More Than A Number

Today, plastic is a common part of our lives, from the toys that our children play with to the display cases in which we store our most treasured items. However, this is only a recent advance in human history; plastic has evolved a long way from its rather humble origins. One of the earliest forms of this material was the polymer known as celluloid.

Created from cellulose and alcoholized camphor, celluloid was invented in 1868 by a man named John Wesley Hyatt. Although the material was originally invented to serve as an artificial ivory in billiard balls, it is perhaps best known for the significant role it played in both still and motion photography.

Today, plastic can be formed into almost limitless shapes and varying levels of harness, used for shopping bags and die cast display cases alike. However, celluloid remains an important step in the evolution of this material.

Miniature helmets are a great way to collect and display autographs from your favorite athletes and celebrities if you or someone you love is passionate about sports autograph collecting. However, collecting mini-helmets can be overwhelming if you do not narrow the scope of your collection. For example, animal lovers may choose to collect cats, while doll lovers can choose to collect Barbie Dolls. Similarly, a sports fan interested in starting an autograph collection can select a specific team or the teams of a particular city or region.

Collecting these autographs creates unique and valuable pieces of memorabilia for personal use or profit. A properly displayed autograph makes a decorative addition to one’s home or office and preserves memories of your favorite athletes. After all, why spend the time and money purchasing mini-helmets and gathering autographs only to place them out of sight in plastic boxes of storage. Make the most out of your autographed mini-helmets and showcase them around your home or office by displaying them in high quality ball qube display cases.

If you’re thinking about outsourcing your answering services or call center services, it is important to find a company that will create a custom solution that is tailored to fit your business. For example, not all answering service companies are equipped or experienced to handle emergency calls.

The telephone answering service you use must have the knowledge and tools to handle your specific work load. Select an answering service company with experience in various professions and industries. When it comes to screening calls, for example, many companies offer more than just screening for urgent and non-urgent calls. You can receive comprehensive contact center solutions with services built to screen calls the way you need them to be screened.

Answering services are available for the following industries: customer support, help desk services, order fulfillment, referral services, event registration, subscription renewals, and literature requests. Select a company that offers a full range of answering service solutions, whether you need doctors answering service solutions or event registration services.

If you want to show off your collection to the rest of the world, it is important to design an outstanding display. Whether you own a fancy teacup collection or a sports memorabilia collection, the following is a quick guide to making an impact with your collection display.

Choose one item as your centerpiece. Whether it is a signed baseball in a ball qube display case or a rare porcelain doll in a glass dome, place the object on the top shelf of a cabinet or above the fireplace. Make sure it is the first object people notice when they enter the room. Once they are attracted to the first object, the will be drawn to check out the rest of your collection.

Provide adequate lighting. Even if your prized possessions are neatly showcased in clear display cases, the wrong lighting can ruin the entire display. You can choose from a variety of recessed lighting, under-shelf halogen lights or simple table lamps to make sure your collection is well-lit.

Group items of similar size and visual appearance. To create balance and symmetry, arrange similar objects together. Grouping things together always creates a pleasing arrangement and avoids the cluttered or scattered look.

Last month, Columbine Health Systems in Colorado launched a telehealth monitoring system at its Fort Collins and Loveland facilities designed to help patients with recurring or frequent medical problems better deal with their health challenges and avoid serious and expensive emergency medical treatments down the road.

The customer support services program is designed to target senior citizens, with a goal of keeping the elderly in their homes and out of managed care situations.

“Our average age is around 85 years old,” said a company spokesperson. “It’s about helping them to better manage their health and doing it at home helps them be in charge of their life. They all want to stay in the least restrictive environment as long as possible.”

Each patient in the customer support solution receives a home monitoring system that allows them to check their own vital signs. These home units are hooked up to the telephone or an Internet connection, and feeds the basic information to a local call center, where nurses can monitor the results and call for emergency intervention if necessary or recommend appointments with doctors for less-serious conditions.

