If you’re looking for a great way to easily impress customers, increase sales and boost your company’s professional image, then look no further. Touch Communications provides businesses with live, 24-hour live call answering services from professional staff who care just as much about your business as you do.

Our Professional Touch

We know that you place a large amount of trust in the people you employ to be the first voice that your customers hear. That’s why we at Touch Communications only employ individuals who are professional, respectful, smart and caring. We don’t just take messages and page business owners with caller’s information. Instead, we take the time to carefully listen to all incoming calls and answer them with the same amount of professional care that customers have come to expect from you. We consider ourselves an extension of your business and take pride in providing your customers with the best experience possible.

Always Open for Business

Businesses are finding it challenging to keep up with the pressing need to always be available for customers. Gone are the days of customers being able to call only during business hours. In order to keep ahead of your competitors and to provide customers with an experience that they will remember, your company requires a live answer service. Customers will not only be happy that their call has been answered right away by a caring professional, but they will be impressed knowing that their call will always be answered, regardless of when they call.

Only One Chance to Make a Great First Impression

First impressions are everything to customers. As a business owner, you don’t want an answering machine to be the first thing that a potential customer hears, or worse – the last thing, before they dial your direct competitor who does use a live answering service. Instead, you want an experienced customer service provider who will answer your business’ calls with the highest degree of professionalism, at all times of the day, which can easily raise your company’s prestige.

Your Own Personal Secretary!

Are you a small business or a start-up enterprise who cannot afford a large staff at this time? If so, then using Touch Communications is like employing the best personal secretary as your own staff! Having a professional answer your company’s calls can give your business an enhanced status to customers. Choosing Touch Communications to be that live answering service is a simple, cost-effective way to add prestige to your company.

Around-the-Clock Service

Employing Touch Communications as your call answering service means providing customers with excellent customer service at all hours of the day. Regardless of where your business is located, we can help you. We offer a variety of package options, but all options have one commonality: to raise the profile of your company. Don’t trust anyone else with increasing your company’s image – call Touch Communications today!

If you operate a business, no doubt there are times when your plate is very full. Many entrepreneurs handle this by – and even pride themselves – in multitasking.  It has been said by some however, that multitasking is just task-switching. After all, you really can’t be assisting a customer and doing your bookkeeping at the same time.

The truth is, that “multitasking” is not nearly as efficient as you may think it is. One study, conducted by the University of Michigan revealed that by switching tasks midway, it can actually increase the total time by up to 25%.[i]

So, if multitasking isn’t the answer what is? Here are a few tips to help you stop multitasking and truly become more productive.

Just Do It

This slogan doesn’t just work for Nike – it can work for you too. When you begin a task, see it through to completion rather than jumping around. If you are going through your emails, either answer them, forward them to someone else who can handle them, or decide if they are unimportant and delete them.

Delegate, Delegate, Delegate

The more tasks that you can delegate to someone else, the more focus you can put toward building your business. Certain jobs in your business can be transferred to your employees, partners or even third party suppliers, such as a call answering service.

Eat Your Frogs First

It’s a gross expression, but this is something that works well in business. Get the less enjoyable tasks out of the way. Then you can put your complete focus on more enjoyable tasks without feeling the dread of the tasks you’d rather avoid.

Resist the Tyranny of the Urgent

If you are not careful, it can be easy to allow urgent, yet not overly important issues take up your time. As a business owner, there are times when you will have to let go – or pass the issue to someone else in your organization in order to allow you to focus on more important matters.

Just Say No

Entrepreneurs by nature, are ambitious people. But if you take on every single challenge that comes your way, burn-out can follow close behind. This, in turn, can lead to less than ideal performance in the commitments that you already have.

When a new challenge arises, you need to ask yourself if it fits your overall mission and vision and whether you have the resources (time, money, and people) to handle it. If the answer is no, then no needs to be your answer as well.

Do Not Multitask!

The key to learning any new skill is repetition. If you have been accustomed to multitasking, you need to unlearn it by deliberately and repetitively not multitasking. Multitasking hurts productivity and leads to time wasted.

So, the next time that you feel tempted to multitask, remember that while it may feel efficient, the evidence suggests otherwise. Follow these tips to stop multitasking and boost your productivity.

Allow Touch Communications to help simplify your tasks. We provide 24/7 live answering for your business, which leaves you with one last task to worry about.

[i] https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/254840

There is no doubt that an answering service can be a real benefit to businesses that might not be able to afford or that may not require a full-time receptionist. A live answering service should make your business better, save you money, and help you with your brand image. But just as in any other industry, there are live call answering providers that are better than others, and there are some that may start out great but then lose quality over time. If you’re wondering whether it is time to hang up on your current live call answering service and call on a new one, here are three signs that it may be time to switch.

