|
TAS
MARKETING
233 Whitepine Creek Road, Trout
Creek, Montana 59874
The Voice of the TAS
Industry
______________________________________
|
| |
Volume 2,
Number 4
"TAS
Tips"
"TAS Tips is an
e-mailed newsletter that covers all kinds of topics and
information for the answering service industry
including: coming events, informative Internet
information, businesses for sale, used equipment for
sale, valuable TAS insights, future projections,
obituaries, quips & quotes, TAS group promotions,
Blast from the Past, guest contributors with their
TAS Tips and of course... lots of humor. For as the late Steve
Allan said, "Humor is the intellects way of having
fun". |
| _________________________________________________ |
And you thought last year was
bad... |
| _________________________________________________ |
Answering Service Accounts for
Sale
110 Premier Accounts that have been on service for over
25 years. They are selling for 10.9 times or
$210K... Cash!
With a 37%
profit margin, these accounts
are averaging $175 per account. Billing $19,300 on a 28
day billing, these customers are receiving a
profitable $.93 cents per minute with 58%
medical.
Daytime only Answering and Secretarial service
with 62 accounts billing $9,100 for all services or
$7,940 for Ans. accounts only. Prestigious location comes with
this business that is selling for only 9.9 times
monthly.
For details, please call (800) 369-6126 and ask
for Steve
Michaels. | |
| _________________________________________________ |
|
Shake, Rattle
&
Roll
I sent out
notices to my staff a month in advance that we would be
cutting hours and changing shifts, and that hours would be
awarded based on performance, attendance, and attitude.
I made a shockingly dramatic schedule to "shake everyone
up". This alone got rid of a lot of my "problems" and
improved attitudes.
Then I put out a survey that asked when they
were available to work, when they would like to work, would
they be willing to work remotely and/or work splits. I
then put together a template schedule of what I thought we
actually needed (still a work in progress) without regard for
employee "convenience" (getting the hours they wanted, when
they wanted, etc.). I let it be known that hours would
be awarded based on skill sets (are you just a message taker
or can you dispatch, supervise, work graveyard), attitude,
remote capability, willingness to work splits, performance,
and attendance.
Here's what a
long-time employee recently told me:
1. I think the attitudes are a lot
better.
2. We
are all pulling together as a team more now to get the job
done.
As for
unemployment claims: I have a reputation of being hard
to get unemployment from. I dot my "I's" and cross my
"t's" before terminating someone. I much prefer to
encourage a dissatisfied employee to seek a better line of
work that will make them
happier.
Deborah Wohlt
Monroe telephone Answering
Service
Beaumont,
Texas
But when
I make my "shocking schedule" it generated quite a number of
unemployment claims, especially from those that still had a
job but with fewer hours. Most of those Texas Workforce
Committee found reasons NOT to award it to the employee. These
were those that left immediately. This is because I had warned
in advance that it would be based on performance, attendance
and attitude, and I had a file full of documentation to prove
it.
The few that simply had hours cut were more
difficult to defend against as they were part-timers to begin
with and though their hours were only cut by 25%, TWC still
decided to "allow them benefits". But because of the
ones who left, those part-timers got their hours back within
weeks, so what little affect it had was
negligible. |
| _________________________________________________ |
Pre-Owned TAS
Equipment for Sale
Axon 8000 with
8 positions includes 8131 backup, extra line card and spare
Axon 4000 for backup. $6,900
Startel
5700 - 5 positions including an IVM Voice Mail
for only $6000.
Axon 8000 - 4
positions and the 8131 zip message storage drive. System would
be a great start-up system for only
$4,500. Startel
5700 system with 8 positions plus 4 'Switch Only' positions, 4
T1 cards, 3 port fax server with alpha paging too. $6,500 OBO.
Accucall Model
2.2/MBX, 8 position system with 2 PRI's, fax, email on a
Stealth Server. Only
$7,500.
Avaya Phone System model IPoffice 460 set
up for 4 stations. $10K
OBO
Axon IV paper based system with 4
positions and patching. $3,500... Reduced to
$1,800
Startel 5700 system with 7 positions,
2-T1 cards, with voice mail and voice logger for only
$9,500.
