In this podcast episode, Nicole Stacey, the Growth and Partnership Manager at AnswerConnect UK, joins the hosts to discuss the benefits and intricacies of using a 24/7 live answering service for Managed Service Providers (MSPs) across the UK, US, and Canada. Nicole explains how AnswerConnect supports MSPs by handling customer calls around the clock, allowing IT specialists to focus on their core tasks while ensuring clients receive immediate attention and resolution of their issues. The conversation covers the importance of customer service in the IT sector, the training of AnswerConnect’s agents, the integration with client systems, and the customisable scripting that ensures seamless operations. The episode also touches on the global nature of business today, the significance of first impressions, and practical use cases for MSP owners to implement such a service. Lastly, a shared interest in Formula One is briefly mentioned, making for a well-rounded discussion on improving customer service through effective call handling.
00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:20 Nicole’s Role and AnswerConnect Overview
01:09 Importance of 24/7 Support for MSPs
04:48 How AnswerConnect Integrates with MSPs
09:10 Training and Handling Customer Calls
11:53 Customisation and Client Expectations
21:37 Internationalisation and Global Support
27:22 Conclusion and Contact Information
Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts
Connect with Nicole Stacey on LinkedIn by clicking here – https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolestracey
Connect with Daniel Welling on LinkedIn by clicking here – https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-welling-54659715/
Connect with Adam Morris on LinkedIn by clicking here – linkedin.com/in/adamcmorris
Visit The MSP Finance Team website, simply click here – https://www.mspfinanceteam.com/
We look forward to catching up with you on the next one. Stay tuned!
Daniel: Nicole, welcome to the podcast.
Nicole: Oh my gosh, thank you for having me.
Daniel: You’re very welcome. And, Nicole, I’m sure a number in the MSP community have met you, certainly at an event last year. great to welcome you into the community. perhaps for those that you haven’t spoken to, just a quick, quick intro.
Nicole: Yeah, definitely. hi, everyone. That’s listening. My name is Nicole and I am the growth and partnership manager at answer connect UK for those of you who potentially maybe haven’t met me at event or don’t know answer connect. We are a 24 7 live answering service and we currently operate across the UK US and Canada with over 1500 employees across the 3 continents.
Nicole: And we support hundreds of MSPs daily, focusing on their streamlining processes, customer service, and helping with a host of things such as capturing and qualifying valuable clients, et cetera, which I’m sure you can touch in later on in the episode.
Daniel: Absolutely. And, maybe just a short, section at the end, we can touch on, Formula One and our shared interest in
Nicole: Great.
Daniel: So, yeah,
Nicole: Would love to.
Daniel: good. So, so yeah, we’re talking about cool answering, which, which some listeners to this episode will see that as quite a dry, like unimportant topic.
Daniel: so, maybe you could tell us a little bit about what your clients. Talking to you about when, when you’re trying to understand their needs and issues.
Nicole: Yeah, definitely. I think if you look in kind of the grand scheme of everything, MSPs essentially are. Third party vendors. And what you do is have, you know, everything from cloud computing management, IT support, networking, infrastructure, etc. And a lot of it is, you know, supporting SMBs, SMEs. So what we do at answer connect is kind of help to take some of that load off.
Nicole: MSPs in the sense that we want to offer 24 seven support and call handling. A lot of the clients that I work with are, you know. Engineering technicians at heart, or, you know, cyber geeks and love everything to do with I. T., but maybe their strong suit and strong point isn’t particularly customer service facing roles, sales, answering calls, administrative work.
Nicole: So where we kind of fit in is leaving anyone within the MSP industry and I. T. solutions to kind of focus on what they’re great at and outsource to us up to what we’re great at. And that’s kind of where we marry up.
Daniel: Okay. a couple of, avenues then open up from there. I mean, the first one, and certainly my, my own experience was, the. the hours of coverage. So, I would dread eight o’clock on a Monday morning because, the answer machine light was flashing and I’d already had three or four missed calls on my mobile, because, The help desk wasn’t open.
Daniel: The clients knew the help desk wasn’t open until nine o’clock. and I’d very clearly stated that we did not do out of hours. but, clients don’t seem to worry too much about that when they can’t get their email or their PC won’t turn on. So, um,is that the sort of starting point for this?
