Since we started answering business phones, Specialty Answering Service has been dedicated to rapid, reliable emergency dispatching – so businesses like yours can stay ahead of problems. When a customer reaches out for help, it’s critical they are heard. Faster resolutions means happier customers, and happier customers grow businesses.

Enter automated dispatching. For businesses that need to be available for their callers around the clock in case of an emergency, like restoration contractors or medical offices for example, having a reliable on-call system is paramount. For the past 20 years, SAS has been dedicated to providing the best answering service in the industry for businesses of all shapes and sizes. That means taking the services that we offer, and building up bigger and better than before. So we built our automated dispatching system.

With automated dispatching, we can deliver messages instantly to your on-call staff the moment the call ends, and we can do it along the communication channels that works best for your team. These improvements to our traditional live operator dispatching model give businesses a more comprehensive and cost effective way to receive emergency communication – and this system works right alongside our live operator answering service.

Here’s how you can use our fully automated dispatching to receive your urgent messages.

Use automated on-call dispatching with live operator answering services

Automated dispatching works alongside our live operator telephone answering service, allowing you to take advantage of live agents answering the phone and automated technology to make sure you received the message. As a 24/7 live answering service, we love hearing the voices of real humans more than most. However, when it comes to emergencies, there can be little room for error. By switching to a fully automated reach on-call set-up, our system can take care of dispatching urgent messages, and agents can spend more time focusing on answering your calls properly.

Pay nothing – automated dispatching is a free service

If you are using live operator dispatching, you are paying a per minute rate for our answering service agents to dial your staff. If your staff doesn’t answer, the agents will set the next call to dial out. This cycle keeps running until your dial outs are exhausted, or until the agents reach your staff. All of this is billable time under your per minute rate and can get expensive depending on your dial out settings.

Our automated dispatching is a free service. Switching to our automated on-call system is a great way to lower your monthly answering service bill, which means you can spend it on more important things (like that new coffee machine you’ve been pining over). With live agents are taken out of the mix, and the automated system is responsible for reaching out, then that means no extra charges.

Choose your preferred method of communication

We offer 3 different ways your on-call staff can receive their messages after the call. Some businesses prefer a phone call from their service when emergencies arise, and others are fine with their staff receiving a text with the caller’s information. SAS offers flexibility when it comes to choosing your urgent message delivery method. Options include:

• Recording: In the recording option, the system will call all numbers in your schedule with an audio message saying: “You have a new automated on call notification from SAS. Please press 1 to accept the message.” If the first recipient presses 1, the system will play the full audio recording of the call for them. If there is no keypress, the system will continue to call in accordance with the dialing rules you’ve set.
• Text to Speech (TTS): In the Text to Speech, or TTS option, the system will call all numbers in your schedule with an audio message saying , “You have a new automated on-call notification from SAS. Please press 1 to accept the message.” If the recipient presses 1, the Text to Speech system will read the message that you have created in your client portal.
• SMS: In the SMS, or texting option, a text message is sent to all numbers in your schedule at the same time. The message will say: “A new urgent message has been created. Reply with ‘OK’ to accept.” Once accepted, the system will relay the custom text message that you have created in your client portal.

Maximize accountability with your on-call staff

Our on-call log can help you learn more about how your staff is dealing with emergency messages. If you are on our Flex platform. you can track dial out or SMS attempts, time between dial outs, which on-call staff member accepted the message, which ones didn’t, and more. Each attempt we make to reach your on-call is logged so you get up to the second intelligence on how your on-call staff is performing after hours.

Reach the right people

Ensure that emergency messages and issues are always sent to the right people with our powerful scheduling system. Whether your schedule changes once a month or 3 times a day, like our live agent system, our automated on-call system is completely customizable. If your on-call schedule rarely changes, or if your on-call schedule changes weekly, daily, or even hourly – create the schedule to match your business model so your staff members are getting notified and taking action immediately.

Add and schedule groups of staff members who will remain on-call in 24-hour increments, or schedule individual or groups of on-call employees to rotate every hour. And, with an easy to use interface, we’ve made managing your on-call simple.

Start using automated dispatch today

Our automated on-call dispatching is the easiest, most reliable, and most affordable way to make sure your urgent messages are reaching toe right responder immediately.

If you’re using any type of emergency on-call dispatching and you’re on our Flex platform, you already have access to and are using this system. If you’re on one of our legacy systems, please contact Specialty Answering Service support to make this available in your account for free.

The post Never Miss an On-Call Alert with New Automated Dispatching appeared first on Specialty Answering Service.

