Answering Services
I have been encouraged by several friends to present this little tutorial, and as such it has been a collaborative effort, despite the first person approach. It provides helpful suggestions, but is also intended for people with a sense of humor. If you don't have one, I think there is a number you can call to get one shipped free of charge. I am not sure what it is. Go research it. For the rest of you, here goes:
Hi. You don't know me, but you have talked to me a hundred times. I am the answering service operator. I am the person who gets paid to talk to you when the office closes and you need help. If you need your doctor and his office has gone home, you will talk to me and I will get him for you. If you need your furnace repaired and the main office is closed, you will talk to me and I will get a technician for you. I am the man behind the scenes that makes your life easier. As such, I want to provide you with tips to help make my life easier, and yours as a result, when you are dealing with me. I am a professional, and will do my job despite how you treat me, but it is a stressful job. You know what stressed out postal workers do. I don't recall hearing about anyone in my profession shooting the place up, but it could happen. As such, this is also a plea. Please don't antagonize my co-workers and get me killed. Why should you care? Because then I can't get your doctor for you or get your furnace fixed. While focusing on the medical in many cases, bear in mind that there are few exceptions that don't apply to commercial accounts as well.
These notes are in no particular order:
- No matter what time of the day or night it is, listen to what the person answering the phone says when they do so. Most of the time we state we are an answering service in the answer phrase.
- If we are inside the hours of 11:30a-1pm, assume you might be speaking to an answering service.
- If we are outside of the hours of 9a-5p, assume you might be speaking to an answering service.
- Assume you might be speaking to an answering service.
- Declaring that the office is supposed to close at 4:30pm and it is only 4pm will not cause the office to magically re-open for you.
- The fact that it is almost 8am and the office opens then will not get you through to the office. They open at 8am.
- The fact that it is past 8am and the office opens at 8am but you reached me will not get you through to the office. They aren't open. Take it up with them.
- We get the calls when the office can't or won't take them. We can't force them to take their phones back. We can encourage them to do so, in order to prevent hostilities towards us. Trust me, this is what we are doing when you call during their normal business ours. Don't harass us. We bite.
- Calling the emergency number because you were on hold too long with the office won't get you through any faster. We will tell you to call back and you will go to the back of the line.
- We get busy sometimes. Deal with it.
- 24 hours means 24 hours, not just a change in date on the calendar. If you want me to put you through to the office after they close to cancel an appointment the next day, to avoid the late fee, you are too late. 24 hours is after the office closes tomorrow. Try counting it out. It's easy. 24 hours is the same time the next day, not just the next day.
- Say goodbye when the call is finished. Don't just hang up. It is rude. If you have to call back again, you won't remember me, but I might remember you. (Of course this doesn't hurt you any, since I am still a professional and can't actually will someone's brain to start bleeding with my immense mental powers.)
- If I get testy after answering the same question for you three times in a row, that doesn't make me a prick. It makes you an idiot.
- If someone asks if you can hold, answer them. Unlike many offices, we wait to hear your answer. This could be life threatening and we acknowledge this.
- If it isn't life threatening, you can hold. We are triaging calls. The guy with the heart attack won't appreciate how important you think you are while he waits for you. (This applies to commercial systems as well. It's the same answering service. A leaking water heater is frustrating, but do you think someone should die for your impatience?)
- Don't start your conversation with the word "yes." If I just asked if you can hold, you will go on hold even if you keep talking.
- If I ask you for your name, give me your name, not the patient's name. I will get to that question soon. If you aren't sure I will get to it, add, "But I am not the patient" after your name. Then I can tell you if I care.
- If I am asking questions, don't try to seize control of the conversation to tell me what the important information is. If I need to know, I will ask. You are just slowing me down, and thus slowing down the response time.
- The question: "Cut where?" Refers to the body part, not the room you were in when it happened.
- If your child's first name has an apostrophe, don't make me ask you how to spell it. Just assume I can only spell normal names.
- If I ask you to spell your last name, and it is Smith, spell it anyway. Don't assume I know how to spell it. Assume my company cares enough about you to require I verify all pertinent details.
- Don't start throwing details at me. Let me ask the questions. It will save you the trouble of repeating yourself once I have gotten to where I need to be and can record the information in the order I need to.
- Don't say you don't know what the problem it. I don't want a diagnosis. If you knew what the problem was, you probably wouldn't be speaking to me. I want to know what possessed you to dial the phone.
- Answering machine and answering service are two different things. I am human and can respond. Don't point out that I can't be an answering service because I answer you. It doesn't point out your clue-finding capabilities. It points out that you should have stayed in school.
