Using your Telephone Answering Service to Protect Your Company’s Assets

We’re going to talk about something near and dear to my heart – protecting the company’s assets.

And we’re going to talk about how to utilize our telephone answering service and call center to help us do it.

We’re talking about hotlines.  We’re talking about pride in our workplaces, and in our ability to not only add value to the organization, but also our ability to prevent bad stuff from happening to the organization.

Our assets are always people first, then cash and cash instruments, then property.  Believe it or not, by providing a hotline for employees to call or even send emails, you are protecting your employees first.

Setting up a hotline is not that hard.  Coming up with the proper process is really based on your company’s culture.  First gather together your management team, a few volunteer employees, your legal department, and your human resources department.

Figure out if you want tips on compliance issues, human resource issues, suspected fraud, or other concerns you have, for instance maybe you just want suggestions on improving work flow or process, or you want to create a hotline whereby employees can nominate each other for awards.  Then, with your assembled project team, come up with your slogan, your purpose, and the best method by which to take these anonymous tips.

Your telephone answering service can provide live agents to take the calls;  they can provide a voice mail service to take anonymous calls;  and your call center provider can often provide an email or web chat platform on which to receive online tips.  The method you choose, whether one or a combination of several should be fitting to your company culture.

When choosing a third party provider, like your telephone answering service or call center, to take the calls ask them about maintaining the anonymity of the caller, provide them with your project scope and legally vetted script, get a toll free number assigned (which can be done by your telephone answering service), then go out and hire a PR firm to market the resource to your employees remembering that this is to have a positive impact on the company.

Often employees are reluctant to say anything about things they notice because they don’t want to be labeled as tattletales or snitches.  They want to be sure to remain anonymous.  Interestingly enough, when it comes to standing up for what’s right, when it comes to letting people know there may be a problem that needs to be addressed, we often shy away from being the voice that enlightens.  Enlightening someone that something may be amiss is not a bad thing…it’s a good thing.

Putting together an anonymous hotline for your employees to contact with their concerns is not a bad thing…it’s a good thing.  It’s not hard to do.  Get your team together, and when you’re ready, your telephone answering service and call center service should be able to provide the technical implementation which will help you and your employees protect the assets of your company.

###

Comments

comments