Short Survey of Cleaning & Restoration Companies

[Answerphone]

Hi Guys/Gals,

Jeff here from Answerphone of America. Came across the boards and love them - very informative in the issues you guys face.

I wanted to ask some questions to on how you guys handle your calls so we can better cater our services to the C&R industry. I'm not trying to sell anything. We answer for over 250 cleaning & restoration companies already and I am genuinely interested in how we an adapter our service to meet company owner's needs.

So here are my questions, thank you for taking the time to answer, I really do appreciate it

1) If a caller is placed on hold, which do you prefer, prioritized answering of calls on hold, or a sequential answering? Would you pay more if your calls were at a higher answering tier than other accounts so that your calls were answered first? Would you prefer to have your callers wait on hold longer in exchange for a pricing discount?

2) What features do you look for with your scheduling software? Is what you use a 'cloud' system and online, or internal?

3) What are the biggest issues you have run into in using an answering service in the past? What do you hate more than anything about using one?

4) When it comes to partnering with an answering service, what are the most important issues for you when you select a partner? Features? Hold Times? Information Gathered? Cost? Experience? Etc?

5) How important are spanish speaking operators to your operation?

Thanks again guys. We dedicate a lot of money to really getting below the surface when it comes to the cleaning & restoration industries. Right now, I'm actually at the "Experience" cleaning & restoration convention, and one of the attendees recommended this site. We typically attend 4-5 C&R conventions a year, and will be rolling out a bunch of new features to offer our customers, so your input in helping us deciding what to do is invaluable. Thanks again

~Jeff

 

[AJR]

read my threads on answering services and you will see several comments from across the board. good luck and the best advice i can give you is deliver what you promote and always remember that when your customer brings a short coming in your service to your attention, in other words you mess up. Own up to it and make it right with tangible solutions and do not let the same issue repeat itself again.

p.s. be honest too. we are all trying to sell something that is why we are in business. just call mike and set up an ad, pay the the piper lol.

 

[jcooper]

If I paid someone to answer phones, the only thing I would care about is % of calls booked. None of the other stuff matters if you can't book/sell them on the phone.

 

[Mikey P]

Being able to answer industry related questions is very high in my list.
If you have to call me each time the lady on hold wants to know if we can get coffee or wine stains out, I would be better off answering myself.

 

[Answerphone]

Thanks for the advice guys! I'll make sure and put it to good use. I'll also try to see if I can't get in touch with Mike about supporting this great site.

Cheers,

Jeff

 

[Royal Man]

Can they close the sale and not just quote prices?

 

[Answerphone]

Sure. No problem. In fact, we're setting up AJR's account to do that right now