Daniel: Is that normally where an MSP is like, actually, this is an aggravation for us.
Nicole: Yeah, definitely. I think 24 7 is. so important. If you kind of look at the buying market at the moment or just business in general, the way people are now, it’s no more of three to five working days for apply. People honestly want something instant. They want to be able to have their problem solved then and there.
Nicole: They want to be able to have someone hear their issue then and there. And I think that is kind of the basis of what sets you apart from other businesses. Unfortunately, IT faults or emergencies, for example, they’re not limited to office hours, just like you said. So, you know, someone’s calling you at 8 a.
Nicole: m. with an issue that they’ve got, but they might have had that fault or that technical difficulty at 2, 3, 4 a. m. And now it’s lingered for hours and they’ve got this frustration growing or potentially even the MSP itself to service their clients. They want to be able to help to build that trust with them that they’re going to have that 24 7 availability.
Nicole: And I think that’s why it’s. So important because I think you know if If your whole business essentially is, you know, focused on connectivity, IT support and service, then this should be a key part of your business model. Having, you know, a solution there that is proactively 24 7 allows you to prevent small issues from snowballing into a crisis.
Nicole: And, and, you know, I found that on call teams that, you know, are reached out to via email or during working hours during the day, they just don’t have that availability. So being able to have, you know, someone outsourced or a service similar to ours that is there in the background to support you is so important.
Adam: Could you just explain how this works in practice? Cause I guess the bit I’m missing is that you’re providing, an answering and communication service. You’re not providing a technical service. So if someone’s calling in the middle of the night because they need technical support for whatever reason, do you fit into that?
Adam: Because they’re still calling for technical support
Nicole: Yeah, definitely. So we are essentially kind of like a virtual receptionist for that business. So what we could do in terms of out of hours is someone calls to reach somebody. Our agent will aim to reach the call, answer the call within one ring or less. So that means you’re instantly being connected to that client or that customer there.
Nicole: They will then be able to log the technical issue, log the fault, log the complaint, understand why maybe the client is calling in. Then the business that we are supporting for, we can either forward that call to an all contact. On call engineer that you have or a technician. We can log a fault into your CRM.
Nicole: We can email the direct inbox that you are asking us to kind of leave that contact information for. It’s essentially a service there to help back up you to have operate like seamless operations across all time zones, essentially.
Adam: and is there any. intelligence in that process so it can filter, calls that, you know, make for whatever reason, you know, that client doesn’t have out of hours or it’s not the, it’s not the right level of ticket. For example, is there any kind of intelligence built into that process? So it can filter some of that, or am I kind of trying to imagine something that’s just way, way
Nicole: So this is actually a hot topic within our company as well between humans and AI and the capacity and capabilities of both. I would say for answer connect, we are human first. So basically, we are always going to have a live person answering either your web forms or your calls, essentially. So that call handler will be trained to be able to.
Nicole: Get qualified, the person is calling in, understand their needs, forward that on. so it kind of depends on how you set it up. Essentially. I wouldn’t say maybe there’s any intelligence around it. In terms of a I or something that monitors it over, but it’s essentially we can qualify it
Adam: I guess it wasn’t that it was more, I guess, you know, for example, what’s your out of hours code. Oh, I don’t have one. Ah, in which case you don’t have the out of hours service. So, you know, and then workflow says go to this part of the workflow.
Nicole: Yes,
Adam: case something else needs to kick in into that process.
Adam: Perhaps I was just trying to imagine, how sort of a different, you know, additional value could be built into that process.
Nicole: Yeah, definitely. So with all our scripting, it’s extremely customizable. So, for example, if that exact scenario happened on this scripting, it would say, if this person doesn’t have 24 hours, or if so forth, you could then have something built into. Forward it to this inbox, take this note, say this, or let them know that these are the hours or so forth.
Nicole: And there are different things you can do to kind of navigate that.
Daniel: and I guess, from the callers perspective, I think I understood the point you made earlier, which is, you’re providing an opportunity for them to be heard. so the fact that I can tell someone just how. frustrated I am that I can’t get my email or print my document or whatever.
