How to Start A Telephone Answering Service E-Book

Peter Lyle DeHaan

• Herausgeber: Rock Rooster Books
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Serie: Call Center Success Series
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 109

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Do you want to own a telephone answering service? Would you like a nice double-digit profit every month?

A mature answering service can do that for you. That’s the good news. The bad? If you don’t do it right, it could be the worst decision of your life. You could lose your shirt.

Learn the inside story from Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD, who has spent his career in and around the answering service industry. He’s owned, managed, bought, and merged answering services. He’s also an industry writer and publisher. And he worked as a consultant.

In this essential book, you’ll discover:

- The precise steps to set yourself up for success

- Key shortcuts to minimize risk

- The secrets that will make you become profitable faster

- How to avoid the surprising mistakes most answering service startups make

- If your personality fits this high-risk, high-reward industry

You’ll learn about equipment, cash flow, and managing a team. And you’ll discover a sound growth strategy, how to make the startup phase as short as possible, and the specific methods of thriving answering service companies.

If you’re considering starting a telephone answering service, this indispensable guide is a must read.

Buy How to Start a Telephone Answering Service today and dive into this exciting industry.

Leseprobe

How to Start a Telephone Answering Service

Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD

How to Start a Telephone Answering Service © 2019 by Peter Lyle DeHaan.

All rights reserved: No part of this book may be reproduced, disseminated, or transmitted in any form, by any means, or for any purpose without the express written consent of the author or his legal representatives. The only exception is short excerpts and the cover image for reviews or academic research.

ISBNs:

978-1-948082-11-2 (e-book)

978-1-948082-10-5 (paperback)

978-1-948082-20-4 (hard cover)

Published by Rock Rooster Books

Credits:

Copy editor/proofreader: Claudia Volkman

Cover design: Cassia Friello

Author photo: Jordan Leigh Photography

To all my friends in the answering service industry. I’d love to make a list, but it would be too long. Besides, I’d inevitably miss a few people, and that would be bad.

Patrons

The following companies and individuals helped cover the production costs of publishing this book. Without them, this book wouldn’t be possible.

Dan L'Heureux

TASbiller / Randy J. Ripkey

Amtelco

ONE, Inc.

CenturiSoft / John Pope

Wayne Scaggs

Gary A. Edwards

Donna West / Focus Telecommunications Inc and Business Calls

TUNe

ASTAA and GLTSA

Call Centre Hosting Inc.

Learn more about these supporters in the Acknowledgments section in the back of the book.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter One: Let’s Get Started

Chapter Two: A Brief History of the TAS Industry

Chapter Three: Strategy Questions

Premise-Based System Versus Hosted Solution

Centralized Versus Decentralized Staffing

Chapter Four: Frequently Asked Questions

Expected Profits

Not an Easy Business

Absentee Ownership

Free Labor

Local Competition

Critical Mass

Reaching Breakeven

Labor Costs

Growth Rate

Daytime Only Operation

Pricing Strategy

Used Equipment

Experience Preferred

Business Experience

Other Positions

Consistent Service

Having a Partner

Outsource Everything

Other Countries

Chapter Five: Action Plan

1. Examine Your Motives

2. Research the Industry

3. Write Your Business Plan

4. Determine Your Rates

5. Establish Your Business Entity

6. Launch a Killer Website

7. Prepare Your Marketing Materials

8. Select Your TAS Platform

9. Determine Your Launch Date

10. Begin Your Prelaunch Marketing

11. Find a Location

12. Order Your Internet Service and Computer Hardware

13. Connect to Your Vendor’s System

14. Hire and Train Your Staff

15. Setup Your Accounts

16. Begin Serving Your Clients

17. Optimize Your Operation

Optional Approaches

Glossary

Resources

Acknowledgments

About Peter Lyle DeHaan

Introduction

A telephone answering service (TAS) is a fast-paced, interesting business. It goes by many names: telemessaging company, teleservice call center, and telephone-answering bureau, to name a few. Regardless of what you call it, a successful, mature telephone answering service can be a rewarding and profitable business. And given recent technology advances that let users access answering service technology over the internet, entering the business is now easier and more affordable than at any time in the past several decades. The time is right; opportunity presents itself; potential beckons. Your future is here.

However, you don’t want to enter the answering service industry lightly. It is a labor-intensive, technology-driven business. It also carries with it a twenty-four-hour-a-day, year-round commitment (called 24/7). But if you’re ready for the challenge and have considered the cost—in terms of both time and money—to launch a successful TAS business, this book will help you start quickly and minimize costly mistakes. If you’re exploring this as a potential business opportunity, the following pages will give you clarity.

Are you ready to take the first step?

Chapter One:

Let’s Get Started

So you want to start an answering service. If you’re reading this, you likely fall into one of four categories:

You’re an unhappy client at a telephone answering service and want to do it better.

You’re an employee at an answering service and want to go out on your own.

You’ve heard that a telephone answering service is a good business to get into.

You’re exploring many business options, and an answering service is one of them.

There is much to carefully consider before launching a telephone answering service. It’s a labor-intensive business that never closes. As you start your business—and until you reach breakeven, which may take a long time—you might find yourself working eighty hours a week or more, and you could even end up sleeping at work to answer those few third shift calls. This will take its toll on you—perhaps quickly; oftentimes gradually. Starting a TAS is not something for the fainthearted or those unwilling to make the necessary sacrifices and investment of time. While running an answering service, like running any business, is challenging, starting an answering service can be daunting.

On the other hand, owning a TAS can be a rewarding and fulfilling endeavor. First, you can experience great satisfaction by helping others, which is what you will do all day long. Second, an established TAS generates steady and predictable cash flow. Although clients come and go, most continue to use their answering service month after month, year after year. Third, a properly run and sufficiently large answering service can generate a substantial profit. Fourth, an answering service is a business you can pass on to your children or other family members.

