Who answers your phone?

[Brian R]

And why?

What would you change? Or never change?

Do you answer it right away or does it go to voicemail sometimes?


You probably know my story...I use Full Circle and I fully believe in it.



You?

 

[Steve Toburen]

Full Circle has gotten a really good rep in a short time, Brian. Especially as an interim step between business growth spurts or for an owner-operator who has no desire to grow FC appears to be the cat's meow.

However, I would still say the BEST situation is an enthusiastic, full time dispatcher answering the phone lines in YOUR office. Especially when we would have five or six water losses come in to our office in one busy morning! I doubt any third party provider (Even Full Circle) is going to give you the flexibility and personal interest of on-site phone staff.

Steve Toburen
http://www.SFS.JonDon.com

PS No matter who answers your phone they need to do it right. Living in such a small market base (30,000 people) I obsessed over each phone call. We just literally did not have the "slop" of a large market. Given the size of our company (16 employees) I had to have each and every phone call. So we developed this phone script which IF ya wanna it is a free download. If you don't want to mess with the download then you can e-mail me and I'll send it to you:

http://sfs.jondon.com/1750/resources/sp ... one-format

 

[Brian R]

She probably does a great job...and there is some marketing behind having the wife answer it as well.

But unless she is completely into it (everyone is different) I could never see tying down the wifey to the phones all day.

The whole point of owing a company is to have "free time" or just making your own schedule.

Jen would be perfect for answering the phone...really the best because of her personality. But she would resent me for it sooner of later.

Not every situation is like that of course....it's just how I look at it.

Still, I would have some sort of live answering service for the rare times that the call goes to "voicemail"

 

[Brian R]

PS...I think it stems from my Mom answering the phones 24 hours a day (no joke) and hating them later on.

 

[Brian R]

And I should say that a full time staff at a certain point in business growth is probably the way to go.

At most levels here, I just see Full Circle as the "I look bigger than I am" approach to the "office".

And the liabilities of having employees..not to mention the problems...etc etc etc.


Who knows, when my daughter is a little older maybe I will have her on the phone to teach some work ethic and to give her a dose of "real life".

 

[Jack May]

There is NO WAY I'd want Jo answering phones. Brian has mentioned some of the reasons. As a qualified nurse, she can earn just shy of $60k, why employ her, when I can employ someone for half that? She doesn't work, but if things tightened up, I'd still prefer she went to work and did what she loves and earn that sort of money than slave away in a job that she doens't really like.

My parents ran their CC business like FCC and I know Ma resented the phones after a while.

I run a permanent receptionist but she is a mum so only works 30 hours a week. Over the past 3.5 years, she has definitely lost some of her zeal and punch.

In the first 2 years, she treated the business as if it was her own. A few thing came into her personal life that have affected her performance slightly. Familiarity breeds contempt and sometimes I catch her almost edging on abruptness. Not often, but occassionally.

This really worked well for us with 2-3 trucks. Sometimes I wish she was full time. When she leaves at 3pm she forwards the phones through to either myself or my lead technician. That can be a bit of a drag.

We're looking at swapping over from a server based job management system to web based in teh near future and that'll make it easier for us techs to access calendars etc.

John

 

[Jack May]

I wasn't being critical of you Fred, just saying it definitely wouldn't work for me in my situation.

It works for you, that's great. It saves you either significant cost employing/contracting, or significant headaches doing it all yourself on the road.

and at the end of the day, it's not about only one way being right and the rest wrong, it's about what's right for each of us in our situations.

Discourse like this exposes options that others may not have considered.

For the likes of me here down under, there is no way I'd contemplate using the likes of FC or SM for my business, the costs would be prohibitive given exchange rates besides the fact everyone over you way talks funny, even worse than Shorty and Jim...

John

 

[Brian R]

lol.
I was thinking that same same John as I was reading your posts...not too mention the time differences.

Anther reason someon on east coast time might have some issues with Full Cirlce.

They really need an early and late crew which I'm sure they will implement soon if they haven't already.

I know they will answer my phones earlier than I expect sometimes.

When I go to check my lines at about 6am their time, they've been known to answer.