Daniel: that’s actually part of the customer experience. and, and so hopefully that person then arrives at the start of service delivery, whenever that is. If it’s, you know, within a certain number of hours, if they’re covered or it’s the next working day, if they’re not, but. I can’t help but think, and one, one of the biggest challenges, we had, was always, you know, trying to manage the unmanageable, the, you know, the customer’s perception in all cases, you know, you think you are doing a great job and the customer still is not happy.
Daniel: and there’s one, one thing that’s always, always the concern with an outsource call handling service is, when the caller rings. The one thing worse than not being able to talk to someone is to talk to someone that can’t help. and then that the risk is you then bubble up and make that cooler, even more agitated.
Daniel: And, so, so how do you, is there something baked into the way you train your agents to be that? pacifying role
Nicole: Yeah, a core kind of value of our company is that every call that comes in, they’re always met with the warm and friendly receptionist voice at the other side. Our CX agents go through rigorous training and long training programs to, you know, understand the different type of call types that come in different type of industries that we support and they are trained to be able to identify this and also come across this way to clients.
Nicole: Because essentially what we are offering. MSPs, but also just any business across different industries is the soft skills that maybe they don’t have at the moment. For example, you know, customer service. How are you able to capture these customers? How are you able to ensure that they’re being met with warm and friendly people who are, you know, answering their calls, answering their problems?
Nicole: I think the biggest thing for us is just the training is really, we do a lot of training with the CXs, but, you know, also to mitigate any kind of issues, for example, on our service. I’m not sure if this is similar for all answering services, but we have, you know, and all the calls are recorded so you can access them at any point to kind of listen in.
Nicole: You can kind of navigate any feedback by going directly to your account manager. flags. We work with you to ensure that we are representing your business the best that we can to ensure that what we’re doing for you is exactly how you would like. I
Nicole: and, possibly more than, an MSP might do with their own internal staff in terms of training them how to answer the phone, maybe, think the biggest thing to kind of think about as well when it comes to call handling is just how important that call is to you. And if missing it is that much of an issue. For example, if you look at, you know, your marketing spend, for example, like, do you know what your cost per lead is? You know, You have to figure out how much you’re really spending on your marketing and divide that by your total leads to fully understand how much you are spending on your customers.
Nicole: And when you think about potentially missing a call, are you missing, you know, your next big client? Are you maybe throwing money down the drain by not being able to answer every call that comes through? Because essentially as well, if there are, you know, tons of MSPs that do a lot of similar businesses.
Nicole: similar solutions or offer similar things. If a client is calling to potentially reach you and then they can’t, what’s the likelihood that they’ll just go to the next best service and call them? So you also have to kind of look at it from like a perspective of, you know, the true cost of a missed call, essentially.
Daniel: a, a, a. Absolutely. And, yeah, cer certainly we, we feel your, your pain there in terms of the cost of, acquiring, well generating, leads and acquiring clients, GE generally. yeah, you definitely don’t want them. Arriving a negative first experience. and, I mean, we’ve talked a little bit about handling technical calls.
Daniel: but, if what, if we were setting up a service here and like our standard, menu might be, one, one for support, if you’re an existing, client to, for new business or, you know, free for, accounts or whatever, are we talking about that sort of, configuration or do you take individual, like, like, would you only take calls for sales or only take calls for support, for example, how does that work?
Nicole: Yeah, I mean, you’ve kind of explained it a little bit there. You seem to have a great understanding of it, but we are completely customizable in the sense we can do different call types for you. So you can do, you know, new inquiries, new business, current business. If there’s a specific person someone would want to speak to, we can put them through to that.
Nicole: I think it generally just all ties back to kind of what you’re offering your clients and what they’re expecting of your business. Because I think the biggest thing about an answering service is giving you the opportunity to Build more trust with your customers to, you know, further that relationship.
Nicole: I think, I don’t know if you guys are the same, but I’ve had, you know, things where I’ve been on a live chat bot or I’ve called someone and you just get the AI where you need to repeat who you’re trying to speak to or what your issue is. And with my accent is all, sometimes they don’t understand me or you’re on a live chat and then, you know, you’re just getting the same options over and over again.
Nicole: So I think it’s something to consider because it just gives you so much more options as an MSP to just really put yourself out there to your clients, to build that trust, build that rapport further, any relationships you do have. you know, it kind of leads me on to first impressions and how crucial that is also for businesses, because, you know, you generally only have a couple of seconds to make a great first impression, and that can be.