We’ve worked hard to develop some useful tools that small businesses can use to create a more streamlined answering service experience for them, and an overall better customer experience for their own customers. However, it’s easy to overlook these features when the tools we do offer aren’t traditionally offered by answering services who offer a web portal or web access. Your outsourcing experience with SAS should be more than having us answer calls. That’s why you should take a look under the hood and at least use these three tools available in your portal:

Letting Callers Rate the Operators

On Specialty’s portal, not only can you listen to calls, rate operators and provide feedback, you can let your callers rate their operator experience as well. That’s right – your callers can directly provide feedback on the agents handling their calls right after each interaction. Once you’ve configured your survey, your callers will immediately get an email after each call where they can rate their experience from 1-5 stars, and even leave a comment if they want. If your customers do leave reviews, you can view that information in the Call Details view within each individual call.

How this helps shape your answering service experience:

• Allows you to gain insight into how your customers are experiencing the service.
• Their feedback helps improve the service and brings attention to issues.
• Hearing their feedback may lead you to make necessary changes that will streamline your workflow.

Already using this feature?

Here’s a few ways you can get more out of it:

• Add personal text to customize the message that is sent to your callers instead of using the standard text that is already in there.
• Allow your callers to leave their name and feedback on specific calls.
• Customize the survey by adding your company’s logo.

Dispatching Call Center Surveys

Dispatching surveys among your client base is a great way to not only gauge their experiences with your business, but you can also get their feedback on specific products to see what improvements can be made. Whether we’re emailing callers a link to your survey or if you’re posting the survey on your own platform, our goal is to make sure your customer’s experiences are nothing short of amazing. That means asking for feedback, and listening to the needs of your customers. With SAS, mining customer feedback has never been easier!

A post call survey can:

• Help you determine if there are products your customers would be interested in.
• Help you refine and improve any products or services that you do already offer.
• Help you determine how and where consumers are hearing about your company so that you can beef up marketing.

Great questions to ask in your survey are:

• How would you rate your experience?
• How did you hear about our product/service/company?
• What can we improve upon?
• Would you recommend us to a friend?
• What would you like to see from us in the future?

Already using the SAS survey app?

Here’s how you can get more out of it:

• Add alerts to be notified after each survey is completed so that you can follow up with customers quickly.
• Give your customers the option to take the survey via email or by phone.
• Create multiple surveys depending on the type of calls that are coming in. For example, new customer calls can receive one survey while existing customer calls can receive another.

Adding Call Status Labels

Whether you’re sharing your online portal access among your employees or you’ve set them up with their own access, adding call status labels is a great way for everyone to stay organized. For example, you can add custom status labels for each employee, and attach them to the particular calls in which those employees need to follow up with. So, Jan from Accounting will know which calls are for her without having to spend time sifting through each one.

Labels help you:

• Stay organized by differentiating calls between staff members or departments.
• Mark which calls you’ve already responded to.
• Prioritize call backs.

While these are just 3 examples of features within the Specialty Answering Service portal, we offer many other features that can help maximize a business’s performance, like on-demand reports and various app integrations. We always put our customers (and our customers’ customers) best interests in mind while trying to offer the best possible answering service out there, and we’d love to hear your feedback!

The post 3 Answering Service Software Features That Work (But You’re Probably Not Using)! appeared first on Specialty Answering Service.

But wait, there’s more. SAS is more than just a virtual receptionist service. Aside from giving your customers 24/7 live operator assistance, you’ll enjoy free, on-demand access to our unique user interface, where you can do everything from listening to call recordings to editing your call script to integrating with various external programs that will support your operations.

The SAS Desk web portal is chock full of resources to help you stay organized and keep track of customers’ requests.

• Want us to schedule appointments? Link your Google Calendar to the app in our portal that will allow our operators to do just that.
• Use a helpdesk? Integrate the Desk.com or Zendesk app into your call script, and support tickets will be created in your platform. No copy and pasting necessary!
• Running your business on a CRM? Link Specialty Answering Service with Salesforce or Zoho to create leads, create contacts, create cases, and more.
• Need to log your information in a different format? The Google Sheets app will push data directly to your online spreadsheet.
• Maybe you already have leads but don’t have the time to call them. Configure our Outbound Calling app to have our professional operators qualify your leads for you!
• Do you have a rotating on-call schedule? Check out our On-Call app, which allows you to create multiple calendars, complete with custom time blocks, messaging options, and color-coding.
• Want to give your colleagues access to your message portal or send calls to specific departments for follow-up? Add a few new users, or share call details by creating a Share URL.

In addition to all of these great features, our Reports section offers a convenient way to review your usage, download custom reports, track calls by hour, and more.

• Want stats on how people heard about your business? Generate a Script Step Report to see the info at-a-glance.
• Need to see how many calls you received over that busy holiday weekend? We have that, too.
• Want to find out which operators are taking your calls, and rate their performance? We have your back.

And if that’s not enough, we also have a mobile app for iPhone and Android devices that gives you on-the-go access to your calls and message details! We are constantly improving our technology to provide a level of connection and convenience that you won’t find anywhere else.

With Specialty Answering Service, the possibilities are endless. If you’re already using us, please take advantage of some of our apps and features. If you’re not using us, what are you waiting for? Give us a try, and go crazy!!

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