Can a virtual receptionist really benefit your business?

When some people think of a virtual receptionist, they often think of a call centre set up. They imagine some kind of battery farm system. Where their business’ calls are answered by anonymous reps who don’t understand their company, and are there simply to take down the names and phone numbers of people who call.

The reality is different. A virtual receptionist is an extension of your own team who understand your business and want to communicate and deal with calls. Essentially, they operate just like a receptionist would in a physical office, only they work remotely.

Hiring a virtual receptionist is a big decision, and it can be unnerving to hand your call answering over to a third party, especially if you’ve never used this kind of service before. There are several benefits to hiring a virtual receptionist that will allow you to spend less time stressing about missed calls, and spend more time on the things that will help your business grow.

The benefits of working with a virtual receptionist

It’s just a fact of doing business that you can’t always be available to answer the phone when it rings. You might be in the middle of a project, in a meeting or just simply not hear the phone ring. A virtual receptionist can easily help you deal with this problem.

For a start, they’re a dedicated resource to deal with your incoming calls, so you never need to worry about missing calls again. Because virtual receptionists work with you to understand your business, the customer will never know they’re talking to a virtual receptionist. As far as they’re concerned, they’re dealing with your company.

You can also use a virtual receptionist to extend your business’ opening hours, without committing yourself to working longer. Your virtual receptionist can provide an out-of-hours call answering service to take messages for you, or transfer urgent calls direct to you or a member of your team if that’s what you’ve arranged. They’re also much more cost effective than hiring a full-time member of staff and this is usually particularly beneficial for smaller businesses.

If you hire someone full time you also take on dealing with things like holiday and sick pay, plus pensions, plus everything else that comes with hiring staff and there wouldn’t be the need to worry about all the extra admin, you simply pay for the service you use.

Admin tasks like diary management and meeting booking, which can be a real hassle and time consuming headache for a business owner with limited time, especially when you’re trying to juggle multiple diaries.

Finally, and most importantly, a virtual receptionist can put a human voice behind your business’ call answering. How annoyed do you normally feel when you call a business looking for help and are met with a robotic answer machine or a generic message service?

Build a better customer service experience with a virtual receptionist

Customer service is at the heart of a good business. Customers aren’t choosing businesses based on product and price anymore. If a customer wants something, they can easily find a business to provide it. The value now is a business that provides a good customer experience. That experience starts from the very first phone call they make.

If you value growth, you’ll be ready to invest in every stage of the customer journey and ensure you’re providing value anyway your customer wants to contact you.