Inside a Telephone Answering Service

Another Random Excerpt from my Book

Small Packages

Statistics show that of 100 new business started, 20 will still be in business after five years. Then, in the next five years, only four will be left. In another five, there remains one. That’s a 99% fatality rate over a fifteen year period. It makes one want to go right out, borrow major money, and start a new business, right?

There are all kinds of mistakes that contribute to a business or a life’s, failure, but the root primary reason?” is by “a thousand cuts”: The slow eroding of the business owner’s will (and funds) by innumerable inefficiencies that in turn spawn recurring problems and distractions. These time-wasters drain the efforts to make and sell a good product or service that had a viable market just waiting.

The problem with most small businesses, and many lives, is simple chaos. At Centratel I spent 15 years in the trenches working long, long hours, always on the brink of failure. I carried the business on my shoulders and somehow convinced my employees to stretch their own limits. Then one day, I figuratively got a clue: I put the pieces together in my head and realized that there was only one way out of the disorganization and, drum-roll, that was to get organized in a certain way. Getting organized via the methodology I had envisioned was going to be messy and the extra time it took had to be carved out of a day already filled with fire-killing and chaos control.

So, I started to break down everything we did into small packages. We analyzed and streamlined such things as how exactly to answer the company’s main line/advertised telephone number, what information to take from a caller, the actual words used to converse with a caller; how make a bank deposit; How to do a customer billing, what tasks should be completed by the midnight operator; how to deal with the telephone company if a problem should come up; how to make a sales presentation and especially, we analyzed, dissected and set in stone the methodology the Operators would use in processing calls. We analyzed each component and decided, first of all, was the action really necessary? If we didn’t eliminate the process altogether, we would try to come up with a better, more streamline way of doing it. I also leaned toward delegation of those tasks that I had been responsible for.

An Exceprt From my Upcoming book...

Chapter 7

                                                                                  Point of Sale

Why? Because I’m the mommy and I said so.

“Point of Sale” is a term in which the obvious acronym just can’t be used (there is another less-savory term that has commandeered the acronym). So, when discussing Pont of Sale we vocalize the entire term. As it is, Point of Sale is a popular term for cash register sales people. It describes “where the purchase takes place.” At Centratel, we expand the definition to include the tenet “Do It Now!” It’s an overriding theme of protocol that states that “If a staff member could perform a task now or  later, with the same result, the decision is always to do it now." Concurrent with this guideline is that if a task requires several steps, it is importantto get all of those steps completed concurrently. The best way to explain how this works is to consider the latest generation of cash registers that of course calculate the correct change for cash-paying customers who are physically standing there, but also automatically and instantly update inventory – and, if necessary, automatically order new product. When was the last time you heard of a large store being “closed for inventory?” It rarely happens anymore because inventory is always up to date due to Point of Sale philosophy and technology. Do it all now!

When the “now or later?” question comes up – and it comes up often – the classic internal dialog for one of our newer staff members goes something like this: “what is the difference if I do it now or later? I just don’t feel like doing it right now.” That staff member’s internal dialog answer to that question (due to his or her’s initial indoctrination of the concept during training) is, “I’ll just do it now because that is simply how we do things around here.” This internal Q&A is much like the whiny child asking the question “Why can’t I…(fill in the blank)?” The mother responds, “because I’m the mommy and I SAID so, that’s why!” As a child, didn’t you hate that response? I did too but now that I’ve been a daddy I see the beauty of it: No need for explanations. No time for inane back-and-forth dialog. It’s simply, “hey kid, just do it and let’s get on with things.”

Completing a task at “the moment of impact,” is simply a universally effective strategy for efficient accomplishment. The Point of Sale concept is endemic to nearly everything we do in processing information and accomplishing tasks. We build it into our written procedures. It just seems to work out that doing things now rather than later is the right thing to do in every situation. There are two reasons for this: First, if there is nothing pressing at the moment, then getting a task done now insures the present moment is not wasted, and second, doing things now provides a time cushion later that can accommodate a time demand that might unexpectedly crop up later. Point of Sale thinking smoothes things out, making the use of time more efficient. At first glance, it would seem logical to include this concept in the third part of the book which lists a collection of applicable principles and habits, but because it is so integral to the methodology – and just so intensely effective – I  list it here in Part One where primary tenets are defined.

