Product preview: Virtual Personal Assistant

As you may be aware, there are a lot of exciting things going on here at TTNC. We are in the midst of an exciting rebranding project, we are also working on a number of new products, features and services. 

Whilst work has begun on our new responsive website and blog. The project which am most excited about is known internally as Project Titan.

Project Titan is our Virtual Personal Assistant service. And the great news is it’s almost ready for prime time. We have spent the last few months testing, benchmarking, and tweaking the features of the service to ensure that Project Titan (Virtual Personal Assistant) offers a cost-effective and complete call management package.

Virtual Personal Assistant includes all the features you've grown to love about our phone service and adds a service we feel you will find invaluable over time.

The service compliments the virtual number service so perfectly it made us think “Why didn’t we think about this before”?

So you what are the use cases for our soon to be launched Virtual Personal Assistant? Who does it benefit? How will it compliment your day to day business?

I will run you through a few examples. Before we do, here are some customer service facts for all you stats lovers out there.

A few customer service stats

A recent survey by Which? (7,000 respondents) found just 58% of broadband providers answered calls in the first five minutes.

Almost all those surveyed (95%) felt that calls should be answered within five minutes by a human voice and not an automated service.

A staggering 90% of those surveyed said UK companies should use UK call centres.

So unsurprisingly customers want excellent customer service, they want to speak to a human being and most importantly they want to hear a familiar voice on the other end.

Even Ofcom who has in the past been slow to act upon consumer complaints has finally upped their game.

Ofcom has waged war on poor customer service in the telecoms industry. Customer service has never been more crucial for our industry. Comments reporting on poor customer service experiences spread like wildfire on social networks, so it is imperative that companies offer the very best customer service experience.

Ofcom has already penalised a number of mobile networks over their handling of customer complaints. Three UK was fined £250,000. Recently this year EE was fined £1 million. Vodafone is also under investigation for its handling of customer complaints.

So how do you ensure your customers get the very best service and are put through to a human being even when all your call centre staff are taking calls?

The answer is simple, you use an overflow service. And that is the beauty behind our new Virtual Personal Assistant, It is flexible, it is scalable and most importantly it is tailored to your needs.

Whether you're a sole trader or a call centre with over 100 staff members, our Virtual Personal Assistant service is built to grow with you. As your needs grow so does the service, we can even transfer calls to another destination via the Virtual Personal Assistant service. This service offers unparalleled customer service for a fraction of the cost.

Usage example 1: Call centre overflow

So here’s the scenario, you’ve launched a major advertising campaign and you’re expecting a surge in enquiries. However, you’re not sure how successful the campaign will be. Can your staff handle the stress? Can they respond in time? Will you lose sales if potential customers can not get through?

With Virtual Personal Assistant, you don't need to worry about that. With a simple flick of a button all calls which are not answered by your call centre staff will be passed on to our UK based call centre, where our professionally trained customer service team will handle all overflow enquiries and leads. These messages can then be emailed to you. This gives your team all the necessary information they need to process the call within seconds of the message being taken.

The Virtual Personal Assistant service is scripted and can be adapted per campaign. Your company name will be the first thing callers hear, they will not be able to tell the difference.

Usage example 2: Out of hours

Ok, so you’ve finished for the day, turned the lights off, and locked the door. Just as you turn to walk away, the phone rings. Do you rush to pick it up? This is a scenario we’ve all faced at some point in our lives.

So what do you do, take the call even though it may take up 30 minutes of your time? Or do you forward it to your Virtual Personal Assistant?

With our Virtual Personal Assistant service, you will be able to  manually turn on the service as and when required. There is also the option to create your own schedules using Time Based Forwarding. Time-Based Forwarding is intuitive and allows your to create a forwarding schedule which works for you.

You can even schedule calls to be forwarded to the service during team meetings or make excuses for you when you’re busy; “Sorry Steve is currently in a meeting can I take a message”?

This is just one example of the many ways in which you can use the service. We are inventing new uses every day and I am sure you will do the same.

24/7 Virtual Personal Assistant

The cost of hiring a well-trained customer service assistant is not always a cost effective solution for start-ups or sole traders.

The Virtual Personal Assistant service is available 24/7, 365 days a year and all calls are relayed to you by email.

You can choose to have the service forwarded permanently to your Virtual Personal Assistant during office hours or around the clock.

This is great for lawyers who are in court or often out of the office visiting clients. It’s also ideal for builders who spend 90% of their working day on site.

The service is even great for large companies who hold periodic training days. They can switch on the Virtual Personal Assistant and have the whole team in that meeting without having to do smaller group sessions.

I can’t wait for the launch of this service, I truly believe it will benefit small businesses and enable them to stand toe to toe with their larger rivals. I think this service will revolutionise the way they handle day to day customer service.