1. You’ve Been Getting Poor Reports from Customers

If you’ve been in business any length of time, you know that some customers are hard to please. But if you’re getting several reports from your customers that they did not have a positive experience calling your business, then consider it a red flag.

Complaints such as long on-hold times, being given the wrong information, or simply being treated in a way that wasn’t courteous and respectful should be taken seriously. If you wouldn’t tolerate a certain behaviour from your employees, then you shouldn’t tolerate it from your live answering service.

2. They don’t Offer 24 Hour Answering Service

If you are not getting 24/7 service from your call answering company, then you are missing out on one of the biggest advantages of having a live answering service.

Customers today are used to getting an immediate response whether they are surfing the web or calling a local business. The fact is, that if a customer calls after hours and doesn’t get their call answered they will likely call your competition rather than waiting for your office to open the next day.

There are all kinds of ways that a call answering service can be helping your customers after hours including providing general information, taking payments, scheduling appointments, and transferring emergency calls to the appropriate person.

3. Lack of Service

Your live answering service is responsible not only for providing good customer service to your customers, but it should also be providing good customer service to you.

If you are having trouble getting through to your service, or are having technical or billing issues that are not being resolved in a prompt and efficient manner then you will end up wasting a lot of time that could have been better spent working on your business.

As a business owner, you know the importance of getting the best value for your dollar – but you won’t be getting that from a live call answering company that is providing poor service.

If you are looking to switch your live answering service, then it’s important to find a company that is going to treat your customers with respect and provide them with a high level of service. These days, working with a company that provides a 24 hour answering service is a must. And finally, you want to know that you as a customer are getting the attention and accuracy you deserve.

At TOUCH Communications, we consider ourselves an extension of your business. Providing a 24 hour answering service, our staff consisting of smart and professional individuals provide a seamless experience for your customers with the same care they have come to expect from you. So, if you’re ready to switch providers contact us today and our team of experts will help you get started.

Tis the season for giving! At this special time of year, local organizations of all sizes are hosting charity events in order to help those less fortunate. If your organization is hosting a holiday charity event whether it be a raffle, a winter 5k or black tie Christmas gala, enlisting the help of others can be the key to making a good event a great one.

If you’ve ever wondered whether your event could use the support of a telephone answering service, here are a few questions that may help you decide:

1. How large is your event?

Some charitable events are pretty small – a food drive done by company employees or a bake sale put on by the “church ladies”. These can be wonderful events that help the community but you don’t necessarily need a call centre to help you take orders for Betty’s Christmas sugar cookies!

On the other hand, if you’ve got a larger event such as a charity lottery or a winter festival, then it might just make sense to enlist a call center to help you manage it.

2. Do you need to sell tickets?

A call answering service can really come in handy if you need to sell tickets for your charitable event. Experienced CSRs can answer incoming calls, respond to general questions, and take ticket orders. This is especially useful since many people will prefer to purchase tickets outside of regular business hours when they are not at work.

Since Touch’s call centre operates 24/7 those supporting your charitable events will be able to get their tickets at the time most convenient for them.

3. Does your event need a more professional image?

Let’s face it. With the amount of scams out there, a lot of people have become skeptical of people asking for money or support this time of year. You may have a wonderful cause and be doing everything by the book, but if your organization comes across as being less than professional, it could make people doubt your credibility.

While volunteers may do a great job at other things, they are not always the best when it comes to making sales or taking people’s personal information. If you would like to give your holiday charitable event a more professional face (or perhaps we should say a more professional voice!), then Touch’s trained CSRs may be exactly what you need.

4. Do you need to manage volunteers?

Call answering services can do more than just sell tickets for your holiday charitable event. They can also manage volunteer schedules. If you’ve got a lot of volunteers that need to check in and schedule and re-schedule time slots, then a call answering service can use an online calendar to help with the logistics.

5. Do you simply need more help?

Sometimes holiday charitable events can take on a life of their own. You may have employees. You may have great volunteers. But sometimes, this simply isn’t enough. Instead of letting yourself get burned out right before the holidays, let Touch Communications make the job a little easier.

If you own or manage a towing company, then you know that when the phone rings, there is a caller on the other end of the line that needs help immediately. They are either on the side of the road somewhere with a broken down vehicle or they are an angry property owner who needs to get a vehicle removed from their premises.

The problem is that it’s not always easy to answer a call. You may be short staffed or you may be on the road yourself driving one of your tow trucks. A live call answering service is an excellent solution for tow truck companies looking to provide better service to their customers.