Voicemail has been an invaluable resource for many a call center solution for decades. But where did this technology come from? In terms of the “inventor” of voicemail, there is no real answer for that. It is, of course, impossible to prove who first came up with the concept that made the inbound call center system viable. If you are going by terms of who made a commercially useful product, invention of voicemail could be considered something of a tie between Xerox Palo Alto Research Center and IBM. However, commercially viable and commercialized aren’t the same thing. Voicemail became popular in the corporate sphere thanks to the efforts of Octel Communications. The first manufacturer to integrate voicemail with a PBX system was ROLM Corporation; this also played a major role in the commercialization of the technology. Now a corporate and call center staple, there were many “cooks” involved in voicemail’s invention.

Many people just leave their electrical extension cords in a giant bundle somewhere. Perhaps it’s in a wad in the corner of their garage. Or maybe it’s in a big pile inside several wholesale plastic containers. No matter where, most people don’t put much thought into the care of their electrical extension cords.

And this is a problem, because improper storage of these items can be a significant problem. There are several reasons that people should take better care of their extension cords beyond keeping their houses and work areas clean:

• Electrical fires: Electrical cords which have been damaged can be very dangerous if used. One simple short could start an electrical fire that might burn down an entire house or business.
• Heat damage: Few people know that extension cords are very sensitive to heat. Storing them haphazardly in a hot area or near a heat source can melt the external cover or internal wiring.
• Malfunctions: Beyond being dangerous, having an extension cord malfunction can be a major headache when you realize too late that the important piece of equipment won’t work because your cord is damaged.

One easy solution to this problem is a product like Pioneer Plastics’ CordGrip, which winds electrical cords and keeps them organized. It’s a wonderful piece of plastics injection molding that will keep your extension cords safe and secure.

An outsourced call center doesn’t need to be the only solution for a medical office. In fact, a growing trend in the industry is for in-house call centers to fill in the gaps in their customer support solution by turning to outsourcers to provide value-added extension services. Here are some of the valuable services that contracting with an outsourcer can provide to your call center:

• Overflow support: Even with a well-planned internal call center, there will be times when the number of calls is greater than the capacity of the staff to handle them in an efficient manner. Phone answering services can be contracted to handle calls once they reach a certain threshold, avoiding overworking in-house staff and keeping callers on hold.
• After hours support: Your in-house call center might be able to handle calls during normal business hours, but what about calls on nights and weekend? For a medical office, the caller on the other end of the line could have an emergency and not be able to wait for someone to return a voice mail message. An after hours answering service – especially one staffed by trained nurses – can help patients get medical help quickly anytime.
• Foreign language support: With the demographics of the United States rapidly changing, it can be difficult to have staff available to handle questions in the wide range of native languages of your patients. Call centers can be set up to handle questions from speakers of specific languages to ensure they are getting the most accurate information possible.

These days, there are magazines that cover pretty much every industry and interest. So is it much of a surprise that there is a publication dedicated to those looking to craft a better call center solution? Call Center Magazine is an online journal that is dedicated to providing information that professionals working in the customer contact arena can use to make their job easier. Both outbound and inbound call center professionals will find useful articles, tips, and research. The publication can also provide insight for those looking to outsource their call center — after all, it’s always better to make an informed decision. Past issues of the magazine dating back to 1999 are archived on the website for you to peruse. With so much helpful information available and no subscription fees to be seen, Call Center Magazine is a valuable resource for anyone looking to learn more about customer contact.

When it comes to contracting an answering service to handle overflow and/or after-hours calls, order fulfillment, literature requests, and more, there are several options, one of which is a virtual call center. A virtual call center is most often staffed by employees who work out of home offices around the country rather than in one central location.

There are a number of advantages and disadvantages to this model. On the plus side, the call center can provide cheaper labor because it doesn’t have to maintain an office. Informal research also suggests that work-from-home employees have more work experience, enjoy greater job satisfaction, and are more willing to help callers. On the other side, however, the lack of a structured work environment could, in some cases, also lead to a decrease in productivity and quality of service.

If you plan to contract a virtual call center, be sure to ask them about training, performance monitoring, and whether they offer analytics for you to track to ensure that the quality meets your standards. Be sure that the service provider can also scale the service based on your future needs. A virtual call center isn’t for every business, and performing due diligence is an unassailable component of making the right decision.