Call Center -- such as Level One Contact Center by RealPage (LeaseStar)

Does anyone use a Call Center to answer emergency and non-emergency calls?

Do you give the Call Center the authority to approve and assign work orders?

Are you charged a certain amount per minute for each call, on top of a monthly fee?

I was told that the set up fee for LevelOne Contact Center is $300, plus an annual cost of $1/unit, but it doesn't make sense to me that Level One would answer ALL my calls and emails for only $150 per year (I have about 150 units). My guess is that there is an additional charge per call/email.


LEVEL ONE:
"We handle and deliver emergency and non-emergency requests, 24/7/365. Our dedicated phone line ensures no calls are missed, minimizing potential resident frustration. Immediate and thorough electronic logging of all maintenance requests gives you extended visibility into your service operation. Prioritization, routing and acceptance of emergency tickets ensures you always have the right staff on the right ticket at the right time. Following-up with residents on closed tickets to ensure proper completion leads to higher resident satisfaction levels."

"Level One can help you to capture more leads and lease more apartments by effectively answering your advertising-generated leasing phone calls, emails and chat. We work as an extension of your onsite leasing team and we’re available 24/7 to answer questions, set appointments, and help sell your properties to potential renters. The marketing associates at Level One who answer your prospect calls aren’t ordinary contact center employees – they’re professionally-trained, multifamily leasing specialists."

I have seen some call centers that worked very well and I have seen others which were not so good. I guess the difference is how well trained the team on the call center is, how much is the management of the call center is involved. I find the best call centers management is working with the client that bought the service on a daily basis to find out if there were any dropped balls and are always working on improving their service. When there is teaming between the client and the service provider it is normally always a win, win!

What makes me crazy is when I call in for 'tech support' for anything, I realize that I have called outside the country and am speaking with someone who does not speak english very well and is reading from a script..... That is always why I ask the the person I am speaking with what time it is where they are. This way, if they respond with a time that is outside of a 4 hour time difference, I can quickly tell if the person I am talking with is likely even here in the CONUS. If I get a response outside the time window; I ask to speak with someone that is physically in the US.

Working with a call center is not a problem, unless that call center is not located in the CONUS and uses people that do not speak English very well. Using tech support via live chat and remote access (Norton does this regularly) is okay.

If I am on a call directed from Level One and a second call comes through that is answered by a Level One operator, will the second call be recorded as forwarded back to Level One?