Check Your Answering Service for Switch Data Redundancy
Your answering service is your way of guaranteeing consistent and reliable over-the-phone customer service. Whether you rely on an inbound call center for complete and comprehensive coverage of your phone lines all day and all night year-round, or have them answering your phone lines only after-hours or during spikes, you and your customers expect to have that service up and running whenever you need it.
That’s why checking your answering service for switch data redundancy is so important. Without built-in redundancies, a simple service interruption or malfunction at your call center can leave you with unanswered phone lines, defeating the purpose of having the service in the first place.
How Does Switch Data Redundancy Improve Your Answering Service?
You don’t really need to understand the technology behind data switch redundancies to understand how important they are for any call center you might choose as a partner in your business. Simply put, a switch system is how incoming calls get routed efficiently to the pertinent phone lines. Call centers handle calls that come in on numerous lines, and the switch system determines which number is being dialed and which inbound call specialist the call should be routed to, along with all of the information needed to answer the call appropriately and start assisting callers quickly.
Without a working switch system in place, there’s no way for an answering service to quickly determine who’s calling and who they’re trying to speak with, leaving you—and all of their other clients— in the lurch. And no matter how strong a switch system is or how well it is maintained, there’s always the potential for a problem to cause a temporary disruption, and that can cause you to miss calls and lose customers. That’s why it’s important for you to look into your call center’s redundancy systems.
Answering Services Need Multiple (Phone) Lines of Defense
An on-site redundant switch data system is something most call centers offer, and these should go to work automatically if the primary switch system fails. This is only one line of defense against a switch failure or malfunction, though, and in the event of a power outage or other large-scale on-site problem, any on-site tool will be ultimately useless.
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Check with your answering service and make sure they have an off-site or even a cloud-based switch data redundancy in place. These systems will not be affected by issues at the primary call center site, providing the greatest assurance possible that your inbound call answering services won’t be disrupted. With off-site redundancies in place for switch data systems, even a full power outage won’t stop your service from effectively route incoming calls so they can be answered promptly with personalized greetings, giving your customers the service they expect from you—and giving you the service you expect from your team of virtual receptionists.
