by Chris Brogan

TV viewing is down. You’d think behavioral types would be cheering, but they know better. We dumped all that time into other screens: our phones and our laptops, mostly. We’re giving ourselves a new version of attention-deficit disorder, one of our own device.

A lot of this is stuff we fell into by habit. Here are some ways to balance. (Read the rest of this great article here, and you also can discover ways that our answering service can help you focus on being attentive to your colleague, client and your work. – The Eds.)

Like many cash-strapped entrepreneurs, Sergio Moutela started his business from home. But what he saved in office rent, he lost in productivity, thanks to a neighbor’s incessantly barking dog and nearby construction work.

“It was pretty distracting,” says Mr. Moutela, who was laid off from a logistics company before he launched Thruport International, a customs-brokerage firm, last year. “I can imagine how it sounded on the other line when I was making cold calls.” More.

Operators work in close-knit quarters at 1-800-WeAnswer answering service (Photo: Krisanne Johnson, Wall Street Journal)

Last week, our New York City headquarters was visited by a reporter and photographer from the Wall Street Journal, and  they profiled our company in the Tuesday, November 16th edition.They were interested in 1-800 We Answer due to the phenomenal interest in NY City Center’s Encores! revival of  the 1956 classic musical, “Bells Are Ringing”.  – The Eds.

This weekend, City Center presents a production of the 1956 musical comedy “Bells Are Ringing,” about an answering service operator. It’s a seemingly arcane service whose use would obviously pre-date answering machines, beepers, mobile phones, text messaging, voice mail and instant messaging. The list goes on.

“As far as I know, the only people who have one are Stephen Sondheim and John Kander,” the show’s director Kathleen Marshall told her cast last week, referring to two of Broadway’s biggest composers.

The mechanism is simple: an individual would give out a shared number, which would lead to the answering service, who would in turn take a message and then return said message to the individual. For years in New York, many actors would use an answering service called Bells Are Ringing to take their messages. With the advent of such aforementioned technology, the need for an answering service would no longer really exist.

But in a large office space in a building in the West 30s, many phone operators work in close-knit quarters at 1-800-WeAnswer, which a little more than a decade ago purchased the actual Bells Are Ringing. (One operator is still employed at WeAnswer.)

“Originally answering services in New York were used by actors,” said Robert Porter, president and CEO of 1-800-WeAnswer. He gave a tour of his office, which featured several rooms of individuals in cubicles with phones and computers as well as inspirational posters and instructions on how to answer calls on the wall.

“But then actors started to get cellphones, and our technology was antiquated for their needs. We’re moving away from the buggy-and-coal-mining idea of what an answering service is.”

Mr. Porter said that he has about 500 employees in his 11 centers around the nation. He has expanded to offer all sorts of technologies, including business-to-business work, telemarketing and 24-hour-a-day customer service and catalog ordering lines. That said, Mr. Porter added that the company has retained some personal clients. He said that the actors Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, Alec Baldwin and Chandra Wilson of “Grey’s Anatomy” have held onto their answering service lines.

When reached, representatives for Mr. De Niro, Mr. Keitel, Ms. Wilson couldn’t confirm this information.

Mr. Porter explained that many of these actors have had a number so long, “they might not want to get rid of it.” “It’s probably the only number they had when they were starting out,” he added. “It kick-started their careers and might have earned them a million dollars.” He said that he also has hundreds of clients who use pagers.

“You might think it’s a dying business,” he explained. “But at the end of the day, we’re social beings who like human contact.”

BY DAVID F.  CARR 06.03.10

…One of the side benefits is that people who were formerly confined to back-room tasks are now in contact with customers, giving them the opportunity to prove their worth. And employees are happier as a result, Sinclair says. “Some of them are earning double what they were a couple of years ago–because they’ve proven that they should be.”  …

Read the rest of the article here. And it’s true.1-800 We Answer specializes in providing the physical resources, like P.O.-boxless private mail receiving and forwarding, telephone call center and virtual receptionist services that create a virtual office for your business in the heart of New York City. You and your workers can work from home anywhere you need to.  – The Eds.

“Well actually, I would prefer to talk to a dead person–or even a plastic bag–than push 10 more buttons until I find someone totally annoyed that they have to DEAL with a customer.”

Excellent, pointed article that shows what’s wrong in the call center industry (even in companies hosting internal call centers), and what we hope that 1-800 We Answer is doing right in providing friendly customer service on behalf of our clients. We love what we do. Our agents have Customer Service DNA! Read the full post here.

by MARK STEVENS

May 06, 2010 -

A few days ago, I was bestowed with a charming and old-fashioned gesture: a wish to “Have a wonderful weekend.” The problem is, the gesture was plastic. Literally. It was stamped on a bag of bandages and toothpaste I’d purchased in a local pharmacy. Perhaps I am a cold-hearted SOB, but I don’t get the warm fuzzies when a bag whispers sweet nothings in my ear. In fact, I wanted to, and ultimately did, tell the pharmacy to replace the weekend “love note” with one that reads “Whatever You Need, Whenever You Need It. Just call us at xxx or visit us at pleasingyoumakesushappy.com.” (Read more.)

