Answering Service Software

What Can Answering Service Software Do For You?

Software is used by commercial answering services for both "live operator" and fully automated virtual office services. Both live and automated telephone answering services require the abilities to connect to incoming callers; identify the caller; transfer the caller to the appropriate party; keep a record of all call activity; and, in some cases, respond to voice or keypad input of requests from the caller. Those are the basics, but software can do many other call answering services as well.

Call center software is for "boiler rooms" of inbound telemarketing agents awaiting inquiries from potential customers; tech support and customer service reps; and other kinds of people who field calls from many people. Call center software's basic function is to answer high volumes of calls and route them to the first available agent. It can also identify caller's by location from their area codes, or even individuals who have called before from their numbers or caller-ID. Depending on the caller, the software may be able to put detailed information on the monitor of the agent who receives the call even as the call is transferred to that agent. This enables more efficient, faster customer service.

A 24-hour answering service staffed by live operators can use call center software. The software can transfer calls to available operators who may work all over the world. A professional answering service uses software to quickly identify customers and keep detailed records for call management.

Telephone answering software (TAS) can be purchased as a turnkey system, including a computer server, telephone interface cards, etc. It can also be purchased as pure software to be installed on an existing server. Mastar.com offerings integrate readily into other software-based telephony systems such as VoIP, virtual PBX, customer relationship management (CRM), etc.

TAS can cost between $10,000 and $30,000 for an entry-level system. But you can also find free, open source software that does what pricey commercial programs do. One of the most powerful and popular open source telephone answering software packages is called Asterisk.

Asterisk can be downloaded from the developer's Website (www.asterisk.com) or obtained free of charge and bundled with hardware, installation, and training services (which cost money). It's used by many small and large call centers, telephone answering services, and virtual office service providers. It can be used by any business for its in-house TAS needs.

Voicemail services are also bundled into Asterisk and many other TAS. So-called "unified messaging" is a popular aspect of such software; it allows voicemail to find its intended recipient by whatever communication channels are available at a given time, sending voicemail to a landline, cell phone, or email inbox as either an audio file attachment or a speech-to-text translation.