Axon 8000 with 8 positions, Voice Mail,
32 trunks, alpha, fax & patching for
only $7,500.
Cadcom Linemaster with 7 licensed
positions, fully loaded with fax, voicemail etc for only
$17,500
If you have used TAS equipment that you
would like to sell, Click Here to fill out a used equipment listing
sheet or call TAS Marketing at:
(800)
369-6126 |
| _________________________________________________ |
The
following segment are stories of old
friends who had once been in the answering service
business and are now willing to share
their
~ Life after TAS
~
Betty Ruth
Edwards
I was
introduced to this industry in 1934 when my parents
bought an answering service. My mother put me to work a few
years later at ten years of age answering calls. I must
confess I was more than a little resentful at being made to
answering calls while my brother played outside. Never at that
time did I dream that this would become my life's work. Many years
later, I moved to Connecticut. There I started Edwards
Answering Service in 1954 with my husband Fred. I retired in 2004,
after 50 years of managing the business and traveling all
around this great country to TAS events. I met many wonderful
people at these meetings.
After
retirement, I pursued my other passion of reading and
books. In 1988
thinking about how I would spend my time in retirement, I had
opened a little used bookstore. There I sold previously
enjoyed books. I enjoyed this business almost as much
as TAS. After retiring, I continued to operate the bookstore.
I also began to volunteer at the local hospital. They put me
to work doing everything from stuffing envelopes to staffing
the information desk. Eventfully I found myself at the
hospital thrift store. I was allowed to take over the book
section, which was heaven to me. With a little bit of
saleamanship I quintupled the book sales.
In
2006, I sold my bookstore to devote more time to my family.
After 57 years, I lost the first love of my life, Fred. I must admit that was
a real heartbreak. I was grateful to still have the soloist of
the books at the thrift store and family. I have continued to
travel, visiting my grandchildren and volunteer at the
hospital. Recently, in 2009, I was hospitalized with heart
problems and received a triple-by-pass to help restore my
normal energy. I
am happy to say I am home now and I am on my way to a full
recovery.
Betty Ruth
Edwards Edwards Answering Service
Vernon,
CT. |
| _________________________________________________ |
| _________________________________________________ |
Do
You Believe Someone Can Actually Provide this Type of
Service... and it is Legal?
Start The New Year With
Great References!
 You
Choose Your Career History!
You Pick Your Start and End Date!
You Choose your Salary!
We Provide a Real Company Just for
You!
We Provide a Real Address For That
Company!
We
Provide a Real Website For That Company!
We
Provide a Real "800" Number!
We Will Have our Operators Standing By!
We Will E-mail you Every Time Someone
Calls!
In America today, we have record poverty
and hunger: 50 million Americans, 17 million households, one
in every six Americans. We have a real unemployment rate of
22% when discouraged and part-time workers are added; close to
the highest levels in American history. The numbers of new
jobs claimed versus the number of unemployed make the odds of
getting one of these jobs about as likely as getting into
Harvard.
CareerExcuse.com mission is to help our
subscribers in NOT joining the statistics listed above. Over 12 million
Americans have been fired or quit their jobs in the last 5
years alone. This
can be devastating for anybody who has been laid off and is
looking for a job in today's job market.
Is It Illegal?
 This
question was asked at adminSecret.monster.com and this is what
they had to say....
Surprisingly, the legal framework of
CareerExcuse's business is solid- except for their fake
diploma offerings. According to law, falsifying information on
a resume is not illegal unless you're lying about your
educational credentials.
Falsifying your work experience could,
however, almost certainly get you fired, not to mention the
fact that your lack of experience might lead to incompetence
at a new job that would be telling and risky in and of
itself.
The study concludes that it is illegal to
commit résumé fraud only if the job seeker (1) is claiming an
educational credential from a "diploma mill," a bogus
institution and (2) is using the résumé in a state that has
enacted legislation to discourage the activities of these
schools. However, an employer may be within its legal rights
to terminate an employment relationship based upon
misrepresentation of qualifications, depending upon the state
and the nature of the falsification."
