When looking for a critical call handling service, there are certain things to look out for. I am going to present a set of 8 pillars that I believe that one should look for when approaching a company to provide this sort of service. This set of 8 pillars provides a sort of benchmark by which you can begin to get a feel of the strengths of the service that you are researching. Having worked for many years myself in Critical Call Management this is a very short summery of some of my conclusions.

Clients

A critical call management is based on its reputation, typically speaking; a good place to start is a company which already has a strong client list. This shows that respected business have already entrusted a significant part of their operations and the service has a quality track record.

Data Protection Registration

This one should go without saying, however since many firms don't actually do, it clearly needs to be said. For the legal certainty both for yourselves and your customers it is imperative in the current climate that you work with a service that is data protection registered and adheres to data protection best practices.

ISO 9001 Certification

Because it is critical support – these extra safeguards cannot be underestimated. The ISO 9000 series are an internationally recognised quality management certification. That has to be annually renewed via rigorous yearly auditing of procedures and performance.

Knowledge of client companies and client procedures

A critical call handling service must be used to being able to consider themselves a critical branch of their clients company and as such a good knowledge of their clients and procedures is important to be able to do the job.

Customer Responsiveness

The ability of the service to be able to respond very quickly to complaints, deal quickly and transparently with any issues and to be able to suite themselves to the needs of the customer is imperative..

Answering time

This is the first point of contact the end user will have with your company, a very fast answer time will certainly be more than a pleasant surprise. A fast answer time increases the likelihood that the call will not be lost or that the user will get fed up waiting and that they will put down the phone.

Call Recording

Call recording has become a modern imperative of any critical response system. It allows you verify calls and ensure service standards. Particularly for critical call response I strongly advise that you ask any candidate companies what call monitoring system they have and what quality assurance measures they have in place.

Channels of operations

An operational question to find out is to enquire what channels the service is able to receive call outs by. Are they only able to take phone calls, are they able to take call outs by SMS, emails, faxes, pagers?

Finally be aware that business operations change all the time. The internal and external environment particularly in a climate of changing legislation can mean that for many companies procedures are changing on a weekly basis. Critical Call Handling needs to be able to adjust and respond with one phone call or email