Answering Service Care’s New App Helps Franchise Owners Manage Calls, Texts and Follow-Ups, Anywhere
- Answering Service Care has enhanced its client services with a new mobile app.
- Through the app, franchise owners and operators learn of customer contacts and can respond quickly.
- ASC’s new app documents and organizes inbound and outbound communications: text messages, recorded phone calls and voicemails.
- Using the app, clients can review data whenever they wish rather than waiting for a monthly report.
- ASC clients can set up the app so calls are routed to the appropriate person, such as someone in billing or a technician.
- The app is available through the Apple App Store and Google Play.
Answering Service Care, which handles businesses’ incoming calls, emails, texts and live chats when the staff is unavailable, has upped its game with a mobile app that franchisees are destined to love.
“Franchise owners and operators rarely sit at one desk all day. They may be visiting locations, managing staff, helping customers, handling urgent issues or moving between jobs,” says Logan Shooster, vice president of strategic growth for ASC. “The ASC mobile app gives them a way to stay connected to their answering service account from their phone. They can review messages, monitor account activity, manage SMS conversations, place outbound calls from their business number, check reports and adjust certain account settings without needing to be at a computer.”
He adds that clients can access ASC through the service’s web app, too – and of course they can always reach the ASC team 24/7/365 by phone or email when needed.
Speed and Control
“Overall, the app gives franchise owners and operators more visibility and control,” Shooster says. “The ASC app helps the business stay informed, respond faster and manage next steps from wherever they are.” A Forbes article notes that if a business takes more than five minutes to respond to prospects, it will lose many customers. “Consumer expectations and options for 24/7 availability have supercharged the importance of speed-to-lead,” the article states.
ASC has been expediting business responses for 52 years, and its new app allows business owners and operators to even more quickly see what happened and react to assist customers, prospects, tenants or callers from anywhere via the app. In addition, the app can send notifications so the right person is alerted to a new message or account activity needing attention.
Various communications – voicemails, SMS conversations, any messaging that ASC has handled – are retained so the user can review interactions connected to the account. “This is powerful because the owner or operator can quickly understand who reached out, what they needed and whether follow-up is required,” Shooster says. Franchises with multiple employees and locations find this capability especially useful, he says.
Privacy was a consideration in developing the app, too, Shooster says. A franchise owner or manager can use the app’s dial pad to place an outbound call with caller ID showing the business’s phone number, not a personal one. The app also provides for two-way text messaging that involves the business number rather than a personal phone.
As a bonus, the app keeps business texts organized in one place and offers access to contact details, account association and the reply field so that important customer conversations are not scattered across personal phones. “If the customer texts back, that inbound SMS is now managed by ASC, where we can either deliver the SMS to our live agents, AI or even back to the franchise if needed,” Shooster says.
ASC App Functions and Features
- Access to recorded calls. If the ASC client has enabled call recording, ASC-recorded calls can be made available for playback. If ASC handles a call, the business may listen to that call afterward to confirm details, review service quality, train staff or resolve confusion.
- Contact and account management. This includes account users, business contacts, message relay contacts and on-call or escalation contacts. For a franchise, that means the right people are connected to the right types of calls. For example, an urgent service request is routed to an on-call technician, while a billing question goes to the office manager.
- Reporting view. This gives on-demand access to call and usage activity for summary reports, activity logs, usage by number, message relay reports, appointment reports and virtual call logs. “Instead of waiting for a scheduled report from ASC, an owner or operator can check activity from the app when they need it,” Shooster explains. “That can help them spot changes faster, such as a spike in calls after a storm, an increase in missed opportunities or heavier after-hours demand.”
- Notification preferences. Users control how they’re alerted. For instance, they may want alerts for new messages, SMS activity, secure messages or urgent updates. “The goal is to notify the right person quickly without interrupting others unnecessarily,” he says.
- Call control. For businesses using dispatching or on-call workflows, the app lets users set who should receive urgent calls and when. The “Hold My Calls” option lets the user temporarily pause calls for a chosen period, such as one hour, four hours or until a selected date and time. “This feature is useful when someone is temporarily unavailable but doesn’t want to change the entire account setup,” Shooster says. “A franchise operator might pause dispatching or hold calls if a technician is unavailable, a manager is in a meeting, a location is temporarily closed, weather makes service unsafe, or the business needs calls handled by ASC.”
Examples for 3 Types of Franchises
Shooster praises the app’s value for a wide range of franchises and lists three examples:
- Speed is crucial for a restoration franchise. If a homeowner discovers a broken water heater flooding the house at 10 p.m., ASC can answer the call, capture the details and route the urgent information to the right on-call person. Through the app, the franchise operator can immediately review the message and call back (with the customer’s caller ID showing the business number), permitting the franchise to respond promptly and land jobs.
- HVAC franchises must respond rapidly during extreme weather. If technicians are tied up in the field, for example, ASC can answer calls, collect the details and route urgent requests. The app enables the owner or dispatcher to respond appropriately while again showing the business’ phone number.
- After hours, in-home care franchises may receive calls about a scheduling concern or an urgent request for an update. ASC can send the information to the franchise operator so the operator can decide who needs to respond, a reassuring experience for inquiring family members.
For Further Information
ASC’s app is available through the Apple App Store and Google Play. Clients can also access ASC through the web app from a browser.
To learn more about the company, its services and pricing, visit the ASC website. Family-owned ASC constantly refines the customer experience after researching topics such as hold music, the accents of live agents and the use of artificial intelligence in handling calls.
