Be sure to inquire about the individuals who answer the phone. Are they well-trained? How long is the average tenure of your employees? Are there progressive levels of learning throughout the centre? Do they participate in industry associations or, even better, participate in industry quality and training programs? Is it possible for them to handle bilingual calls? Any 24/7 telephone answering service should answer all of these inquiries and more. Other important staffing and training considerations include:

High Turnover And High Sick Days Are Impacting My Operating Cost. How Do I Manage This?

If your employees are overworked or if they have low overall morale, develop a sustainable plan to help with escalating call volumes and share it with your call operators, get their opinion, and then implement and monitor its effects.

How Do I Answer Growing Call Volumes For Less Labor Costs?

Look at labor efficiencies, is productivity reduced because there are so many calls and an insufficient number of staffs? To minimize labour costs, you can hire entry-level staff to handle simple requests and triage other requests to senior staff. Check the on-hook time, your goal here should be to minimize the amount of time each of your staff spends on a call. Less time equates to less costs.

Other things to understand is if you are really putting your available resources to there best use. Do you have top level staff spending time retrieving endless voicemails, or is their time better spent resolving clients problems with the knowledge and skills you have invested in to develop? Really look at how these staff are spending their work hours and determine how to maximize your investment.

How Do I Support Multiple Languages?

Determine what are your multiple languages call volumes and if they require in-house or outsourced expertise. For example, if you only offer English and French and you notice an increase in Mandarin speaking callers. You can check with your staff to find out if any of them speaks Mandarin or if you would need to outsource to a call center with Mandarin speakers.

Our Clients Require 365/24/7 Call Support Service. Night Shifts Are Very Difficult To Staff And Are Very Slow, And That Destroys My Efficiency Stats. How Do I Solve This?

Look for a flexible 24-hour answering service company. This will improve your stats and employee morale. It’s crucial to have a selection of services at your disposal from which to choose. Also, if you have Increased Demand by larger clients for Service Reporting, you can ensure that your new answering service company has the necessary mechanism for handling that reporting situation. Check that they have proper call volume management software.