Nicole: How you stick in someone’s mind and the majority of actually first inquiries are by phone. So being able to offer, you know, a quick, professional, friendly response is really critical for capturing that lead as soon as possible. To be honest.
Daniel: and talk me through then what a typical, would you call it a script that the agent is going to be working to? So, what would a script typically involved to help judge the sensitivity and
Nicole: Yeah, so the script can kind of, you know, be. It’s totally customizable to however you want it. For example, we can take the information that you need, such as, you know, if you want the name, email, business, where they’re calling from, we can capture all that information as standard at the beginning of the call.
Nicole: And then the account manager will work directly with you to kind of see where you want to go with your scripting. So what type of call types you expect to have, how you want us to kind of. Act in those calls, what kind of wording you would like how to kind of escalate something where to kind of judge if it’s a bit and you know, higher priority as well.
Nicole: So it generally just depends on kind of what you need.
Daniel: Okay. Interesting. again, talking from recent experience, and we, we have a, a different call answering provider, but we have a call answering provider nonetheless. and interestingly, I think in the space of it can’t have been more than a week. we had, two prospective clients, make contacts.
Daniel: one, felt that they were being mis, identified as a cold caller. and talking to the individual, the more. He actually tried to say that he wasn’t a cold caller, the more I think they thought he was a cold caller, like, like, almost comical, if it wasn’t so dangerous for us in terms of, you know, making a bad first impression.
Daniel: and, and then, and then, you know, within a week, another prospective, client, you know, in particular, I’m like, and how did you find that, that call? They were like, no, it was brilliant and no problem at all. And so, you know, it’s a real mix of expectations and. Scenarios. So I can see it being quite tricky to, to capture and delegate that handling process, without making it too cumbersome.
Daniel: so, you know, if you want to get five bits of information, you know, and the prospect just want, look, it’s Daniel, here’s my email. I just want someone to send me an email or, you know, just want to call back, or I just want to book. book a call with Adam, for example, would you have that level of customization?
Daniel: So could, could the call agent have, my Calendly, Adam’s Calendly and actually pick between us. So, you know, who do you want to talk to and how urgent is it? And could they do that sort of logic that you can’t do with Calendly out the box?
Nicole: Yeah, absolutely. We’re able to integrate and put your booking links on. So our agents can actually book directly into your account only or you also get access to a software called set more as standard with our. AnswerConnect as well. So it’s our in house scheduling system as well. but I guess in terms of what you’re saying there, yeah, completely agree.
Nicole: Our receptionists basically are trained to identify hot leads and urgent callers and route them quickly. And we also prepare scripts for, you know, common scenarios to maintain consistency. So this is also, you know, to avoid maybe identifying the wrong caller as a cold caller or, you know, making a mistake, especially if the call is so crucial to you guys.
Adam: So, so this has got me thinking now I’m a cold caller. I want to get through you. You’re the gate, you’re the gatekeeper in this instance. But I’m actually a cold caller. So what tricks can I use to make it look like I’m a genuine caller and I can get through?
Nicole: mean, I hope no cold callers are listening in
Nicole: No, this is gold dust now. This is gold dust. So, so how to get past an answering service that’s a gatekeeper. I mean, potentially with other answering services, I think ours is pretty foolproof in that our CX agents are rigorously trained to be able to identify these types of calls and you know, there’s things in place for the scripting, but I guess, you know, if I don’t know if there’s a trick or the trade, but sometimes maybe just confidence will get you through.
Adam: I’ve just got a question around, all this is great. There’s going to be some instances though for MSP owners where it’s not a good use case. It’s not appropriate to use this. what would those be in your opinion, do you think?
Nicole: I think when it comes to that, I think MSPs and IT solutions need to remember that we’re just going to be acting as an extension of their brand. So, example, we are just a receptionist service. We can do a whole host of things for them in terms of the administrative side, but we are never going to be the technical specialists.
Nicole: We are never going to be, you know, the IT specialists. So if the instance is that, you know, they’re dealing with really highly sensitive information and it’s kind of, you know, business critical that these calls are dealt with in a very specific, adequate manner, then we wouldn’t be the right solution for them.
