Answer Midwest Employee Spotlight: Chrissy Pollock

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Here at Answer Midwest, we love making sure that our clients’ customers are always taken care of and have all of their needs fulfilled. This wouldn’t be possible without our amazing staff, who are always happy and serve our clients’ customers with enthusiasm and a smile on their faces, no matter what time of the day or night. Our Employee Spotlight this month showcases Chrissy Pollock, Senior Dispatcher and soon to be our Office Manager here at Answer Midwest!

Chrissy has been with Answer Midwest for 4 and a half years and has worn several hats while at the company. “I’ve been in training for about a year now on all aspects of running the office,” she says. “I do account programming, the first level of employee performance reports, call-handling, dispatching, and I am also responsible for several reporting functions as well as being the trainer for new employees and new customers learning our systems.”

Chrissy has never been short on ambition and is always in pursuit of knowledge and self-betterment. “There are lots of other things that I’m training on!” said Chrissy. “Basically, I want to be able to know everything there is about keeping this office running smoothly for our Answer Midwest team and for our clients.”

A native of Wood River, Chrissy grew up spending time with her twin brother Chris and racing soapbox derby cars as a child. “I was on the news once when I won a trophy, which was almost as tall as I was,” she said. “That was a pretty cool thing for a kid!”

Chrissy graduated from SIU-E and studied social work, criminal justice, and business at the university. She chose to work at Answer Midwest because she wanted to work with people in an office setting and was looking for a job that would match the need she had. “My best friend Tess had worked at Answer Midwest while she was in school, too, and she told me that it was a great place to work,” said Chrissy. “She was right – I love it here!”

More specifically, Chrissy loves the people most when at her job. “I love both the people I work with as well as the long list of different companies and callers,” she said. “I also enjoy being able to learn new things and share ideas here!”

Chrissy has been married to her husband, Don, for 8 years and together they have two dogs, Leroy the basset hound and Stitch the Shih Tzu. “My husband has been my rock through so many trials – we really are soul mates!” she said. “We don’t have children currently, but we both love kids and definitely see them in our future.”

When Chrissy isn’t happily assisting our clients’ customers or her coworkers, she can be found reading, crocheting blankets, or camping or fishing with her husband. An avid baseball and St. Louis Blues hockey fan, Chrissy also loves to watch her twin brother Chris race on the dirt tracks at TRI City Speedway, being part of her cousin’s free haunted house, Mason Mansion, in Wood River, and being part of the Ladies Auxiliary in Hartford.

Want to know more about Answer Midwest? Call us at (618) 463-2430. We’ll pick up!

Hey, Health Care Professionals! Answer Midwest Is Now HIPAA Compliant!

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When you use any kind of service, you expect your information to be confidential and held with the utmost respect. This is especially true if you’re in the healthcare field, a field in which privacy is a must.

Well, we have great news for you then! Answer Midwest has now become totally HIPAA compliant and certified in order to better serve all of you in the medical industry!

All of our operators at Answer Midwest have just finished training and certification in become HIPAA compliant, so whenever you use our services, your clients will be greeted by HIPAA certified, friendly operators who are highly trained to gather private sensitive information and to dispatch messages promptly and accurately to your desired HIPAA compliant protocol! Each call includes detailed record-keeping and is digitally recorded for retention.

We also provide message encryption, which will protect your privacy and the privacy of your clients in both text message and email format! Doctors will now have the ability to send secure messages to others in their group and make notes on the messages that they receive right on the secure messaging app!

Best of all, all data files are sent and received securely among you and your staff and features text with fully-supported

SMS text messaging! All messages are secured with SSL encryption software and are safely stored on a secure remote server.

As an ever-changing industry, the field of healthcare and medicine depends on messages being delivered in a simple, quick, and secure manner, all while remaining compliant with HIPAA secure PHI regulation requirements. At Answer Midwest, you can be assured that your messages will remain secure and that you can access them instantly – 24/7!

Want to make sure that your company is ahead of the curve? Sign up with Answer Midwest, your full-service, 24/7 live operator call-handling service company!

Call us at (618) 463-2430 today!

Answer Midwest Wins the National Award for Excellence 12 Years in a Row!

