6 Things You Didn’t Know About Hiring a Virtual Receptionist

If you’ve ever worked in an office, you know how often your office phone rings throughout the day. When the phone rings, you’re forced to stop what you’re  doing to answer the phone. Often times, you’ll need to take a message for an employee who is out of the office or you’ll transfer the call to their voicemail. We’ve all been there, and being interrupted throughout the day leads to decreased productivity over time.

Many companies are now using virtual receptionists instead of hiring traditional receptionists to help them screen calls and provide support to customers. The services provided by virtual receptionists are often misunderstood, and many business owners are hesitant to outsource this job to someone else. Despite working remotely, virtual receptionists can perform many of the same responsibilities as an internal receptionist. If you’re new to the idea of hiring a virtual receptionist, here are some of the benefits you can expect:

Available 24/7
When you hire a virtual receptionist, you’re hiring a team of trained professionals who are available to answer calls, take detailed messages and provide a live, friendly voice for your organization, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Virtual receptionists are able to provide after-hours support as well as support on holidays and weekends, and can escalate urgent calls when needed. Partnering with a quality provider of virtual receptionist services enables you to consistently provide top-quality support to your customers at all times.

Cost Savings
If you’re receiving a high volume of calls on a daily basis, hiring a virtual receptionist can help to save you money in the long run. Although your customers’ calls are extremely important, as a business owner, you don’t have time to handle them all. However, virtual receptionists are much more cost efficient than hiring an in-house receptionist. Instead of having to pay for recruitment, employment, training, insurance and equipment for a 30 to 40 hour per week employee, you’ll simply pay a monthly fee for the live agent services you need and use.

Increased Productivity
Directing your calls to a virtual receptionist can have a huge impact on productivity levels. Rather than having to stop and answer calls throughout the day, you’ll be able to focus on more important tasks while a virtual receptionist answers questions, screens calls and takes messages. When a call is transferred to you, you’ll know that the call is intended directly for you and that it’s something that needs your immediate attention. With a virtual receptionist you can have peace of mind knowing all of your calls are being handled professionally.

Improved Customer Service
Virtual receptionists go through extensive training on how to provide exceptional customer service. Custom scripts are developed so virtual receptionists are able to answer questions, take messages, transfer calls, and represent your business professionally when in-house staff are not available. Depending on account preferences, in many cases your customers won’t even know that they’re talking to someone outside of your business.

Multi-lingual Support
If you’re worried about a language barrier with your customers, it’s important to know that many virtual receptionists are based in the United States. Additionally, if you have a percentage of non-English speaking customers, there are virtual receptionists that are able to provide multi-lingual support. For some businesses, this is a huge advantage and an effective way to communicate with non-English speaking employees, customers or patients.

Reliability
When you work with a virtual receptionist, you eliminate the stress and headaches involved with making sure calls are answered or returned in a timely manner. Quality virtual receptionists have a well-developed staffing plan to ensure the best staffing coverage to all of their clients. Their goal is to make sure all calls are answered so that your customers never have to deal with voice-mail.

Virtual receptionists provide many benefits and are more cost-efficient than hiring someone in-house. With a virtual receptionist you’ll also benefit from their extended hours and broad knowledge about the job. Hiring a virtual receptionist can be an integral tool to help you grow and expand your business without having to take on the additional responsibility of hiring another full-time employee.

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Related Links:
The Growing Trend of the Virtual Receptionist Service
How To Best The Competition – Use A Quality Answering Service