Nicole: And we’re not the right solution for a lot of people. And that’s the same for a lot of answering services. But what we are is, you know. That backup support for when you need it, that credibility for your clients, that, that solution that allows you to just give a 24 7 coverage. And maybe something we haven’t even touched upon as well is MSPs.
Nicole: A lot of them deal with clients in different time zones, and that’s where we come in as well. We’re able to kind of capture calls coming in or information or inquiries when potentially, UK time zone and someone else is coming in from the
Adam: and clearly for this to be successful, the client, the MSP in this instance has to take ownership of what happens when you complete the call and push the text or the email through or whatever it is that you’re pushing through, that needs to be consistent. From, from the MSP’s perspective to set that trust in place so that when the caller calls, if they’re, you know, an ongoing client, you know, they understand actually, yes, I can leave a message with these people and I know I’m going to get a call back within what level of expectation, you know, is agreed.
Adam: so I think that’s just. Something that’s sort of critical really to this, isn’t it? That there’s got to be a kind of end to end expectation management piece. I would say the owners out there need to be upfront about the fact that they’re using a messaging service, you know, work it out, they’re gonna work it out pretty quick, right?
Adam: So let’s just be upfront about it. unless you’ve got a different opinion, which I’m really interested to hear, but I’d say, you know, be upfront about it. And, you know, but you can expect 24 seven answering by human who will direct your call to the right department or the right person that, and it’s going to speed up, the workflow, you know, much more quickly than you trying to find a mobile phone or something.
Nicole: Yeah. Or reach someone. Find an email somewhere in your inbox that you’ve corresponded with before months ago. Something I’d like to add then on that is, you know, we totally can be anything that the business wants us to be. So I have clients that use us that specifically want us to let their customers know.
Nicole: That we are the answering service. We’re, outsourced or we have clients as well who want us to act as if we’re their front desk, their receptionist. So it just depends as well what the business wants, because obviously, as you were saying, you know, there has to be some level of responsibility for the business owners as well to maintain like their service level agreements, which, you know, are a lifeline in MSP client relationships.
Nicole: There has to be some sort of expectation set there as well. So sometimes with the calls coming in. Some of the clients I work with specifically have written on the scripting, like, make sure the client knows that, you know, they can expect a call within 48 hours, 24 hours, or for this department, we’re only replying at this time.
Nicole: So it gives full transparency to the caller, to the client, the user. So it’s just giving other ways for you to just proactively engage with your customers.
Daniel: One of the, topics, trends we are, we’re seeing and, talking about in other episodes is the internationalization of the MSP market. So, so I’m a UK business, but I support. U. S. Clients with my team in the Philippines, for example. so are you starting to see more of that within your client base?
Daniel: And what? See, we talk about sort of out of hours call handling, but are out of hours is someone else’s normal hours. So is there a, do you distinguish between what’s out of hours and what’s normal hours for the caller? Like, are there different ways of handling the call based on how it comes up, for example?
Daniel: Yeah, good question. We do a kind of follow the sun and model with our CX agents who are the agents who handle the calls. So we have agents based in the UK and US. So if you think, for example, when the UK agents are going to sleep, the US I guess agents are picking up the calls, so there’s constant continuity in terms of, you know, the calls won’t be handled any differently, the scripting wouldn’t be any different, the person who’s calling into the service wouldn’t be able to identify that, you know, it’s any different, except for maybe the accent, but yeah, but I guess if you’re calling at 3am with an emergency, you’re probably your first, your first kind of point of worry wouldn’t be if it’s a American accent or a British accent on the end of the phone, you’d probably just want to get through to someone.
Daniel: yeah, possibly, equally, if I’m calling from the U S and it’s my normal hours, perhaps I do want to. a US accent, or a British accent. but, I think as the market becomes more in internationalized, I think I feel like that, that accent reliance is melting away as a concern that people have.
Daniel: so, So, yeah, I think the, just interesting to hear if you, you know, if you’d handle calls differently based on whether it was out of hours or in hours, but. In a different territory. So
Nicole: wouldn’t be handled any differently, but I do think kind of, you know, business is completely global at the moment. You know, you can have prospects or clients in a different country in a different time zone. Same with us. We operate in over 3 different countries at the moment across sorry, across 3 continents at the moment.
