The Specialty Answering Service Blog

Do you know why first impressions matter for business success? It’s because of a phenomenon that famous business author Malcolm Gladwell refers to as thin slicing. Thin slicing means that we often make judgments within the first few seconds of meeting someone. These can range from whether a person is trustworthy to…

Apple Inc. was started in 1976 with an initial investment of just $500 and a $25,000 order. It’s now the world’s largest business, worth more than $700 billion in market capitalization. Apple’s history is folklore today, but if Apple can become a behemoth in less than four decades, then so can you.…

The fax machine has gone electronic! It all started in 1823 when English inventor, Francis Ronalds, built the first working electrostatic telegraph. Fast forward to 1833, to find Germans Carl Friedrich Gauss and Wilhelm Weber installing a telegraph line through Gottingen, Germany, that stretched for nearly a mile. The line transmitted messages…

Role play is a viable business customer service training tool that encourages best practices and thoughtful discussion amongst team members. It can be a little unnerving to “act” in front of your colleagues, but at the end of the day, the takeaway is a more effective approach to managing the numerous issues…

You’re ready for your first answering service, but with so many options out there, you have no idea which will work best for your business. We know how tedious the process of selecting the right call center can be. That’s why we put together this list of 25 questions and answers to…

What’s your management style? Would you say that you are more inclined to cater to your boss, do you spend more time working with your direct reports, or do you fall somewhere in the middle? Managing Up: Managing your boss, or managing up, is necessary in order to understand what is expected…

The first impression a customer has of a company is usually made by the receptionist. And if that’s your job, then maintaining a professional demeanor is essential in everything you do. While receptionists accomplish many tasks over the course of a day, their primary responsibility is answering the phone. For some, a…

For many people, text messaging has replaced the art of real conversation. It’s easy and direct, and it saves users an abundance of time. This is also true in the health care environment, where text messaging has improved workflow and made communicating by pager and return calls obsolete. But the issue of…

Closing up shop at 5 p.m. doesn’t mean that your business won’t continue to receive calls after hours. For many industries, having callers greeted by voicemail after the doors close for the day is perfectly acceptable. But for service-oriented industries, voicemail places a barrier between your customers’ needs and your ability to…

On a scale of 1 to 10, how boring is your office? With a 10 being straight up dullsville and a 1 being the joint is jumpin’, we would guess that the majority of offices the world over rank somewhere in the 8 to 10 range. Did you know that an ultra-serious…