Carrie tossed a blue-line printer's copy of her latest catalog into Jack's lap as she walked passed him to get to her own desk. "You know, Jack, we go through this every year. The new catalog breaks on April 1st and I don't have time to worry about how to man the phones until March 15th," she said.

"Every year, I say it's going to be different and every year I spend all my time laying out the catalog instead of hiring enough bodies to staff the phone lines. The only thing different about this year is it that it is now the 21st and I am just starting to look for college kids to hire. By my count, all I've done is get even further behind," said Carrie.

Jack looked up from thumbing through the catalog. "Carrie, I think I can help you out on that one." He sighed, "You know the way things usually work around here, I'm training in all those kids we hire at the same time the catalog hits the streets. Between the calls we get from customers on the new catalog and answering a thousand questions from our temps, I just can't keep up. It makes me crazy, it makes you crazy, and nobody is happy until about the first week of July."

Carrie frowned across the desk at him. "You aren't making me feel any better, you know."

"Well, I think I can. I know that Bendickson doesn't hire a flood of new people every year, like we do. So I found out why. They outsource everything to a big call center overseas," Jack told her.

"Who says," asked Carrie.

"I know Josh at Bendickson pretty well. He even buys from us when their stocks run out and he's in a bind. He's the one who told me. He also told me they have two managers on staff to manage the overseas people."

"That wouldn't work for us," Carrie interjected. "One of the big reasons people buy from us and not from Bendickson is that we are real people they can understand and talk to. They know we know our product and we know our clients."

"Just hear me out. Our answering service can also take orders – over the phone and over the web. These are the same people our customers have been talking to for years, so the transition will be seamless. We can eliminate all those hours training our temps and I can concentrate on my customers from the day this catalog hits the streets."

"And how much will that cost?" Carrie asked.

"I've already talked with Katie in HR. She said that it takes us about three months to train a new employee and by then our temps are almost ready to go back to school anyway. Katie says that the time I spend on the phone with customers instead of training temps will pay for the entire service. Plus, our orders should go up, since our customers' wait-times on the phone will go down!"

"How, may I ask, are you going to be working with customers if someone else is taking orders?"

"Easy. All routine calls will be routed to the telephone answering service. They'll screen callers who need assistance from those who know exactly what they need. They'll redirect anyone who needs help to Anthony, Sharon, or me directly."

"It can be set up before the first?"

"It can be set up by five o'clock tomorrow."

"Well, Jack, you've made your first sale today. Get together with Katie to set it up," said Carrie.

Last year, they took over 4,000 phone orders as a result of the catalog. This year, with the help of their telephone answering service, they are on track to more than double that amount.

Learn more about telephone answering services and discover how the might be able to help you.