A virtual receptionist is someone who takes care of your phone and handles related communication, but they don’t sit in your office. They work remotely. In that sense they are virtual, even though their work is very real.
Here are the three key benefits of using a virtual receptionist.
If you have one on-site receptionist and two calls come in, only one can receive immediate attention; the other waits. This may be okay for two calls, but what if six come in at once? Five will have to wait, a few of them for quite a while.
To combat this you could hire a second receptionist, but what happens when the phones aren’t busy or no calls come in? You still have to pay them, even though there’s no work for them to do.
Not so with a virtual receptionist. If no calls come in, they’re not on the clock; you pay nothing (except for a small monthly service fee). When calls come in, they work and you pay them for their time. And if many calls come in at once, the virtual receptionist service automatically scales up to handle them, quickly and efficiently.
Virtual receptionist services will help you grow your business to its full potential. Making sure you're available for new opportunities is key. More business, more sales, happy customers. All things that are within your reach using a call center amplify your customer service and availability.
A virtual receptionist is scalable; your in-house receptionist is not.
What are the total employment costs of one full-time employee? In addition to pay, you provide benefits, including expensive medical insurance. Then there are vacations, sick time, and personal days.
Next add in breaks and lunches. Someone else needs to cover all of this. Plus, your office is likely open more than the standard 40-hour workweek, so you need a part-time, backup receptionist. Then factor in ancillary costs, such as overhead, desk space, equipment, human resources, management, and the list goes on and on.
The total cost for one receptionist is tens of thousands of dollars each year.
With a virtual receptionist, all those employee costs go away. Gone. Instead you pay a small value-based fee for the actual time worked each month.
Although this varies with each company and the number of calls, the typical charge is only a few hundred dollars a month, roughly a tenth of expensive in-house counterparts.
A virtual receptionist is a bargain; your in-house receptionist is expensive.
Your in-house receptionist works 40 hours a week, whether calls come in or not. Maybe the phone doesn’t ring when your receptionist is there. Then you have an expense but no work to show for it. What if the phone rings when your office is closed? That’s a missed call because no one’s there to answer it.
Yes, you could let voicemail get it, but most people won’t leave a message. Instead they’ll hang up and call your competitor.
All of these concerns go away with a virtual receptionist. Your virtual receptionist is available on demand, 24/7, including holidays. You can’t predict when your phone will ring, but with your always-available, on-demand virtual receptionist, it doesn’t matter.
Your phone will be answered any time of the day or night.
A virtual receptionist is always available; your in-house receptionist isn’t. Hiring a virtual receptionist puts real people to work for you and your company. Most service providers offer customized solutions for your front office support.
Mapping out your work flow beforehand is a good idea. It will help you identify gaps in service or productivity that the call center can help fix. Best of all, this can be done at a fraction of the cost of hiring and training in-house staff.
If you seek more from your ringing phone and want to pay less to accomplish it, a virtual assistant is the right answer for you.
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