Do you remember the “bad old days”? When phone companies charged for every local (!) call you made. This was before free long distance, and back when you wouldn’t give out your cell phone number due to the per minute charges… Strangely enough, that mentality is still true in the answering service industry.
When I started No More Phone Tag over 20 years ago, every single answering service was charging per call, per minute, per patch, per page, and per “everything” fees. I thought this was totally crazy. Just think about it, we as an answering service handle more than 600,000 calls per month. Shouldn’t we be able to predict how much usage will be and then charge a flat rate? It was clear to me from day one that instead of putting our customers in the position of having to predict their bills, we should do it for them. As a result, from the first day we opened our doors on September 1, 1991, all our customers are on our 100% flat rate answering service.
Why flat rate answering service?
Medical Answering service – Open letter to doctors
Are you frustrated with your answering service? Have you have just decided that there is no really great solution out there? If so, you’re in good company. Most doctors are more or less frustrated with their answering service, but every time they try to do something about it, things only improve for a short while, so they decide it’s just something they have to live with… Here are some of the most common frustrations I hear about.
• Call the wrong doctor / call about the wrong things / or forget to call the doctor
• Incorrect messages and/or phone numbers
• Long hold times for patients and doctors
• Astronomical answering service bills
However, there is a better way… No More Phone Tag’s medical answering service is designed to handle calls for medical offices whenever they cannot answer their phones. Today, about 70 medical offices in our area have an answering service that
• Answers EVERY call right away
• Takes exact word-for-word messages
• Immediately notify the on-call doctor with an exact escalation process
• Patches the doctor’s call live back to the patient
• Doctors and their staff can make immediate changes to on-call schedules
• FLAT rate of only $65 per month – no limit how many calls we handle
• Great customer service
If you’re not truly happy with your current answering service, give us a call and we’ll set you up for a free trial of the one service that you’ll never have to worry about.
Phone systems and cell phones – time to think outside the box!
In the old days, you could actually reach somebody by calling their office phone. Today, if you need to reach somebody, you really need their cell phone number. At first, that might seem OK, but there are several problems with having your customers bypassing your company completely:
- Loss of control on what’s going on in your company
- The risk of sales people taking their customers with them when they leave
- Delayed responses to inquiries left on the in-house voice mail system
- Cell phone bills out of control
Some companies do transfer calls to their staff’s cell phones, but then the caller ID disappears, so if a caller doesn’t leave their phone number, you’re in trouble….
Why are small business owners not complaining about this? Well, my theory is that this cultural change (cell phones = best way to reach people) has happened so quickly that most small business owners haven’t thought much about it. And the ones that have looked in to solutions, have been told that they need a new fancy phone system for $$$.
However, there is an easy and affordable solution. The Virtual Phone System feature from No More Phone Tag makes your cell phones full featured extensions on your phone system, and it works with all phone system, no matter how old they are. No matter if the call is answered by your receptionist, or if it’s handled by your auto attendant, it will look like your mobile employees are sitting right in the office.