about the upcoming busy holiday season, I thought about how busy good old St. Nick is quickly going to become. And that, inevitably, raised the question — wouldn’t his life be much easier with a live answering service??

There’s no question he needs 24/7 phone answering, but he also needs more than simple message taking. Imagine the variety of call protocols he’d have to have.

- Is someone calling about the availability of a specific toy? That would need to get to the right elf. Customer service of the highest priority.

- Maybe Blake or Brenda is unsure whether they’re on the naughty or nice list. That would obviously have to go to someone pretty high up in North Pole management. And the agent handling those calls would have to be sympathetic but always in control of the conversation.

-  What about questions on cookie preferences? If you want to score points with Santa, it’s a good idea to have his favorites on the plate. That call might have to go to Mrs. Claus or whoever she decides to have on call each day. Or maybe the call protocol changes daily to reflect Santa’s current choice.

And what about incoming information? Santa must have a standing order for weather updates starting on Dec. 23 or Dec. 24. That info needs to get to him immediately. Wouldn’t text messaging be perfect so he could be up to date throughout his delivery schedule?

Of course, bilingual services — or more appropriately, multi-lingual services — would be a huge help. Though I’m not sure any call answering service could provide coverage for as many languages as the variety of callers Santa gets.

So after thinking about it, maybe my holiday prep work isn’t quite as overwhelming as I was thinking. After all, I get a couple of e-mails, a few phone calls and some lists to work from. I don’t need multi-lingual services or call protocols. And thank goodness — I don’t need 24/7 coverage!

I think I’ll leave the worldwide present-delivery business in Santa’s capable hands this year — but I’d be more than happy to tell him how Alert Communications’ answering services can lighten the load for him next year.

Frances Starr, Director of Sales & Marketing for Alert Communications.  Alert Communications is a 24/7bilingual inbound call center, specializing in professional attorney answering, virtual receptionist, Spanish answering and business answering solutions.

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Call Answering Services in Real-life Terms

Friday, August 13th, 2010

Whenever I talk about the benefits of call answering services, I feel like I’m running through a list of bullet points. Those benefits are hard to convey in real-life terms. A while back, though, I received an e-mail that did a great job of doing just that. Let me tell you the story.

In early February, a 17-story building in the Northeast caught fire. The police needed barricades to close off the street to traffic. That call came through a call answering service.

The fire department needed the transit authority to send buses to help evacuate the people from the building. That call, too, went through the same call answering service.

When the Red Cross needed to provide water and shelter for the tenants, that call also went through the same call answering service.

Many residents of the building had pets suffering from smoke inhalation, and they needed a veterinarian. That call went through the same call answering service.

After the fire was put out and the barricades were taken down, a contractor was needed to clean up the debris. That call, too, went through the call answering service.

When salt and sand were needed to spread on the streets to prevent icing, the call for the trucks went through that call answering service.

When the electrical safety authority had to restore power to the building, that call also went through the same call answering service.

Calls from evacuees wanting to know if they could go back home were handled by that same call answering service.

Sadly, in this case, when two lives were lost, and they needed the coroner, the call answering service took that call, too.

It’s easy to think about call answering services handling after-hours phone calls, but when you see the reality of how the service unfolds, it takes on a whole new meaning. The woman who wrote the e-mail about this incident not only works at the call answering service that handled all those calls, but her mother was a tenant in the building that caught fire that night. For her, the benefits of call answering services will never be just a list of bullet points.

Frances Starr, Director of Sales & Marketing for Alert Communications.  Alert Communications is a 24/7bilingual inbound call center, specializing in professional attorney answering, virtual receptionist, Spanish answering and business answering solutions.

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