Friday, November 13, 2009

Who Is Watching Your Back?

It is a great feeling to know that someone has your back. We all know things happen that can be out of our control. If you own a business, having a back-up plan can mean the difference between keeping a client or losing that client.

At Time Communications, we strive to do everything we can to ensure that if you have an issue in which you are unable to communicate with your clients, be it a phone outage, power outage or any other issue, we will be there for you. Your business and clients are important to you. And they are important to us as well.

When you are heading home from a day at the office, who will handle those after-hours emergency situations? Time Communications will. If there is a storm in your area and your phone lines go down, who will answer the calls when your clients are trying to reach you? Time Communications will. When you are running a large sale and have several calls coming in that you may not be staffed for, who will take those overflow calls? Time Communications will.

Our staff is generously trained to assist you and your clients with any unforeseen issues or high call volume you may expect. Each and every member of our team genuinely cares for your clients and callers. If you provide an empathetic service to your clients, we can accommodate as such. Do you provide any troubleshooting or customer service to your clients? If so, our staff would be able to assist with that as well. We are also able to place orders for your business after hours using our system, your website or your software.

Time Communications is extremely versatile. Each day, our staff helps your callers contact their on call doctor, fix a power outage, order a product you have to offer, or fix a leaking pipe under their sink; depending on the service your business provides. We are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We answer your calls with a smile on our face and a smile in our voice.

Thursday, October 8, 2009

Put Some Buzz in Your Website



You have no doubt seen the “Click to talk to me Live” botton on many web sites, or you may even been a user of this quick service approach to customer service by using the bottom. Regardless of you have used it or just seen it, it may be time to take a look at your web site and see if it couldn’t use the benefits of the “Click to talk to me Live” feature.


What it allows your web visitors to do is speak with a customer service person at the same time they are on your web site.


Benefits? Well, there are many, the biggest being you have a potential product or service buyer that has questions. Rather than email you directly and waiting for an answer, which in some cases could take days or longer, they are immediately speaking with someone who can help them out.


The “Click to talk to me Live” feature can turn shoppers into buyers.


Call Centers like Time Communications can provide everything you need to make your web site a larger part of your overall marketing plan. Adding a low cost feature like this to your web site will more than pay for itself from day one.

Monday, September 7, 2009

How Patient Needs are Met Using a 24 Hour Medical Call Center

Medical patient’s needs are critical no matter what time of day it is, or even if it is a weekend or holiday. Their questions need to be addressed immediately, and a 24 hour medical call center is capable of answering their important questions and directing their emergencies appropriately. Using a 24 hour medical call center is a flexible and cost effective means for patient communication needs after hours, or when the regular staff is busy with patient care or other calls.

Patient’s emergency needs are communicated immediately to doctors by calls, voice mail, pagers, or e-mail according to the planned procedure. Other patient needs that can be addressed are appointment scheduling, information updating, prescription refills and referral needs. These can all be handled professionally by a 24 hour medical call center, and will follow a specific format customized by the physician client.

Patient service representatives are trained and experienced with the medical knowledge to speak to patients to get all of the information needed. Call centers are also trained to be compliant with HIPAA regulations for patient confidentiality. When patients have a live response, they feel that their doctors care about them in their time of need. With a 24 hour medical call center, patients have a connection to their doctors at all times.

Choose a call center that provides telecommunication services and offers 24 hour medical call center services. Make sure their customer service representatives will respond to patients knowledgeably, promptly and accurately while adhering to all regulatory requirements including HIPAA.

Grace Enderlein is a freelance writer and editor. “How Patient Needs are Met Using a 24 Hour Medical Call Center” notes how capably this service aids patients. Timecommunications.biz offers call center services.

Reasons Inbound Call Center Services Lead to Satisfied Customers

The customer is always the first priority to a business, and their approval ultimately dictates their success. Using inbound call center services assures that the customer is pleased by allowing consistent quality interactions, prompt responses and the technological capability to gather information to serve them better.

Professional call centers have a highly trained staff, and can communicate with customers in a knowledgeable fashion about company products and services. Their professionalism coupled with a live response 24 hours a day, 7 days a week states to a customer that a company is easy to work with and accommodating to their needs.

Consumers are demanding, and expect a live operator available to them around their busy schedules. An inbound call center service provides this and more, including support after hours and during heavy call volume times. Customers feel valued with the company interaction and extra time spent on calls. Studies have shown that outsourced call center’s loss ratio of calls is better than average because of the high quality interactions.

Customer satisfaction also results from an inbound call center’s practical ability to collect information and use it to better serve customers. Call centers have the technical capability to build customer profiles. This information can be used to segment customers and anticipate their needs, and this personalization leads to customer satisfaction and can also allow for cross sell and up sell opportunities.

Choose an answering service that provides inbound call center services with enthusiastic employees who represent companies professionally. Look for one which has a commitment to technology, which has led them to offer the most powerful communication systems available to serve their customers.

Grace Enderlein is a freelance writer and editor. “Reasons Inbound Call Centers Lead to Satisfied Customers” notes the excellent capability of call center services which are offered by Timecommunications.biz.

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Texting, Tweeting & Talking

It is hard to pick up a newspaper or watch television without reading or hearing about the social networking phenomena that is now reaching into the business community.

