|
Lambourn Engineering offers a variety of professional services, from
designing water systems for cities to land
surveying. Dan Lambourn, is the current president of the company,
founded by his father Gene.
“We’ve always been a small, family-owned company,” explained Dan. “For
about 20 years, our hometown held fairly steady at about 50,000
people, but during the past five years, we’ve had a real boom. New
businesses are coming in, new developments are being built, and we’ve even
attracted a large rail yard which is going to continue to help us grow
over the next 20 years.”
This development has had a dramatic effect on Lambourn
Engineering. In the past, they would hire engineering interns from a
nearby university as office support staff. The interns could handle the
telephone service, accounting, and appointment setting under Dan’s
supervision. “That was a win-win for both of us,” said Dan. “They don’t
teach you about what it means to run a business in engineering school.
You learn about physics, drafting, and flow dynamics, but they
don’t let you know what it's like to meet payroll. That’s what we wanted
to teach our interns.”
The construction boom made it impossible for Dan to keep up with the
demands for engineering services. He hired an office manager to
supervise the interns and handle his routine bookkeeping. He spent more
time in the field and hired two more professional engineers, one, a
former intern. Dan also put together a dedicated team of
land surveyors to handle the growing demands of commercial clients.
His office manager,
Sandi, researched their options to cope with their growing business. She
recommended outsourcing their after-hours and overflow calls to a
telephone answering service. Dan agreed. “I had no idea how many calls
we were missing until we began using the answering service. During the
day, we often had all three lines busy, but I never thought about
dropped calls. With the overflow service we were getting about five more
calls every day,” he said. “There are plenty of other firms to call if
our line was busy; we were losing those contacts.”
Like his hometown, Lambourn’s business is growing. The new engineering
staff, office staff, and additional interns have all played an important
role. Dan Lambourn is also quick to credit the additional help he’s
received from his extended staff at the answering service. “Their service has played a
huge part in our success.”
Learn more about telephone
answering services and discover how they might be able to help you.
|