In another online article, a study by
resume checker HireRight that shows: "Eighty percent of all
resumes are misleading, 20 percent state fraudulent
Reported problems with
resumes:
Misleading
information 80 percent, fraudulent degrees
20 percent, Altered employment
dates 30 percent, Inflated salary claims 40
percent, Inaccurate job descriptions 30
percent, Companies no longer exist 25
percent, Falsified references 27 percent
Bottom Line:
It appears most new hires today are just
as likely to be fired for "lying on their resume" as anybody
else who uses a professional job reference service.
The key is to exceed your new employer's
expectations with your job performance and become a valuable
asset to the organization. Failure to do such, or
to perform poorly for your new employer will only invite them
to look for excuses to fire you.
Be sure to check
the laws in your state and local area.
Here's what it says on their
website located at www.CareerExcuse.com.
No New
Subscribers.
(Sorry, our work load has now
exceeded our capacity) - Wonder Why!
Submitted by:
Liz Klepfer
Santa Cruz Answering Service
Santa Cruz, California
|
| _________________________________________________ |
"Here's a
tip for any TAS wishing to cut the cost of bill printing
and mailing by up to 50% and speed up
receivables.
Mail-N-More is several steps ahead of any
other mail house serving our
industry.
The reasons
are:
 1. They
can track your bills (via USPS web site link) from
when you upload them for printing, to
Mail-N-More's post office, to your customers' local mail
sorting center, to your customer's actual mail carrier's
bag.
2. They can split your
upload billing file into bills to be mailed, bills to be faxed
and bills to be emailed with online payment capability (and
also track faxes and emails to delivery).
3. They can bar code all
info required by your bank so that if the remittance
address is your bank's lock box, your bank scans the bar
code (no typos) and emails a daily report to you of who has
paid. You load the report into your accounts
receivable program (again, no typos) and save several days in
cash flow and also a lot of effort (no bank deposit forms
to fill out daily).
Mail-N-More boasts sending
out invoices for the AnswerNet group of companies including
AnswerNet, Signius, Answer America and Cerida among
others.
Call Chris at (321)
729-9972 or email info@bizmailservice.com for further
information".
Advertisement |
| _________________________________________________ |
9 Careers on the Way
Out
We don't think
so...
Some careers have simply faded away over the past 10
years. In most cases, advances in technology eliminated the
need for certain jobs. Americans are also more focused on
conservation. Here are a few jobs that are being phased out;
hopefully your career isn't on this list!
Bank Tellers, File Clerks, Data Entry Clerks, Mail Clerks, Photo Processors, Travel Agents
Watch Salesperson, Video Store Clerk
&
Telephone
Operators
Even the smallest company can now use sophisticated
telephone systems that allow callers to select their own
options for needed information. Callers simply listen to
pre-recorded telephone directory names and select the person
they want to talk to. Voicemail, email and even texting have
become preferred forms of communication in addition to
traditional telephone conversations.
Their Bottom Line
The past decade ushered in job market changes that
closed out old careers and started new ones. In many cases,
the processes performed in old jobs were replaced technology,
but in some cases, the processes simply went away. One thing
is for sure, there will always be change.
"TAS Tips" Bottom Line sent in by Observant
TAS Individuals
Over my business lifetime, the Beeper
(just beep, beep) "would kill us", then the Answering
Machine "oh my god we are doomed", Alpha Beeper "its all
over", Voice Mail "we're done for", Cell Phones "we might as
well close our doors". I personally
think that all of these things are what allowed us to grow as
an industry.
If it wasn't for some of these we would still be using
switchboards.
Our technology evolved because we faced some of these
challenges.
Our job now is to reinforce with our marketing and the
quality of our services the advantage a business has when they
let a person answer their phones. Some of my marketing
says "you hate answering machines and Voice Mail, what makes
you think that your callers are any different." or "when your
machine answered, they hung up and called someone else".
etc.
We might have to work harder, but then we get to charge
more, (is this a great country or what).
Bill Smith
AnswerOne, Inc.
New York, NY
I like to use similar
wording when speaking with new and potential clients. The large majority of
people prefer a live person's voice versus a voicemail
greeting and most clients realize this. Sometimes, they need
to be reminded or educated about this - especially when faced
with cost-cutting decisions i.e. should they eliminate their
answering service and go with an inexpensive voicemail
system.
