Archive for category: Blog

How does Answer Midwest generate the service and culture that defines us today? 

For us, our work starts with the backbone of Answer Midwest: our team. They are the ones who keep the day-to-day running, and we ensure our business supports them back. Whether it’s creating an environment that nurtures opportunity or generating a culture that regularly expresses gratitude and trust, we’re so proud of our family-like business community!

Leading with compassion – Value that flows from the top down

Building a culture where gestures of appreciation and trust are a daily occurrence doesn’t appear out of just anywhere. It’s a product of bringing the right people together and building a sense of family-like inclusion and positivity — starting with our leaders. 

Our leadership team works hard to ensure our team feels heard and valued. “I never worked for a company like this in my life,” says Taylor S., an Answer Midwest training manager. “With Answer Midwest, my quality of life has vastly improved.”

Through thoughtful gestures, like rewarding work successes with awards and incentives, and sending handwritten cards to team members during exciting and tough moments, we show our appreciation in many ways. 

Our leadership team also places high value on mentoring and providing support for our team to expand. The value the leadership team instills in Answer Midwest employees also transfers into how our team approaches our clients’ needs: with empathy, patience, and trust.

Building relationships with our clients – Why we love what we do

One of our team’s favorite aspects of working at Answer Midwest is helping another person every time we answer the phone. Whether it’s a person who’s upset over a flooded basement or someone needing help finding business information, our team shares our core values of positivity, empathy, and trust at each touchpoint.

“Every call is an opportunity to help somebody with something that’s important to them,” says Patti G., an Answer Midwest dispatcher. For our team, being able to feel good about the bigger picture of what their work means is an integral part of our team members’ approaches and satisfaction with work. 

Although our work is based on assisting others, our culture is built around supporting each other. Team members receive positive feedback for their efforts as well as offline resources to aid with the weight that can come from some of our clients’ calls. 

The Answer Midwest team’s efforts and strong customer service have earned us high accolades with the St. Louis Small Business Monthly: Best in Reliability and Family Business awards and the ATSI Award of Excellence for the past 22 years. 

Encouraging growth opportunities – Ensuring our employees’ future success

A family makes the effort to not only guide its members but also provide the tools they need to continue their positive, personal growth. The same is true for how Answer Midwest works alongside our team members to promote personal and professional success. 

Each team member can recount how fair compensation, incentives, recognition, personal fulfillment, and motivation combine to give them the push to take on new responsibilities, try new things, and be creative.

According to Luna P., one of our main dispatchers: “Answer Midwest helps you get where you want to go. I went from being at an all-time financial low point to now owning my own home.”

Find your home

If you’re looking for a place where you can feel valued, personally fulfilled, and have a sense of positive progression in life, come join our Answer Midwest team! With advancement opportunities, monetary incentives, a supportive workplace, and more, our team and our clients experience our family-like culture. 

Learn more about our award-winning team by subscribing to our newsletter and following us on Facebook and LinkedIn.

Now more than ever, people are searching for meaning and camaraderie from their workplaces. Companies that neglect to appreciate their team members can experience a loss of productivity, morale, and talent. By its very nature, a supportive, positive culture leads to increased peer-to-peer recognition, happiness, retention, engagement, and more!

As the Answer Midwest team knows, showing appreciation doesn’t have to (and shouldn’t) be reserved only for March 3’s official Associate Appreciation Day! We would like to share some of the things we do throughout the year to make our associates feel valued. We hope these spark ideas to help you show gratitude to your team members!

       1. Build Camaraderie

Nurturing peer-to-peer camaraderie is a great way to increase trust and collaboration among team members. Holding team celebrations and themed fun days are a couple ways Answer Midwest encourages our associates to come together and form friendships. Here are some highlights from the past year that show how our team celebrates each other’s successes, creativity, and unique personalities!

 

 

 

Team members let their creativity (and smiles) shine with a dazzling array of Valentine’s Day boxes during our annual competition!

      2. Give back

When a team takes time to help their community, they gain a greater sense of service and purpose by sharing their talents. Holding community service events at work throughout the year can be as simple as collecting food or clothing donations during the holidays. 

This past year, Answer Midwest shared our time with our community by holding a Reverse Advent Calendar donation drive. This event brought us closer together as we gave back to our community!

      3. Personalize praise

Celebrating individual team members’ contributions, successes, and roles within the company in a personalized way helps them feel recognized and appreciated. It also gives them the confidence and opportunity to grow!

For example, each month Answer Midwest highlights one of our team members on LinkedIn and Facebook. We also recognize our team in our newsletters and with letters of appreciation, in addition to rewarding them with compliment bonuses. Create opportunities for your team to applaud each other, like an internal shout-out board, to create a nurturing culture.

 

Year-long associate appreciation is crucial to building an environment that retains and satisfies its workforce, no matter your industry. A culture built on nurturing its team members also goes beyond the walls of the business to help the community and other businesses. We hope our examples of how we recognize and engage with our team have inspired you to integrate community service, personalized praise, and building a culture of camaraderie into your business!

Are you looking to make the Answer Midwest team a part of your team through our telecommunication services? Contact us today to experience our culture and expertise firsthand!

Self-improvement is more than setting one-time goals to achieve. It’s about the continuous learning goals one sets for themselves! And in today’s workplaces, self-improvement and growth are top-of-mind for many. 

A 2022 LinkedIn Workplace Learning Report found that employees’ top motivations to learn are connected to their careers. People are looking to stay up to date in their field and have learning opportunities tailored to their specific interests and career goals. 

With that said, our goal is to continue doing what we do best: fostering a company culture that encourages growth and supports our team to be the best versions of themselves every day. 