At Centratel, there is a written company policy regarding employees’ effectiveness and compensation: I say to my employees, “If you give me one hundred and ten percent, I will compensate you generously.” Yes, it’s a somewhat generalized concept and there are no specific guidelines, but nonetheless it is my personal guarantee to staff that if they work hard and produce, significantly more compensation will be provided. Here’s another policy that seems to confound the first: “Limit your work week to 40-45 hours. It is company policy that salaried employees do not work more than a standard work week.”

How do the above seemingly conflicted guidelines fold into the Point of Sale philosophy? Quite neatly. The Point of Sale protocol creates an incredible efficiency; an efficiency that is hard to measure yet profound and, since I limit the number of hours that an employee can work, its effectiveness can do much to eliminate long work hours. Its application keeps a staff member at peak efficiency thus reducing the possibility of, for instance, having Monday afternoon be a time when “I can’t find anything to do,” and then having Tuesday morning a time when “I can’t get caught up!”  Because the Point of Sale methodology’s positive impact is hard to measure, and because the tendency for procrastination seems to be built into the human gene,  I simply dictate its use. Having done that, and trusting in the theory, for Centratel staff members there is no question that it helps smooth out the week into a busy forty hours rather than an “ up-and-down fifty hour week.” For most of us, the previously mentioned “because I’m the mommy” internal Q&A dialog doesn’t happen anymore: we automatically “do it now” without a second thought.”

The Point of Sale concept as we use it is one of those great business concepts that beautifully folds over into how one makes personal life decisions: “I’m shopping. While I’m out, and in the shopping mode, should I go ahead and make one more stop to get next week’s groceries?” The answer is, without question,  “yes!”

The Book is in progress

My book, as yet un-named, is about developing systems and protocols, not just for an answering service but for one's personal life. Here is an excerpt from the Preface. It's preliminary and will be edited further. Publication will be in August.

"The premise I propose is presented around the history of my business, Centratel, a telephone answering service that I have owned and operated for 22 years. In the course of these pages, I will describe some of the innumerable mistakes I’ve made, how one day I arrived at the decision to make changes, and the results which have left Centratel highly profitable and at the top of my industry. The story is this:

After 15 years of fumbling around with my business and with my life, I decided to make a change in my perspective and my approach. With the aid of a lot of head-scratching, of experimenting, of trial and error – and luck, the rebuilding process took five years to figure out and then apply. Those five years have culminated and these past two years – despite an excruciating legal battle that threatened to end everything – have been 24 months of bounty, peace and personal satisfaction. For the small business owner, it is my hope that this book will condense my first fifteen years of frustration and my fivc more years of trial and error, into a formula that will take less than a year to implement from scratch. For the less-encumbered reader who doesn't have a business, it is my contention that with the proper application of the basics as presented in these pages, results will be seen immediately.

The principles I examine here are universal and applicable to any situation; to any life. I illustrate my thoughts through flashbacks to Centratel only for clarity. It will be easy to see my persoanl narration as relevant to your own life.

I will not patty-cake with the theoretical but will carve hard into practicality. I will go beyond the feel-good of pop-psychology and offer you a “here’s what I can do today” sensibility that will have an immediate impact on your life. And, as the successes build right from the beginning and you see the results for yourself, you will more assertively adapt and move even further down the road of reinventing your business and your life through your new perspective. Things will be simpler, more efficient and more successful for one simple reason: you will be in more control of your physical and emotional world, moment to moment, day to day and year to year."

Error Rate

From the beginning I have tried to find a way to measure quality. About a year ago it dawned on me that the way to do that is to simply count the number of message transactions in a given month, and then divide that by the number of bona-fide complaints we received. These complaints HAD to be substantiated: The complaint had to indicate that one of our TSRs made an error.

At first we determined that the error rate was 1 error per approximately 11,000 transactions. This was a sketchy figure as our reporting and verification process was not defined precisely at the beginning. Now, it's solid and Hollee Welch and her management team go deep to find, investigate and document errors. Our latest Centratel "Customer Reported Error Rate" which covered the three month period of January through March 2006 indicated one error per 6,612 message transactions. I feel comfortable with this figure and am eager to prove to any of our 800 clients how we arrived at this figure and why it is accurate.

Human error is a matter-of-fact thing but it's good to know our system protocols, everything from how we take calls to drug testing to scheduling, contributes to this high level of measurable quality. Of course it has to do with the people too: I am very proud of everybody here. We’ve got some incredible talent but no amount of talent can make up for disorganization and fumbling around. And, if the organization is chaotic, the quality people won’t stay…

-sc