I know you’re anxious to jump into this, but it’s important to cover some background first so you can see how everything fits together. To do this we must take a brief look at the history of the telephone answering service industry. Knowing the industry’s past is essential to understanding its present, so let’s start at the beginning.

Chapter Two:

A Brief History of the TAS Industry

To know where you’re going, you need to know where you’ve been. This is especially true for anyone moving into the telephone answering service industry. While this overview may be more detailed than you care to digest, it’s helpful because it explains the present state of the industry and provides context for picking the right strategy to launch your answering service.

The telephone answering service industry began in the 1920s with various local entrepreneurs opening the first answering services around the United States. Although many claim to have been the first, there is no agreement on who was. We also don’t know if they all learned from the first one who opened an answering service or if they each developed their innovative businesses in isolation.

Many of these early answering services focused only on doctors, others took on only commercial accounts (along with a few wealthy residential customers), and some did both. Today there are still telephone answering services that specialize in the medical field, as well as some who decline to take medical clientele, but most do both.

Because of the available tools and how the telephone system worked, each TAS client originated from the same telephone company central office, usually serving just a few exchanges (the fourth, fifth, and sixth digits of a ten-digit phone number).

Each customer had to pay the phone company to install an off-premise extension of his or her phone line at the telephone answering service. This was the least costly when the TAS was located within a contiguous block of the phone company’s central office. For this reason, most answering services were located very close to the phone company.

An alternative for those not served by the same phone company central office as their answering service went by the descriptive name of “if no answer.” Elegantly simple in concept, the business or doctor would give people two phone numbers. The first was the main number. Then they would say or write, “If no answer, call...” followed by the second number, which was their answering service (sometimes called an exchange). Companies would place this information on business cards and ads, in the phone book, and even on their signs.

Although needing to have and possibly call two numbers was cumbersome for customers or patients, it beat not having their call answered. This was especially true when calling a doctor in an emergency.

Some answering services would install a separate telephone in their office for each client. So if they had one hundred clients, they would have one hundred telephones in their office. This was a messy situation, resulting in a noisy environment when things got busy. As an alternative, other answering services rented cordboards from their phone company. The telephone company’s own local and long-distance operators used this same equipment. Most cordboards could accommodate up to one hundred telephone lines.

Legally these were the only two options since the answering service could only use equipment provided by the phone company, which they rented by the month. This meant using a telephone (either single line or multi-line, which could accommodate up to thirty or more lines) or a cordboard or its equivalent.

This continued with little change until the late 1970s, when two things occurred. One was a court case that allowed people to buy certified telephone equipment from third-party manufacturers and connect it to their phone line. The development of the microprocessor and the first basic computers followed a few years later.

At this time telephone equipment vendors sprouted up, a few of which specialized in making equipment specifically for telephone answering services. Initially these devices were electromechanical solutions, which slowly gave way to computerized alternatives. Today all TAS systems are computer-based.

Around the same time call forwarding developed, allowing people to forward their phone calls to another number, often that of an answering service. This removed the need and expense of installing an off-premise extension. It also greatly expanded a TAS’s service area to include the entire local calling area, which was far greater than just one central office. A wave of answering service consolidation followed.

Although it took several years, the internet provided the next major advance in answering service functionality and flexibility. Increasingly telephone companies digitized phone calls and sent the data over the internet or a comparable digital network. Called Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), it paved the way for calls to arrive over a high-speed internet connection instead of a telephone line.

A parallel development goes by many different names (and with no real agreement on the subtle differences): Software as a Service (SaaS), hosted services, cloud-based computing, and so forth. The essential element of these options is that, instead of installing a computerized TAS system in one’s office (a premise-based or on-premise solution), the system’s computers are located off-site in a high-tech facility maintained by the system vendor. The answering service only needs computers for its operator stations, an office network, and a reliable internet connection.

This provides three key benefits. The first is financial. Using an internet-based system negates the need to buy a complete system, instead incurring a monthly service fee. This removes the capital expense of a system purchase and replaces it with a monthly operational expense, affecting both the balance sheet and the income statement.

Second, with answering service systems growing more technologically advanced, installing equipment on-site requires a trained technical staff to maintain it. Moving to the internet removes most of the technical complexities of running an answering service, leaving only the network and desktop computers to content with.

Third, this gives answering services the flexibility to scale up quickly, move locations with ease, and allow operators to work anywhere they have a stable internet connection. There are other benefits of using a hosted answering service solution too. Today some answering services install systems on-site, and others opt for hosted solutions. Though there are valid strategic reasons for both, the trend is toward the cloud-based alternative.

In addition, the industry has been undergoing another wave of consolidation in recent years, with big services getting bigger. This means decreased competition, though it is still formidable. Despite the barriers to entry, this provides potential for answering service start-ups.

This is the current climate of the TAS industry. It’s also the point where you, as a future telephone answering service owner, can enter the industry. Options and opportunities abound.

Next we’ll look at various TAS business strategies and pick the ideal one for you as you start your very own answering service.

Chapter Three:

Strategy Questions

There are two primary considerations as you consider your basic start-up strategy. The first is whether to buy a system or use a pay-as-you-go approach. We typically refer to this as the premise-based system versus hosted solution decision.

The second is whether to require your staff to work in your office or allow them to work from remote locations. We call this issue the centralized versus decentralized staffing dilemma.

Premise-Based System Versus Hosted Solution

The distinguishing characteristic between the premise-based and hosted options boils down to owning your system versus paying for access. It’s a decision that involves many aspects of your business, including financial considerations and technical ramifications, along with your anticipated growth. A key issue is your own comfort level and preferred management style. Here’s how it breaks down.

Premise-Based