Posts Tagged ‘telephone answering service’

They’re Coming — Can You Handle It? Leads from Your Media and Marketing Campaigns

Tuesday, April 5th, 2011

You are fully focused on marketing your business. You’re exploring direct-response advertising over the Internet, on select billboards, in radio ads, and you’re even considering a television ad. But have you figured out who’s answering those direct-response calls when they start coming into your business? It’s important if you want to turn your leads into conversions.

Two ways to turn leads into conversions:

  1. Have a real person answer prospective-client calls. An answering machine or voicemail can only answer a call, not questions.  There may be times during the day or after hours when no one is in the office to take potential client calls.  Route those calls to an on-call attorney or have an industry-savvy receptionist at a live call center answer them.  Prospective clients want to speak with a real person and if one is not available then they’ll often hang up and call another law practice. 
     
  2. Take the caller to the next step in the ‘selling’ process.  Sales gurus say that each contact with a prospect should take them to the next step in the selling process.  If you’re outsourcing your potential client calls, rather then just taking a message the receptionst could collect intake information, connecting qualified leads or schedule consults.  All of these would qualify as taking the caller to the next step in the process

And here are the ways Alert Communications can help:

  • Manage your leads 24/7, and record calls for quality assurance.
  • Develop custom scripts to qualify those leads.
  • Deliver qualified leads to your sale people via call transfer or e-mail.
  • Schedule appointments and confirm scheduled appointments.

We can answer your calls 24/7, after regular hours and/or for overflow. Our live and automated services enable customized call routing, which can help you manage costs and increase the efficiency of your call traffic. We even provide Spanish-language support at no charge.

If you’re expanding your marketing and media efforts to promote your business, or your business provides that service to others, talk with Alert Communications to learn more about our 24/7 media and marketing support services.

Frances Starr, Director of Sales & Marketing for Alert Communications.  Alert Communications provides 24/7 call answering support including: legal media and marketing support.

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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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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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