Northern
Communications

 Issue 21

Our objective for our Message Centre clients is to provide you with the level of service that you need in the most cost effective manner. The more efficient the process the less it costs you. Here are a few things to consider with regards to your message service.

1) Are you on the right plan for the number of minutes that you use?
Some plans have a higher allowance and a lower per minute rate.

2) If we hold messages for the morning, sending them by e-mail or fax occurs automatically. Giving you messages verbally consumes time and costs you money.

3) When we are inputting on-call information, the time to do this is being charged. If we have a clear schedule for the month there is far less time taken than if we get varied requests on a daily basis. Some clients, real estate as an example, have individual files set up for each agent. If you give us the agent’s account number with the on-call schedule it saves us the time of looking it up. This may only save us 30 seconds each time but it can add up if the on-call person changes regularly.

4) Do you have voice pagers? If we have to speak the message to a voice pager it takes longer than pushing a button and having the full text message sent to an alphanumeric pager or cell phone.

 5)     If you are getting a lot of messages such as “will call back”, “no message”, “inquiry about services” etc... then a greeting could reduce operator time. Many people record their own greeting stating their business hours and the services provided. If the caller hears this and hangs up, no operator time is used and the client’s cost is reduced. If the caller stays on the line, they are handled as usual.

6)     Our system can provide you with voice mail. If the caller has a non-urgent message they simply leave a message in the voice mail and you retrieve it later. With no operator involvement the time charges are reduced. If the caller has an urgent issue they press 0 and drop to an operator.

7)     How do you do Call Forwarding? If you call at 5:00pm, which is a peak time, your call may be placed in our call queue while you wait for an operator. As long as you are on the line for 5 seconds the call forwarding will take effect and you can simply hang up. No operator means no cost.

8)     How are the instructions in the account? If we do one thing for one department and something else for another, or different actions at different times then it can be a little confusing. The operator has to stop and read all the instructions to determine the correct action. The simpler the process, the faster we can perform it and the less cost to you.

We are always much less expensive than hiring a staff person to sit in your office to answer the phone. If you look at the service from that perspective, a person who works a 40 hour week at $10.00 per hour is $400.00 for one week alone. Most of our client’s bills are far below that for the entire month! And we can answer 24/7. We document every action and record every call which gives you the ability to retrieve messages well after the fact.

If you are concerned that your account may not be set up in the most cost efficient manner, call your local Northern Communications office. We will take the time to review your account with you to ensure that you are getting the service you need at the right price.

Need To Be Reachable?
We Have The Solution Wherever You Are!
We recently received a call from a client who let us know just how good our text messaging coverage is. He was on holidays and had forgotten to advise our message service that someone else was on call. We sent him a message and he got it while on a cruise ship in the Panama Canal. Now that is exceptional coverage!

If you want to download a copy in PDF format, click here. NCS News #21

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