Nicole: So, you know, it’s very multinational and very international. And I think that’s the way MSP and IT solutions are operating at the moment as well. So it’s kind of, it’s really nice sometimes just to kind of be able to speak to someone from somewhere else as well. Just even at work. Do you know what I mean?
Daniel: yes, yeah, absolutely. so good. Okay. so, I think the only thing, that I’ve missed the question that I had, taking us back to the service delivery call handling element was, was just how integrated that call Login processes. so, do you, do you have a standard template or for some clients, are you actually logged into their, their PSA, how, how does that work?
Daniel: Or do you send an email and it passes into their system? Is that the, you know, how would that
Nicole: So it can work one of two ways. We integrate with a whole host of PSA systems or CRM systems as well. I can’t list them all, but I can send a little website
Daniel: you got one minute List them all.
Nicole: have logged in already. and then on top of that as well, if you do utilize our service, we which you can access on your phone, on the website, on your desktop, and that way you can kind of see all your calls, all the emails are logged there, all the information that you get from the calls is all logged there.
Nicole: So you kind of can have it into your inbox and into the app as well. And it’s just really easy as like an organizational tool as well for having, you know, some people really only utilize this for the out of outers. hours aspects. So during your day to day business hours, they have, you know, if they do have someone in office that does the calls or they do have an administrative assistant, the work can be separate.
Nicole: That way it’s not getting confused or they also have access to that as well. So it just depends on really how you want to set everything up.
Adam: So somewhere near the top of our use case, going back to use cases that we talked about earlier, in my head, at least would be an overflow. So
Nicole: Yes.
Adam: you call the support desk, all your support guys are busy, you know, away from the desk, having lunch, whatever it is, you don’t want to go into voicemail because that’s impersonal.
Adam: So overflows to you. You then log a ticket in the PSA, and the engineer, the dispatch person or whoever can then, you know, jump on that and service the client appropriately. So that’s obviously, a, an end to end approach. the engineers aren’t having to work outside of the system they used to, you know, go into email or call you up or whatever.
Adam: So, that’s obviously a very straightforward, you know, efficient approach, and certainly that’s like this. Probably near the top right of a use case. And
Nicole: yeah, definitely. I don’t think anything needs to be kind of overcomplicated. That is basically what people use our service for. And I think it works for what they need it to be. You know, we’re efficient. We’re professional. We’re friendly. We have everything on our back end ready
Adam: I think there’s a lot to be said for an MSP saying, do you know what? We will always answer your call. You will have a human answer your call. You won’t get voicemail. It won’t go dead. It won’t just ring for hours and hours. Someone will answer the call. This is how it works. You could even show them and you could say, actually, if it goes here, there, and still nobody answers the call, it’ll then.
Adam: Escalate up to our answering service and you’ll still get another human taking your message. They will log a ticket directly into our PSA, which goes straight to our dispatch person, you know, and I think there’s a lot of confidence there in, in, in thinking that process through.
Nicole: Yeah, perfect. You’ve described it just even better than I could.
Daniel: Adam is available for, shows, events, general hire. So, so yes. good.so, I feel like we’re pretty much there in terms of time. Norma normally at the, the end of an episode, we’d offer someone a shameless plug, but, as, As often when a topic is so integrated into the line of business of the guest, I feel like we’ve already kind of done that.
Daniel: So, if anyone listening wants to pick up the conversation, how best to reach you
Nicole: Yeah. If anything in this episode was of interest or you think potentially you could use a service like ours, feel free to find me on LinkedIn, Nicole Stacey. You can reach out to me on email as well. Nicole dot Stacey at answer connect. co. uk. Or you can send an inquiry to our sales team on www.
Nicole: answerconnect. co. uk. Give me call. Absolutely.
Adam: Nobody answers the phone, you know, right?
Daniel: Okay. on that bombshell then I think, it’d been really interesting conversation and it’s amazing. Even a topic you think, you know, well, there, you know, there’s lots of detail and nuance that, that’s always there to, to discover. So thank you. Thank you for your time.
Daniel: And, we’ll see you, at an MSP event, hopefully later this year.
Nicole: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for having me on guys. This was a lot of fun
Adam: Thank you. Fabulous. Bye.
Nicole: Bye.