The question is whether it is worthwhile for small-business owners and advertisers to invest time, money and effort into the social media platforms on the Internet. It is a question that has yet to be answered succinctly, but many small business owners have decided not to wait it out, and rather to begin using these social tools to promote their businesses. At that point, another question arises. Which social media platform should be used? Internet users have more than 400 social media platforms to consider.

Wading through these options can be confusing for small business owners, and it may help them to use a tested social media advertising strategy. To that end, there are six essential platforms that, when combined, will escalate your social advertising campaign on search engines.

A targeted social media strategy incorporates not only social tools, but also your website and PPC campaigns in order to dominate the first page of search engine results. Essentially this formula will make you the only choice as far as the searcher and Google are concerned.

The first step is to set up a LinkedIn account for your business. Linked In is a popular business profile social media that ranks very well in search engines and allows you to send event updates to business associates. If you choose one main search phrase in your LinkedIn profile and use it frequently, it will boost your rankings in the search engines.

The next step is to set up a page for your business on Facebook using the same search phrase. It is possible to connect your blog to your Facebook page so that posts show on your wall. You can use Facebook to invite people to corporate events, send messages, and share photos and videos.

Another social community you will want to use is MySpace which also ranks very well in the search engines. Once again, use the same search phrase in your profile so that your MySpace ranks high in the search engines for that phrase.

The next step is to create a corporate YouTube account. You Tube is the main video-sharing platform where you can publish client video testimonials how to videos and any other type of link bait which will lure people back to your Web site. Once again, be sure to use the keyword search phrase in your video title and description.

As you may have already heard, every small business should have a corporate blog because search engines love blogs. They have plenty of content and are easy for the spiders to crawl and categorize online. Blogs usually contain a lot of educational information that attracts visitors and elicits trust in online shoppers. Once again, try to use the same search phrase in your blog titles and content, while still making it readable and useful.

Finally, set up a Twitter account. Twitter is a microbloging site that limits posts to 140 characters. Use the same keyword phrase in your Tweets. You can add a Twitter plugin which will update your Facebook wall with your tweets. Best of all, Twitter posts rank well in the search engines.

With the combination of these six social advertising platforms, your keyword phrase has a much better chance of dominating the first page of Google.

H1N1 - What happens when it makes a visit to your office?

The Center for Disease Control estimates that the H1N1 flu virus may affect 3 out of 10 people this year. Is your office properly staffed to have 1/3 of its workers missing? Preplanning can prevent a major disruption.

Planning contingency plans for this year’s flu season makes a lot of sense. If the Swine Flu hit your state in the spring, it is likely that it will hit again harder this winter, and linger through March. Most employees who contract the flu are out of work for at least five days.

However, for employers that is just the tip of the iceberg for flu-related absences. Employers must manage the absences and schedule work projects around die-hard employees who return to work when still ill and then have a relapse. There are also employees who need to take days off to care for a sick young child or an elderly parent.

Fly season also takes a toll on productivity. Employees on medication loose focus and can not concentrate. Insurance company estimates place the cost of sick employees continuing to work at 4 times as expensive as the cost of absent employees.

So how can employers prepare for the flu to strike their workforce? Here are a few common sense ideas:

· Encourage employees to wash their hands more often.
· Encourage employees to get a flu shot from their physicians. The vaccine for Swine Flu may not be available until after November, but the normal flu vaccine is available now.
· Subsidize the cost of the flu shot for all employees who receive it.
· Encourage employees to take several days off to recover from the flu at home.
· Create flexible work schedules so that employees can work from home while taking care of sick dependants. This can keep a project on schedule.
· Make staffing contingency plans. A call center or temporary staffing agency can keep work running smoothly and actually save the company money.

Give Time Communications a call to discuss ways your company can prepare for the upcoming flu season so that you will not be left in the cold.

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Cost Effective Uses for a 24 Hour Answering Service


Using a 24 Hour Answering Service is a cost effective way to communicate with customers. Answering service representatives are highly trained professionals who can answer calls the way a business wants them to be answered, and it pleases customers because of the prompt and direct correspondence. The cost savings of a 24 Hour Answering Service vs. handling calls in house are significant, and there are many uses for the service.

If a business chooses to establish their own in house staff for 24 Hour Answering Services, there are many costs involved. In addition to the time it takes to recruit and hire a staff, there are start up resources, equipment needs, and space preparations to be made to accommodate personnel. Salary and benefit costs for customer service representatives are considerable, and the staff needs to be trained and managed. Positions need to be filled for the training and management of the staff, furthering the time and dollar investment.

When using an outsourced 24 Hour Answering Service, it is not just having the individual agents who are already trained and prepared to take calls almost immediately, but the management is already in place. It also increases efficiency working with an answering service because they can customize a plan based upon a company’s needs and budget.Some of the cost effective uses for an answering service are overflow, weekend and holiday coverage, dispatch services, regular hours receptionist, medical service, and message delivery.

Grace Enderlein is a freelance writer and editor. “Cost Effective Uses for a 24 Hour Answering Service” outlines the cost advantages of using an answering service provided by Timecommunication.com.
Subscribe in a reader