- Don't ask me if I am kidding when I tell you the office is closed, or anything else for that matter. What company do you know of that allows their representatives to fuck with callers at will?
- If I request a piece of information, don't tell me why I don't need it. Odds are good that I will just ask you again.
- Yes, I need a date of birth. Always! Even if you are calling a plumber. Well, not if you are calling a plumber, but if you are calling a medical professional, I need to know. Don't ask me why. (Not because I don't know, but because there are many reasons why this is needed, and I am not going to take the time here to tell you all of them.)
- If I ask seemingly irrelevant questions about what is going on with you(such as what the medication you need refilled is taken for), it is probably because what you told me is not going to elicit a callback. I'm doing you a favor. Play along. You are welcome.
- I am not asking you what your problem is for my own amusement. I am asking because I need to know. You may think it is the most embarrassing or grossest thing I will ever hear. You are wrong. I could tell you stories. No, wait, I couldn't. Because I am bound by the same laws that keep your doctor from telling anyone about your case. I've taken calls from my own grandmother. Deal with it.
- If you need to speak to a doctor and you called me, don't hand the phone to someone else and have them explain.
- If, out of necessity, you can't speak to me (bear in mind, I have waited out contractions to take information) make sure the person you hand the phone to can answer my questions without your help.
- Do not assume I am typing what you say word for word. I am not. It is quite possible you are a moron who needs their problems to be translated into a language a real human can understand.
- More frequently, you are a normal human being, but don't speak the medical lingo.
- Understand that if you tell me everything that is going on, a brief synopsis goes to the doctor and you will have to explain yourself to him all over again.
- If I give the doctor all of the details, you will have to explain yourself all over again.
- Briefly, what is the problem? Notice the word brief. Try headache, dizziness, nausea. That's what I am typing anyway if you give me a three page essay that describes these three symptoms.
- Your message should never include the words "last week" unless that is when you had a surgery (or when your furnace was worked on, etc...) I don't want to know that you saw your doctor for stomach pains last week. These things go across pagers. If you give me a history of your pain for the last week, the doctor will see: "Stomach pain."
- If you speak something like Russian or Chinese and you live in NY, compensate. Don't expect us to speak your language. (Author's note: This isn't prejudice, we have operators that speak six different languages. They don't all work at the same time. The odds are against you.)
- If you are deaf, and calling via TTY, I am sorry, the conversation will be delayed by medium. Let me help you: If you are calling a medical office, provide full name of yourself and patient if different. Provide date of birth, regular physician, phone number and brief indication of problem. If I need anything else I will ask, but I can probably take this down as I hear it. TTY operators read slow enough, and I can ask them to re-read. If commercial, I need your name, phone number, address including city/state/zip, and what the problem is. Throw in if you are regular customer and what warranties you have, I might need that. If I need anything else I will ask.
- For the rest of you, ignore the above. Well, not completely. That is what I will need to know. I can type as fast as you talk, but not all operators can. Further, I will have problems if I get the information out of order. (Above order not always consistent.) Just expect these are the questions I will expect you to answer.
- There are on call doctors. You won't necessarily get to talk to the one you know. If you can wait until the morning if your doctor is not on call, you can wait until the morning if he is. Have a heart. He might be at his daughter's dance recital or sleeping.
- Your doctor is not the only one who will understand. If it is serious and he is monitoring, he filled in the o/c (on call physician). If you just know him well, the o/c can probably help. If it is beyond the o/c's capabilities, he will contact your doctor.
- If you call, prepare to have a stranger return your call. If it's an emergency, this guy your doctor trusts is trusted for a reason.
- If you thank me, I assume the call is over. I appreciate your thanks, but please save it until the end. I will hang up after responding with my appreciation.
- An answering service can't help you with your billing questions. Call back in the morning. (Or after lunch if applicable.)
- An answering service can't schedule or verify appointments. Call back in the morning.
- Part of being professional involves preparing and protecting our clients. If you swear at and abuse us, your doctor might find "caller hostile and abusive" in the message. We aren't tattling, we are letting the doctor prepare to be professional with you. Just bear in mind, the office may know how you personally deal with the people they rely on so heavily.
Undoubtedly my friends will provide me with more info, but that is a pretty decent list thus far. Now please, do me a favor. Please respond and tell me you are taking these issues to heart. In fact, please feel free to link this or copy and paste without linking it to help all of thus answering service folks out while they are serving you. Those answering service folks spend all day listening to your misfortunes, don't compound it by being rude to them and making their life harder.
If you don't take these to heart, we will still do our jobs. So ultimately, your treatment of us will not effect us much. This gives the abuser the power. I guess that's just life, or something close to it.