Anne Field – (From AMEX Open for Small Business)

If, like many small business owners, you want to cut costs, one prime place to look is your office space. That typically can come to as much as 5 percent of total revenues for many small companies, according to Ken Gaebler, who heads Gaebler Ventures, a Chicago-based small business consulting firm.

It’s also an area where it’s easy to find yourself overextended. But, “Every dollar you save on office expenses is a dollar that can be used to grow the business,” says Gaebler. “It’s best to be as frugal as possible.”

Here are five creative ways to do that: (read more)

BY JEREMY CAPLAN

Once upon a time, phoning it in signaled failure. Now it’s a strategic move. As the U.S. economy slowly rebounds, companies are increasingly relying on a decentralized workforce of domestic, home-based call centers. The old mantra: route service calls overseas to cut costs in half. The new idea: bring call centers back home, but not to bulky, brick-and-mortar phone banks. Use hourly workers sitting in home offices, managed on someone else’s payroll. Call it phonesourcing.

Phonesourcing basically means contracting with a private firm to hire, train and manage a small army of local or regional call handlers. That enables companies to ramp up or tamp down their services flexibly, without the political controversies that are associated with outsourced, overseas call centers. Handing off call handling isn’t new — people have been grinding their teeth on hold for outsourced help since the dawn of voice mail more than a decade ago. What’s new is the growing scope and scale of the U.S. home-based call sector. Datamonitor projections show the number of U.S. home-based call agents growing at an annual clip of 20% between 2009 and 2012, from about 50,000 to more than 80,000. That’s much faster than the growth rate for calling centers in India (4%) and the Philippines (9%), though foreign outsourcing remains a more popular and cheaper corporate option.

Companies desiring the different levels of certification that the FTO provides must self-disclose their operations to the Foundation, including all of their outsourcing and offshoring subcontracting activity.  A “No Offshoring” certification signifies that clients can find reliable US- based call center services and realized savings through outsourcing their projects to a certified provider.

Robert Porter, President and CEO commented, “In developing our call center division, we’re gaining more clients asking us to help take orders and share information about their unique products and services. Our call center services include inbound customer feedback surveys. The feedback data that we collect on behalf of our clients is just as valuable as the contact information that we key into our systems. Customer opinions get fed to Research and Development specialists within our clients’ companies. By keeping all of our work in-house, we can help our clients rest assured that their most valuable ideas are safe and protected by applicable US laws and intellectual property regulations.”

1-800 We Answer, Inc. only employs on-site call center agents, working at various sites in New York City, the Philadelphia Metro region, and in the company’s Jacksonville and Miami, Florida locations. The company’s inbound telephone call center services operate 24 hours a day, 365 days each year.

“Independent call centers are particularly vulnerable to outside security breach attempts, “commented Robert Porter, President and CEO of 1-800 We Answer, Inc. Our call center clients rely on us to provide the firewall and systems assurance so that they can tell their customers that their credit card information is safe. Going through the PCI DSS certification process is just one additional step our company takes to maintain the trust our clients show in us.”

PCI Compliance testing measures network systems’ performance benchmarks against international security best practices and principles. 1-800 We Answer, Inc. sought out independent auditing firm Security Metrics, Inc. during the certification process. PCI DSS certification is one method the payment card industry uses to assure businesses who routinely process electronic payments that their sensitive data is protected against theft. Call center clients can trust that 1-800 We Answer’s systems are shielded from malicious attacks and that all transactions involving private data, including credit card and identity information remain safe.

PTM Communications’ client list includes several notable business and trade journals, including regional business directory and news services. PTM has additional experience in providing telemarketing service for nonprofit and membership organizations. PTM’s expertise includes providing successful organization membership and subscriber retention calls.

Companies marketing to select groups within various industries and trades rely on telemarketers to generate buzz: promoting insider subscriptions, selling ad placement in trade publications and encouraging attendance at shows, conventions and events. While most trade publications rely on industry specific advertising to offset free subscriptions, niche and industry publishing groups have been affected by the same changes taking place in mainstream print media: Professional telemarketing service providers are being aggressively used in the B2B marketplace to retain subscriptions and invite new subscribers.

Professional telemarketing service providers are being recruited to help industry conference and meeting planners bounce back from recession slow downs. After declines in attendance figures during 2008, the trade show industry is eager to improve upon slightly better 2009 attendance figures. Conventions and industry trade shows normally attract millions of attendees each year through using telemarketing to publicize their events. Telemarketers not only reach out to industry members to extend invitations to attend events, they track down potential exhibitors and sell booth space.

1-800 We Answer, Inc. created its telemarketing division in 2007 and has expanded its outbound call center capabilities through recent acquisitions. Through purchasing PTM, the company intends to attract additional trade and industry clients who recognize the value in using a bilingual Spanish and English-speaking, US-based call center to effectively market to their members.