HOW IT WORKS - DISPATCHING CALLS
“Our 40 years of call center experience has given us the knowledge needed to ask the right questions of our clients when setting up new accounts and also allowed us to perfect our instructions to our operators to cut out any room for operator error.”
Rob Beecham, President – Professional Answering Service
PRE-SCREEN RECORDINGS TO REDUCE COST
One of the first steps in setting up a new account is having our client fill out a questionnaire that is specific to their industry.
The questionnaire gives us a good starting framework for account setup. At that point, we have further consultations with the client to finalize the setup of the account.
Not necessarily all calls that come into our office are emergency calls that are going to be dispatched. Defining what meets the criteria for an emergency call is not always easy. An important part of the account setup process is having our client exactly define what their emergency criteria are.
When we sign a new client on to service, we work as hard as possible in translating their criteria for emergent calls and lining out the instructions to the operators as clearly as possible. When the operator takes that call, follows the instructions on the screen and gathers the information that they are supposed to gather, they will not have to guess at a decision, because it will be laid out in the instructions for them.
CALL EXAMPLE: DISPATCHING MESSAGES TO THE RIGHT PERSON
To further discuss how we could dispatch calls and differentiate between call types, we are going to use a couple of examples. For the medical industry, for example we might have a doctor with different sets of instructions depending on the time of day.
During business hours, he may say alpha page all of my calls to me. Or try the office backline first and if they are not available then alpha page the call to me. But between the hours of 8 p.m. and 7 a.m. I want you to call my residence number first and if I don’t answer there, then call my cell number.
And these instructions can also be customized on a per doctor basis. If your office has multiple doctors, we can customize the dispatch instructions for each doctor. Once again, we are going to work to optimize the efficiency in both communications and cost. Another example of this is for attorneys. After hours they may only want potential new clients to be put through to them live, or we may have to take a collect call for them and get the inmates personal information and then relay that to them.
But during hours, we may have different instructions, for example they may have people that they are meeting at court and they are running late, and we have to track the attorney down via office or cell numbers to make sure they get connected. It Is all customizable with the first goal being the connection of the message to the client, and the second goal being to do it in a cost efficient manner.