Apello has been offering live answering services for years. We serve a variety of industries including medical, legal, home services, and property management. If there is one thing we have learned, it is that it’s not good to force clients to accept a one-size-fits-all service. Customizing live answering services to each client’s needs is a better way to go.
If you operate a medical office, your needs will differ from the contractor who came in last week to fix the HVAC. Their needs will differ from the lawncare contractor, the landlord who owns your building, and the management company that oversees the property.
Here at Apello, we look at service customization in a number of different ways:
Industry-Specific Needs
At the top of the list our industry-specific needs. For example, take the healthcare industry. Any services we provided for a private GP practice would have to account for:
- Practice policies.
- Emergency needs.
- Casual patient inquiries.
- HIPAA regulations.
Our medical clients have unique needs. For example, the local plumber may get emergency calls in the middle just like the doctor, but they don’t have to worry about HIPAA. They may want us to schedule appointments for them. In that respect, they have something in common with a real estate office. But while realtors might also want us to schedule appointments for them, they aren’t getting calls for emergency services on weekends and holidays.
Feature Customization
Industry-specific needs aside, clients often request feature customization. For many of our clients, a basic service of answering calls and taking messages isn’t enough. They expect more. They need additional services like:
- Call routing.
- Appointment scheduling.
- CRM integration.
- Tier 1 tech support.
- Order Entry.
Customizing features allows us to meet more specific needs. The more features we can offer, the more opportunities we have to meet the needs of clients throughout the broadest possible range of industries.
Flexibility and Scalability
Customizing live answering services needs to include flexibility and scalability to be worthwhile. Let’s start with flexibility. Consider a medical office that has its own staff of skilled receptionists more than capable of managing the phones during normal working hours. They contract with Apello for after-hours service. But perhaps they want us ready to step in whenever they find themselves short staffed. We need to be flexible enough to take calls during regular business hours.
We have clients that utilize our services only after hours. We have others for which we handle the phones 24/7. We are fine with whatever arrangements each client requires. We are flexible enough to adapt to just about anything.
In terms of scalability, a competent live answering service should be able to scale up or down as needed. Scaling up is perhaps the more critical of the two, given that an inability to manage the phones as a company grows can stop such growth in its tracks.
Training and Support
Finally, customization even touches training and support. Clients have different needs based on industry and business practices. Our team members need to be properly trained to accommodate each client they will be working for. With the right training and support, customers need never know whether they are talking to the client’s receptionist or one of our team members.
It is possible to pay for a one-size-fits-all live answering service. We don’t think it’s wise, but it is possible. For our money, the better way to go is to work with a company that customizes services according to each client’s needs. That is what we do at Apello. It is one of the things that sets us apart from the competition.