Here are four ways we support our team’s personal growth: 

1. Offer internal opportunities for growth. Providing a healthy work environment is only one factor in delivering great results in a 24/7 business. To encourage our team to grow alongside our business, we extend opportunities for our team members to be rewarded for their hard work with great benefits and competitive wages.
   
   On top of that, we offer rapid advancement opportunities, insurance options, a company-matching retirement plan, and more because we want our team members to strive for excellence in their careers and future.
2. Strengthen our company culture. Respect and appreciation are of utmost importance to our business. We operate on the golden rule — treat others as you would want to be treated. Luna P., one of our main dispatchers, says, “Everyone makes sure you feel good going to work. And if there’s something that makes you feel hesitant, the team is there to talk you through it.”
   
   With relationships built on trust and empathy, our team members can find a support system within the company and one another.
3. Provide flexible time off. We understand everyone has a life and commitments outside of work, which is why we offer a wide range of schedules that meet both our teams’ and our clients’ needs. At Answer Midwest, our teams are able to work from home, and we also allow team members to trade shifts when a need arises. We’ve found being accommodating makes everyone feel more positively about their work-life balance.
4. Support our team members’ hobbies. Being a 24-hour business means our teams work around the clock to provide award-winning service to our clients. Their dedication is what makes it all happen, so we make sure to celebrate successes big and small — in and outside of the workplace — with team spotlights and wins in our monthly newsletter and on our Facebook and LinkedIn. 

All in all, Answer Midwest strives to create a healthy foundation for everyone to reach their goals, pursue endeavors outside their comfort zone, and continually expand their knowledge of the world.

 

All businesses have needs. But sometimes, those needs extend to all hours of the day and night in the name of customer service. This is where our team at Answer Midwest shines. Although it no doubt gets tough with a team that runs 24/7, we also know it makes an incredible difference for our clients every single day.

As a truly full-time answering service, Answer Midwest has dozens of team members working hard to keep the lines of communication open between our clients and their customers. It’s a busy and sometimes stressful job, but we know our staff is our greatest asset. 

Our approach to customer and employee satisfaction is all about building relationships. Over the past 32 years, Answer Midwest has grown leaps and bounds, and we pride ourselves on fostering a healthy, happy workplace. Since we’re available and on-call all day, every day, our team must have that needed energy our clients require of us to provide to their customers.

As the saying goes, success is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. We’ve worked hard to cultivate a culture that is good for our clients and our staff. Learn more about the lessons we’ve learned that have helped us to create, build, and sustain the successful 24-hour business we are today. 

1. Show your appreciation — and show it often.
   One of the top reasons people leave a company is because they feel undervalued. If you don’t take care of your staff by recognizing their needs and making accommodations that are mutually advantageous to their lives and the company, you’re more likely to run into trouble.To show our appreciation at Answer Midwest, we provide flexible in-office and work-from-home capabilities, incentive programs to boost productivity, employee assistance programs, wellness resources for mental and physical health, and more.
2. Celebrate the wins!
   We don’t just provide 24-hour service for our clients. At Answer Midwest, we’re there for each other 24/7, cheering each other’s wins and consoling the losses. Caring for people is at the core of who we are. Here are some of our favorite ways to celebrate our team’s accomplishments both inside and outside of the workplace:
    
   • Honoring each other’s dedication and achievements.
   • Celebrate personal team member milestones and recognize the importance these moments have in their lives. At Answer Midwest, every team member is unique — and our leadership team ensures they are valued and seen!
   • Create a caring environment. We know when our team members feel they are in good hands and confident in their training, they can provide the highest level of quality client service. A win-win! 
3. Provide competitive compensation.
   We hinted at this earlier, but it takes more than just a positive work culture to retain talent. A recent survey from Pew Research Center stated that low pay and insufficient benefits were among the top reasons people left their jobs in 2021 amid the Great Resignation. While we strive to provide strong wages and benefits, we understand the importance of advancement opportunities, 1:1 mentoring and encouragement, and support for both personal and professional growth.

By keeping our team top of mind each step of the way as we grow, we know we can’t fail. We look forward to celebrating many more team successes, milestones, and opportunities as we move into the future together. 

Contact Answer Midwest today to find out how we can partner with your team to help your business thrive and find success! 

 

 

 

At Answer Midwest, our mission is to serve and support our clients to help them grow their businesses. How can we best do this? Through creating an award-winning culture that attracts the best employees—employees that are excited to represent our clients and their businesses. When our team members are excited to come to work, customers experience a more positive interaction. So, what does a focus on team culture look like? It’s truly so simple, but has an amazing impact:

Following the golden rule. Although it may sound cliché, we instill this idea – treat others as you would want to be treated – into all interactions with our team. Since team members feel respected and appreciated, they in turn are genuine to the callers with whom they speak on the phone.

Compliment bonuses. In addition to preaching kindness to each other, we also make it a point to reward positive interactions with customers. At our staff meetings, we give out $5 for each in-depth compliment that our employees receive from callers and clients. We are at a point where we hand out thousands of dollars at each meeting, as our team members continuously receive compliments for delighting our customers.

Flexible work situation. Many of our team members work remotely and have flexible hours – both are practices we implemented prior to the pandemic. We believe that employees who are comfortable in their work environment are happier and achieve better results. For us, flexibility for our associates is all about treating our team with respect and understanding the need for work/life balance.

Our customers tell us that they are surprised by the kindness and respect they receive from our team – and it’s because we strive to create a pleasant atmosphere.

Employees are so much more than just workers at Answer Midwest – they are individuals who matter. Investing in the culture of our team had done wonders for our business and that of our clients – what could a shift to a positive team culture do for your business?