Hi. You don't know me, but you have talked to me a hundred times. I am the answering service operator. I am the person who gets paid to talk to you when the office closes and you need help. If you need your doctor and his office has gone home, you will talk to me and I will get him for you. If you need your furnace repaired and the main office is closed, you will talk to me and I will get a technician for you. I am the man behind the scenes that makes your life easier. As such, I want to provide you with tips to help make my life easier, and yours as a result, when you are dealing with me. I am a professional, and will do my job despite how you treat me, but it is a stressful job. You know what stressed out postal workers do. I don't recall hearing about anyone in my profession shooting the place up, but it could happen. As such, this is also a plea. Please don't antagonize my co-workers and get me killed. Why should you care? Because then I can't get your doctor for you or get your furnace fixed. While focusing on the medical in many cases, bear in mind that there are few exceptions that don't apply to commercial accounts as well.
These notes are in no particular order:
- No matter what time of the day or night it is, listen to what the person answering the phone says when they do so. Most of the time we state we are an answering service in the answer phrase.
- If we are inside the hours of 11:30a-1pm, assume you might be speaking to an answering service.
- If we are outside of the hours of 9a-5p, assume you might be speaking to an answering service.
- Assume you might be speaking to an answering service.
- Declaring that the office is supposed to close at 4:30pm and it is only 4pm will not cause the office to magically re-open for you.
- The fact that it is almost 8am and the office opens then will not get you through to the office. They open at 8am.
- The fact that it is past 8am and the office opens at 8am but you reached me will not get you through to the office. They aren't open. Take it up with them.
- We get the calls when the office can't or won't take them. We can't force them to take their phones back. We can encourage them to do so, in order to prevent hostilities towards us. Trust me, this is what we are doing when you call during their normal business ours. Don't harass us. We bite.
- Calling the emergency number because you were on hold too long with the office won't get you through any faster. We will tell you to call back and you will go to the back of the line.
- We get busy sometimes. Deal with it.
- 24 hours means 24 hours, not just a change in date on the calendar. If you want me to put you through to the office after they close to cancel an appointment the next day, to avoid the late fee, you are too late. 24 hours is after the office closes tomorrow. Try counting it out. It's easy. 24 hours is the same time the next day, not just the next day.
- Say goodbye when the call is finished. Don't just hang up. It is rude. If you have to call back again, you won't remember me, but I might remember you. (Of course this doesn't hurt you any, since I am still a professional and can't actually will someone's brain to start bleeding with my immense mental powers.)
- If I get testy after answering the same question for you three times in a row, that doesn't make me a prick. It makes you an idiot.
- If someone asks if you can hold, answer them. Unlike many offices, we wait to hear your answer. This could be life threatening and we acknowledge this.
- If it isn't life threatening, you can hold. We are triaging calls. The guy with the heart attack won't appreciate how important you think you are while he waits for you. (This applies to commercial systems as well. It's the same answering service. A leaking water heater is frustrating, but do you think someone should die for your impatience?)
- Don't start your conversation with the word "yes." If I just asked if you can hold, you will go on hold even if you keep talking.
- If I ask you for your name, give me your name, not the patient's name. I will get to that question soon. If you aren't sure I will get to it, add, "But I am not the patient" after your name. Then I can tell you if I care.
- If I am asking questions, don't try to seize control of the conversation to tell me what the important information is. If I need to know, I will ask. You are just slowing me down, and thus slowing down the response time.
- The question: "Cut where?" Refers to the body part, not the room you were in when it happened.
- If your child's first name has an apostrophe, don't make me ask you how to spell it. Just assume I can only spell normal names.
- If I ask you to spell your last name, and it is Smith, spell it anyway. Don't assume I know how to spell it. Assume my company cares enough about you to require I verify all pertinent details.
- Don't start throwing details at me. Let me ask the questions. It will save you the trouble of repeating yourself once I have gotten to where I need to be and can record the information in the order I need to.
- Don't say you don't know what the problem it. I don't want a diagnosis. If you knew what the problem was, you probably wouldn't be speaking to me. I want to know what possessed you to dial the phone.
- Answering machine and answering service are two different things. I am human and can respond. Don't point out that I can't be an answering service because I answer you. It doesn't point out your clue-finding capabilities. It points out that you should have stayed in school.
- Don't ask me if I am kidding when I tell you the office is closed, or anything else for that matter. What company do you know of that allows their representatives to fuck with callers at will?
- If I request a piece of information, don't tell me why I don't need it. Odds are good that I will just ask you again.
- Yes, I need a date of birth. Always! Even if you are calling a plumber. Well, not if you are calling a plumber, but if you are calling a medical professional, I need to know. Don't ask me why. (Not because I don't know, but because there are many reasons why this is needed, and I am not going to take the time here to tell you all of them.)
