We are occasionally asked about Update Time. What is it and when is it charged??

With all of our rate plans, the price quoted is always for "Operator Talk Time". Operator talk time is just that, time an operator spends answering your calls and delivering your messages. Occasionally, a client needs us to perform work for them beyond the scope of answering calls and this is generally what we refer to as “Update Time ”.

For example, some real estate firms have us keep a database of their property listings. Property listings are used by our operators to determine which agent should receive a particular message. Callers generally are asking about a certain property, so our agent reviews the property listing to determine which agent is handling that property and dispatches the message to the appropriate agent.

Additional properties are added every month to the listings, some properties are deleted because they are sold and on occasion the agents assigned to properties change. For these reasons, the property list needs to be "updated", a process which can sometimes take several hours to complete, depending on how many changes are necessary. These changes are performed by our staff and we bill "update time " for this work.

Another common example of update time is a client who asks us to change their on-call schedule. While most of our clients now perform this task themselves through our Client Web Access without any charge, occasionally clients will find it more convenient to just call in to have us make the change.

Another example of update time are instances where the information you provided us when you first started your account changes. This may be because you have moved to a new office and need us to update your address or perhaps we are handling new and different type of calls where the instructions on how to process these particular calls needs to be added.