FM Washington

I’m a small business owner, and – like other small business owners – I’m always on the lookout for technologies and methods that will increase overall sales volume and help the company image. My business is based from home (good old Washington DC) and consists of myself and my wife; we like the size of the company and want to keep it pretty close to where it is. With the recession rebounding, we knew it was prime time to increase our sales volume, but we weren’t willing to bring another full-time staffer onboard.

It was an awkward growth period for us. We really wanted to be able to handle the volume of calls we were getting for orders, but we simply could not be on call 24/7. If we wanted to grow, we needed a solution that would accommodate both the volume of calls we were receiving and the off-hours we were receiving many of them. Our online storefront was handling much of the load, but the volume of orders we were receiving through email was even too much for us to handle.

A friend and fellow small business owner had been kind enough to have dinner with me to do a little brainstorming over some possible alternatives to hiring another full-time staffer. We sat at the table with a couple of beers and talked out some possible strategies for dealing with our awkward growth issues. The suggestion that I found most intriguing was bringing an operator answering service onboard. I’d heard the concept before: channel calls to a bunch of outside professionals and let them handle your customers.

Needless to say, I wasn’t exactly thrilled about the idea – but I told my friend I was willing to check it out. He emailed me a link to the website of a Washington DC call center. I was pretty surprised to find that the company had impressive credentials, boasting more than 45 years in the business and many trained staff members with close to 15 years at the company. Suddenly, a nationwide answering service wasn’t looking like such a bad idea after all.

With this operator answering service, I’d be able to designate a script and knowledge base to the company’s trained, courteous staff members. The company also empowered me with the ability to listen in on calls in real-time or review recorded transcripts or conversations of their personnel handling my customers. That was all the security I needed, and I signed on with the Washington DC call center the next day.

With the extra off-site personnel added to the team, we were able to greatly increase our sales volume while creating the perception that we were a much bigger company than we actually are. The way we run business now, you would hardly believe we are just a mom-and-pop organization working out of our home.

The nationwide answering service has helped us move past that awkward growth period. Now, we’re looking to the future and expect many more years in business at our current size.

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Tags: Businesses, call, Center, greater, homebased, Offers, professionalism, Washington