- If I ask seemingly irrelevant questions about what is going on with you(such as what the medication you need refilled is taken for), it is probably because what you told me is not going to elicit a callback. I'm doing you a favor. Play along. You are welcome.
- I am not asking you what your problem is for my own amusement. I am asking because I need to know. You may think it is the most embarrassing or grossest thing I will ever hear. You are wrong. I could tell you stories. No, wait, I couldn't. Because I am bound by the same laws that keep your doctor from telling anyone about your case. I've taken calls from my own grandmother. Deal with it.
- If you need to speak to a doctor and you called me, don't hand the phone to someone else and have them explain.
- If, out of necessity, you can't speak to me (bear in mind, I have waited out contractions to take information) make sure the person you hand the phone to can answer my questions without your help.
- Do not assume I am typing what you say word for word. I am not. It is quite possible you are a moron who needs their problems to be translated into a language a real human can understand.
- More frequently, you are a normal human being, but don't speak the medical lingo.
- Understand that if you tell me everything that is going on, a brief synopsis goes to the doctor and you will have to explain yourself to him all over again.
- If I give the doctor all of the details, you will have to explain yourself all over again.
- Briefly, what is the problem? Notice the word brief. Try headache, dizziness, nausea. That's what I am typing anyway if you give me a three page essay that describes these three symptoms.
- Your message should never include the words "last week" unless that is when you had a surgery (or when your furnace was worked on, etc...) I don't want to know that you saw your doctor for stomach pains last week. These things go across pagers. If you give me a history of your pain for the last week, the doctor will see: "Stomach pain."
- If you speak something like Russian or Chinese and you live in NY, compensate. Don't expect us to speak your language. (Author's note: This isn't prejudice, we have operators that speak six different languages. They don't all work at the same time. The odds are against you.)
- If you are deaf, and calling via TTY, I am sorry, the conversation will be delayed by medium. Let me help you: If you are calling a medical office, provide full name of yourself and patient if different. Provide date of birth, regular physician, phone number and brief indication of problem. If I need anything else I will ask, but I can probably take this down as I hear it. TTY operators read slow enough, and I can ask them to re-read. If commercial, I need your name, phone number, address including city/state/zip, and what the problem is. Throw in if you are regular customer and what warranties you have, I might need that. If I need anything else I will ask.
- For the rest of you, ignore the above. Well, not completely. That is what I will need to know. I can type as fast as you talk, but not all operators can. Further, I will have problems if I get the information out of order. (Above order not always consistent.) Just expect these are the questions I will expect you to answer.
- There are on call doctors. You won't necessarily get to talk to the one you know. If you can wait until the morning if your doctor is not on call, you can wait until the morning if he is. Have a heart. He might be at his daughter's dance recital or sleeping.
- Your doctor is not the only one who will understand. If it is serious and he is monitoring, he filled in the o/c (on call physician). If you just know him well, the o/c can probably help. If it is beyond the o/c's capabilities, he will contact your doctor.
- If you call, prepare to have a stranger return your call. If it's an emergency, this guy your doctor trusts is trusted for a reason.
- If you thank me, I assume the call is over. I appreciate your thanks, but please save it until the end. I will hang up after responding with my appreciation.
- An answering service can't help you with your billing questions. Call back in the morning. (Or after lunch if applicable.)
- An answering service can't schedule or verify appointments. Call back in the morning.
- Part of being professional involves preparing and protecting our clients. If you swear at and abuse us, your doctor might find "caller hostile and abusive" in the message. We aren't tattling, we are letting the doctor prepare to be professional with you. Just bear in mind, the office may know how you personally deal with the people they rely on so heavily.
Undoubtedly my friends will provide me with more info, but that is a pretty decent list thus far. Now please, do me a favor. Please respond and tell me you are taking these issues to heart. In fact, please feel free to link this or copy and paste without linking it to help all of thus answering service folks out while they are serving you. Those answering service folks spend all day listening to your misfortunes, don't compound it by being rude to them and making their life harder.
If you don't take these to heart, we will still do our jobs. So ultimately, your treatment of us will not effect us much. This gives the abuser the power. I guess that's just life, or something close to it.
posted by Wanderer at 10:11 PM
1 Comments:
Way to go, dipshit. You wasted the couple of extra seconds to get past my word verification and anything.
How about a little hint? Unsolicited sales pitches on my blog are a waste of your time. Further, my post indicates that I am already well involved with this type of business, and one could assume I therefore have addressed these concerns.
Don't try to sell me shit out here.
Post a Comment
<< Home