All businesses regardless of the size have one thing in common – they need help. But what if your budget doesn’t allow you to hire the help your business so desperately needs? The next the best thing would be to outsource certain aspects of your business to a third party, such as investing in an answering service (virtual receptionist) to become your personal assistant.
An answering service can fulfill many roles, as long as they fall under the phone answering umbrella. Aside from the standard ‘answering the telephone and taking a message routine’, many answering services have taken on the role of a receptionist: transferring calls, scheduling appointments and even providing basic information just as a fax number or address to callers.
Is there a difference between an answering service and a virtual receptionist? There most certainly is: an answering service immediately says to your caller that you are offsite and employed to represent a company in their absence while a receptionist creates an imagery of the person sitting at the front desk of a particular business. In some cases it is best to have your caller know when they are speaking to the answering service: such as with medical accounts, and there are other instances when the answering service may need to play the role of the receptionist: small businesses often take this route.
But, why use a ‘non traditional’ method to fulfill such a ‘traditional’ task? Well there are the obvious reasons such as:
- To save money
- To elevate work load
And then there are other benefits of having a virtual receptionist such as:
- Live 24/7 customer service representatives
- A disaster recovery/backup plan
- Great customer experience
- Higher customer satisfaction rate
Since 1974 Answering Service Care has offered quality customer service to our clients and have successfully offered our services under as the receptionist.
Why Hire A Virtual Receptionist?
Most callers would rather speak with an in-house representative – someone who they believe is sitting at the front desk. But the business world has changed, and the simple truth is one person can no longer handle all the calls a business will receive – remembering the fluctuating in average daily call volume.
Seeing that the customer service portion of your business is perhaps the most uncomplicated aspect to outsource – doing just that can accelerate your business’ success. By simply providing an answering service with the necessary information: such as address, fax number and basic company information, you can seamlessly migrate all or a portion of your customer service to an answering service and allow them to become your virtual receptionist.
For more information about hiring a virtual receptionist, contact one of our Business Development Consultants at 800.430.6511.
