Client Expectations

Is it most important that your callers are greeted by a friendly live voice thanking them for calling your company?? Is it more important that the information gathered from your callers be accurate and delivered in a timely manner? Of course, these things are important. You are not alone in your realization that the staff of a call center answering your business calls are the face of your business. Callers dial your phone number and a call center operator answers in your name; why wouldn't callers assume they have reached someone at your office?

While every business would like to have every call answered by a live person every time and while every business would like for all information to be totally accurate 100% of the time, business owners must realize that almost no system works perfectly. You know that even your own staff will make mistakes from time to time and you know calls can be missed on occasion by your staff, your staff is human after all.

So what expectations should you have for your call center or answering service? What is considered "quality" performance when gauging a call center's productivity? From a client perspective, excellent call center performance can be guaged by three main statistical criteria:

1. Average Ring To Live Operator Answer - 2 rings or less
2. Average Percentage Of Calls Answered By Live Operator - 85% or greater
3. Average Length Of Hold Time For Callers - 45 seconds or less

At AnswerFirst, we maintain or exceed the three main citeria for excellence and try to make it as easy as possible for our clients to know exactly how we are performing on their accounts. Through our Client Web Access feature, clients have the ability to run a variety of reports in real time to guage how well we are doing. Not only can you see our performance statistically, you can listen to your calls, view your messages and web form submissions and view your account screens with this feature. We WANT our clients to know how we are doing. It is only through our client's feedback can we improve on our performance.

A quality call center can be an enormous help to many businesses, but have limitations just as any other business. Ours is a business powered by people and people can make mistakes. We think one of our best qualities is how we react to those mistakes to insure they are not repeated in the future. People are also our biggest strength; cheery, helpful and efficient operators can add immeasurably to the satisfaction of your clients.

Give us a call and discover the AnswerFirst difference: 1-800-645-2616