If a client gains one piece of new
business every few months by employing a telephone answering
service instead of trying to save the money and utilizing a
voicemail instead - the TAS service, at a minimum, pays for
itself. It reduces the risk of callers hanging up when
they reach a voicemail recording and going on to another
company. Not to mention better service is provided to
their callers increasing the chances of repeat business and
greater client satisfaction. Although it would be
difficult to track the actual statistics, most clients
understand these points when they are explained to them.
So far nothing, including the technologies you mentioned
below, will beat the human contact someone gets when they call
and reach a live person.
Scott
Hadley
Operations
Manager
INTERCEPT
of Florida, Inc.
Ft. Myers,
Florida
_________________________________________________________________________________
|
| _________________________________________________ |
Consumers Less Willing to Put Up
with Poor Service
By Brendan
B. Read, Senior Contributing Editor
A survey of American consumers to
determine their attitudes toward and perceptions of today's
customer service and the impact of the down economy sponsored
by Jacada (News - Alert) notes that serious concerns are on
the rise while service and satisfaction have dropped. The red
button areas are Web self-service and billing. Observers say
failure to address these issues could cost companies business
at a time when every customer is golden.
The research,
conducted in April 2009 by Wakefield, revealed that 69 percent
of Americans are less willing to put up with poor customer
service than they were a year ago while 43 percent feel that
customer service has gotten worse since the economic
downturn.
As a result, 53 percent say that they
have left a company due to a bad experience with customer
service and 43 percent of consumers said they have postponed
dealing with a problem or issue because they didn't feel like
dealing with customer service.
While many
companies have invested in Web self-support solutions with
more attention being paid to online service options, survey
findings show that the vast majority of consumers prefer
phone-based customer service. The results show that
experiences with customer service Web sites often lead to
frustration and annoyance.
The vast majority
or 79 percent of those who have used a company's self-service
Web site to resolve a problem use at least one negative term -
"annoyed," "frustrated," or "confused," for example - to
describe the experience. Some 62 percent report feeling
frustrated when having to resolve an urgent or serious issue
using a company's site while 54 percent say they get annoyed.
Barely one-third or 32 percent feel Web self-service an
efficient way to get answers; 71 percent say they would have
preferred to talk directly to a live person.
Not surprisingly for urgent or serious
issues, 89 percent prefer to work with a live agent over the
phone rather than using company Web site self-help functions.
40 percent give up "some" or "all of the time" when using an
online customer service center because it wasn't resolving
their problem/ answering their question. By contrast, far fewer
Americans or 29 percent have done the same when dealing with
an agent.
The survey found that there has been an
increase in issues that require Americans to contact customer
service:
* Compared to a year ago, nearly
one-quarter i.e. 24 percent of Americans have seen an increase
in the number of urgent or serious issues that require them to
contact customer service
* More than half or 51 percent have at
least one urgent or serious customer service issue per month
* The number one reason Americans contact
customer service is for a billing mistake
Roughly a quarter
or 26 percent cited a billing mistake or incorrect charge.
Nearly as many or 22 percent said that a bill was higher than
expected. Nearly one in five or 17 percent said cancelling
services or accounts.
Observers say that many of these issues
can be resolved and calls avoided by making sites more
customer-intuitive and by correcting processes that lead to
errors and urgent matters.
Submitted by:
Mary
Jones
Answer 1
Communications
Phoenix,
AZ
|
| _________________________________________________ |
|
~Quote of the Day~
"A pessimist sees difficulty in
every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every
difficulty"
~Winston Churchill
On the
Lighter Side
* When the French swear do they say pardon my
English?
* Why do people
constantly return to the refrigerator with hopes that
something new to eat will have
materialized?
| |
|
|
| _________________________________________________ |
| "TAS Tips" Newsletter... |
|
|
"TAS Tips" does not itself endorse or guarantee the
accuracy or reliability of information, statements or opinions
expressed by any individual or organizations posted in this
newsletter.
Steve
Michaels of TAS
Marketing is available for
consultations and Business Valuations.
TAS
Marketing, 233 Whitepine
Creek Road, Trout Creek, Montana 59874.
|
|
| | |
