Answering Services: The Modern Secretary

Today’s answering services are a far cry from the options available several decades ago. In reality, the answering service choices you have today are much like a modern secretary. Answering services predate cell phones and pagers and were initially used in the healthcare industry. Doctors who were away from the hospital and needed to be reached at home for emergency calls needed a dispatch service.

An Early Connection

During the 1950s, doctors who needed to be reached at home were often contacted by their local neighbors and alerted to an important call. Ladies who lived along the route of a particular doctor were paid a small fee to hold signs along the roadway to attract the attention of a doctor driving home from work. Thanks to tech developments a few years later, housewives were able to stay indoors and let pagers do the work.

The Use of Technology

Early pagers didn’t reveal a phone number to contact, but rather signaled an emergency situation through a beep. Radio frequencies made it possible for the pager to “talk” or communicate a voice message from the answering service. The development of digital paging made it possible for alphanumeric contact and the delivery of text messages to a recipient. As this happened, an answering service got away from taking messages through pen and paper and moved to computerized messaging systems.

The Future of Services

As technology has continued to impact the role of answering services. Voicemails make it possible for a caller to leave a message directly with an intended recipient with a caller ID revealing where the call originated. Voice over Internet Protocol allows calls to be transferred to anywhere in the world, letting answering services handle an expanded call market without poor quality or excessive costs.

An answering service is a cost-effective way to keep your clients or consumers in close contact with your organization. If you want some extra help handling your communications load, consider the benefits of this modern secretary.