Answering Service Blog | American Inbound

Dr. Neil Martin, Founder/CEO of Global Care Quest and Chief of Neurosurgery at UCLA Medical Center announces a new way to view medical images over your cell phone.

The ICIS Mobile viewer made made Martin and others will help reduce diagnosis times.  As the first 3 hours after an emergency are the most critical, this technology is sure to help many physicians who are on the move.

Please read the full article for more information.

This is an interesting read if you answer phones for attorneys.    In this riveting, legal tale a criminal defense lawyer recounts his years of service and how he has dealt with his clients’ after hours needs as they have changed over the years. 

He uses an answering service to screen out non emergencies, then for real emergencies he is always available. The most telling bit of the post is this:

“We come to appreciate that no one dies thinking that they didn’t spend enough time at work.  We realize the need to set limits, and are fully prepared to suffer any negative consequences as a result of those limits.  It’s a trade-off, but a trade-off that we are happy to make.  ”

Yes, lawyers are people too!  Maybe you should give yours a break (especially if it is 3 in the morning).

Echoditto blog has posted an interesting read.  They follow the life of a dot com start-up, zappos.com and discuss the strategies that have made them a success.

Their plan has focused on two main ideas:

1)  Put customer service before marketing

2) Favor long-term investments and short-term financial sacrifice over short-term investments

 This includes many different tactics, but the most interesting one deals with their call center.

“They don’t measure average call time, they don’t up-sell, they refer to competitors, and everyone who answers the phone is already authorized to do what it takes to make you happy (even if that means, in one case, looking up local pizza parlors).”

Clearly, they take customer service seriously.

I can’t comment much about this because I only get 80 kps at home.  And this idea is just depressing when compared to that.

However,  if you live in an area that is fit for fiber optic service, you can now have the internet beamed directly to your fingertips at the blinding rate of 2.5 gbps.  T1 Rex’s blog has the scoop here.

Whew, makes me dizzy thinking about it!

The Wall Street Journal is reporting the findings of a UC-Santa Barbara economics professor and Ph.D. student.  Apparently we’ve all been wasting money and energy by switching our time back and forth every year.

I live in Indiana and until a few years ago, we did not have to worry about this.  Our time never switched!  This created a lot of confusion for the states around us (not for us, of course!  No!).  So in 2006 Indiana decided it would be a good idea to mandate that all counties follow daylight savings time.

Well think again Indiana!  Your flip-flopping has provided the data for a shocking revelation in daylight savings time mentality! 

…You should read the article for the full information,

and remember to set your clocks forward this weekend!

But don’t try to upsell them either!  This is what research performed by two marketing professors and and a doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania has shown.

The full article is listed over at CRM Buyer. The article is very informative. It goes against what has been conventionally thought in the answering service industry.

In it, however, they call their low-value customers “slugs.” I want to let our customers know that I would never consider any of them “slugs.” I like all of our customers equally, and I love talking to each and every one of them!

Every cell phone has the ability to recieve emails.  However, many people are not aware of this.

It’s very simple to do. Let’s say the cell phone you want to email has the number of 1-555-555-5555, and their provider is Nextel. To send an email to this cell phone you would send an email to this address: 5555555555@messaging.nextel.com
They will receive your email as a regular text message!

Blog.realitors.org posted a nice table showing the hosts
that you would use for each provider.

So remember, it’s phonenumber@serviceprovider.host.

Happy emailing!

While not embued with any super powers, this call center girl is super in my book.  Stephanie Smith, 24, saved a life the other night answering routine phone calls when the man she was helping had a sudden brain hemmorage.  Stephanie managed to send the paramedics his way all while constantly reassuring him that help would be arriving shortly.

This article explains that Stephanie is in line for a customer service award…  Come one.  Really. Give her the award. 

Web analtyics are great.  They allow you to track your leads.  But what if the customer sees your phone number on your site and dials that instead of filling out a form?  The lead is lost.  Previous analytic systems have failed in this regard.

If I refer someone to a website, and they go and pick up the phone to call them, well then I’ve lost my referral!  Thankfully InsideSales.com has just released a feature that will track these calls.  I expect more companies in the analytics game to follow suite eventually.

Sprint has just released an exciting new service for the hearing-impaired.  This service will provide word-by-word captions of phone conversation on the web.  This article explains it can sometimes to be difficult for the other party to hear the conversation, so they give the option for both parties to log in and view the screen caps.

Great idea from Sprint.  Users should have as many options available to them as possible, as Sprint is giving them that.