A live call answering service such as that offered by Touch Communications can make the process of operating a towing service much smoother. Professional customer service representatives are on hand 24 hours a day, 7 days a week – so when that distraught or angry caller gets on the line, there is always someone available to take their call.

Here are a few more benefits that tow truck companies get from using live call answering services:

1.      24/7 Service at a fraction of the cost

Most tow truck companies want to be available 24/7 – after all, a breakdown can happen at any time of day or night. The problem is – unless you have a very large company, you’re probably not going to get a call EVERY night. And paying a staff member to sit in an office – or even to be on call – 24/7 can be quite costly.

Using a call centre, on the other hand, is generally much more affordable and TOUCH’s CSRs are always ready to provide professional and friendly service.

2.      Call forwarding and dispatching

Of course answering the call and taking the customer’s information is only step one for towing services. The next step comes in actually contacting a driver and relaying the information so that they can go the aid of the caller.

Depending on how your company works, a TOUCH CSR can either forward the call on to someone else in your company, or they can take down the information and then contact one of your drivers. An online database can be created for CSRs to check drivers’ schedules, assigned area, etc.

3.      Unsurpassed customer service

Dealing with people is not just a job for us – it’s our passion. And we are really good at it. When someone requires a tow truck they may be panicked, upset, excited, frightened, or angry. Also, the manner in which they are dealt with on the phone is going to matter. For most, it will be the first impression they get of your company.

Therefore, it is important that when a call is answered, the caller is dealt with in a calm and professional way. By employing the services of a company such as TOUCH – you know that your customers’ calls will be handled by experts.

Are you ready to take your towing company’s customer service to the next level? Then contact TOUCH Communications today and learn how we can help your business.

Using a live call answering service such as TOUCH Communications offers business owners a number of advantages, yet there always seems to be that touchy question as to whether or not they should have TOUCH’s CSRs identify themselves as working for an answering service. There is no one right answer to this question – there are good reasons for an answering service to say they are an answering service as well as many good reasons for them not to.

In the following article, we will discuss the advantages of each.

Reasons NOT to let your customers know that they are dealing with an answering service

Many business owners do not want their customers to know that they are dealing with a live call answering service provider because they feel doing so makes service seem less personal. They may also wish to give the impression that they are a larger business than they actually are. Believing that a business is open and available to take calls 24/7 can give many customers a sense of security and trust in the company that they are dealing with.

In general, if a CSR needs to collect personal information from a client, they will have an easier time doing so, if the customer feels that they have reached the business rather than a live call answering service.

Reasons TO let your customers know that they are dealing with an answering service

The professional CSRs at TOUCH Communications can do an amazing job at representing any company, but they are never going to be as knowledgeable about your business and your staff as your own employees.

Your clients would have a lot higher expectations knowing they are dealing with your staff, which would lead to higher levels of frustration if your staff can’t deliver the level of expertise that was expected. However, with a live call answering service, your clients would be more understanding and wouldn’t question the reliability of your company.

Is there a middle ground?

There are a few – but no really great ones.

You may have CSRs answer the call with a script such as “Hello, you’ve reached the after-hours receptionist of Acme Corp, do you require urgent service … “. The advantage of this is that it lets the caller know your business is prepared to handle after-hours emergencies. The disadvantage is that they will probably be able to figure out that they’ve reached an answering service.

Another approach could be to have the CSR answer with a script like, “Thank you for calling Acme Corp. You’ve reached the off-site receptionist, how may I help you.” The advantage here is that the caller feels more like they’ve reached someone at the company. The disadvantage is that they may still expect more expertise or knowledge to be offered than a call centre CSR is able to give.

Nope, I still want my callers to think they’ve reached my office

Should you decide you still want your callers to believe they are speaking with your staff when they reach as TOUCH CSR, there are a number of things that you can do to help make the caller experience better:

• Provide complete information when you set up your account through well-written FAQs
• Only have CSRs collect basic information from callers
• Have stock answers such as, “sorry, I don’t have access to that information but I’ll have Alan give you a call and answer all of your questions when he gets back to the office.”
• For more complex calls, have the option for CSRs to transfer the call to someone in your organization.
• Try to cover all likely scenarios by providing a complete list of employees and explaining which types of calls go to whom.

If you’ve never worked with a live call answering service before, it can take some getting used to, but with a little planning, it can take your business to new heights of efficiency. If you’re still unsure as to how best to set up your account, contact the professionals at TOUCH today. We can help you come up with the plan that is right for your business.