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Here at Answer Midwest, we strive on a daily basis to make sure that you, our client, are receiving the best service possible. We make sure that every caller of yours is happy that they are doing business with you and that your every need is catered to and considered. We want to provide you with the highest quality of caller professionalism, service, responsiveness, and comfort, and we make it a point to reach for this goal on a daily basis.

How honored were we when we learned that we were being recognized and rewarded for our hard work!

The Association of TeleServices International has recently given us The Diamond-Plus Award of Excellence for customer service for the 12th year in a row! This is quite an honor for us all here at Answer Midwest. For the past twelve years, we have had to pass stringent testing by an independent panel of judges. The judges rated our call-handling skills in the realms of courtesy, accuracy, professionalism, response time, making our customers feel comfortable, and our overall service to our clients’ callers.

We are so proud to continue this tradition of quality and superior customer service and so honored to have received this award for the 12th consecutive year. Our goal each and every day is to make every single caller happy and satisfied that they are doing business with our clients, and that our agents, who continually train and are unwaveringly committed to our clients, provide the highest quality of service, responsiveness, and caller professionalism for our clients and their callers. To us, receiving this award exemplifies that we are adhering to our motto every day – “Real people. Real time. All the difference!”

If you’re looking for a full-service, 24/7 live operator call-handling service company that stands out from the crowd and provides you with superior service, then we are the company for you!

Give us a call at (618) 463-2430 for more information! Remember, our only limitation is your imagination!

The Rich History of Answer Midwest

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Hello, and welcome to our blog! We are very excited to be presenting our blog to you and hope that you will be back many more times to get great information and handy updates from us.

Answer Midwest has been serving customers happily for quite a long time, but we more than likely wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for Mrs. Margaret Weber accepting a very important position back in 1946. At that time, a local physician in Alton approached her and asked if she would be willing to answer his phones after office hours, hoping that by having someone real answering the phone the patients would not only be satisfied but they could also reach the physician in case of emergencies.

Margaret answered the physician’s phone through the phone in her residence and would take a message for each call she received. The physician had also left her with his detailed itinerary on where and how he could be reached in the event of an emergency. At that time, all that was needed was a telephone, a note pad, a pencil, and someone willing to work 16 hours a day and all weekend long.

The company survived and went through a series of different owners until it was sold to its current owners, Gary and Lee Ann Tedrick, in 1991. From 1946 up until 1991, a fully staffed and appointed office, including 3 operator consoles, 7 employees, and the latest state-of-the-art Telescan Advantage Plus IV paperless messaging system, have been at the service of more than 150 customers.

Gary, Lee Ann, and their daughter, Jennifer, bring a history of professionalism and diversity of business management skills to the business. Gary has a strong history of sales, customer service, and marketing, having begun in the corrugated industry with the Alton Box Board Company and moving to the telecommunications field. He had served as a systems consultant at Southwestern Bell and AT&T before moving to this family-owned business adventure.

Lee Ann has served as the administrative assistant for several business leaders in many different cities including St. Louis, Miami, Denver, and Kansas City, and she has honed her skills in creating an atmosphere of professionalism over the years.

Jen, who graduated Cum Laude from Greenville College with a bachelor’s degree in business management, worked as an assistant to the General Partner at Edward Jones & Company in St. Louis until 1994, when she came to Answer Midwest, Inc. She has worked her way up through the ranks, performing in every position available, beginning as a management partner-in-training. She is now Vice President of Answer Midwest, Inc.

We at Answer Midwest have worked diligently to improve the company as a whole since we took ownership. We have gone through several equipment upgrades and have kept our focus always on the satisfaction of our customers and on the quality of service that we provide them. We have added in-house monitoring as well as very rigorous monitoring from an outside agency to make sure that we keep the quality of services top-notch. Our dedication to the quality of service has garnered us a great deal of recognition, and we have recently been awarded the illustrious Award of Excellence for outstanding customer service for the past 12 consecutive years.

What brings us more joy and satisfaction more than any award is when a customer recommends someone to us or when a caller calls in for another company and are so impressed by what they hear that they want our services for their own business. That is a great feeling and makes all of our hard work worth it!

If you’re in need of a full-service, 24-7 live operator call-handling service company that will always provide you with top-notch services, then give us a call at (618) 463-2430! Our commitment is to YOU!