Somebody answer the phone!

Somebody answer the phone!

Somebody answer the phone!

For businesses across the world, showing a professional and fast response to all customer enquires is absolutely essential. If your telephone number were to ring and ring unanswered, and if emails were to go unresponded, clients and prospective clients alike would very quickly become frustrated and take their business elsewhere.

This means that companies need to ensure a receptionist is available to deal with all incoming enquiries and to route them to the correct destination. Employing a full time receptionist can often be costly it's another person's salary to consider. The alternative option would be for workers in other roles to attempt to answer calls in addition to their existing responsibilities. This can often be counterproductive, with skilled professionals distracted by customer enquiries, sales calls and wrong numbers. Not only that, but if you employ a person on a high wage for one purpose, would you really want to waste their time doing the job of someone in a much more junior role? This would be an expensive use of your resources and can reduce employee job satisfaction, encouraging your workers to look for a position elsewhere where their responsibilities would better suit their skills and experience.

So if you don't want to employ a receptionist, and if you don't want highly skilled, highly paid professionals being distracted from their regular responsibilities, what other choices do you have?

It may feel like you have no further options, but there is one more possibility for you to consider - contract an external company to answer the phone for you. By doing this, you pay less than you would if employing a full time receptionist, and you don't distract your current workers with tasks that they aren't suited to.

Virtual receptionists are easy to arrange. You simply need to ensure that the contact number you give to clients routes to the office of the virtual receptionist. When someone calls you, the receptionist will answer using the name of your business, and then forward the call to the relevant person within your organisation. Some people feel discouraged at this prospect: how will the virtual receptionist know who to pass the call to? How will they know when people are on holiday? You should remember that virtual receptionists are specialists at what they do. They can be told who to route calls to under specific circumstances. It's also usually possible to email your virtual receptionist when people are unable to work due to sickness, or are working from home. Alternative contacts or numbers can be pre-arranged so that the call will always be answered and directed to the correct place.

Virtual offices don't just provide telephone answer services, they often also help maintain your diary. For example, a virtual office used by a medical firm such as a doctors or dental surgery would also provide patient appointment scheduling. The receptionist would speak with the patient, check your diary and arrange an appointment. This would then be added to the doctors/dentists diary.

First impressions are a very important aspect of all businesses and ensuring that your customers receive the very best attention from the moment they first come into contact with you is crucial. Likewise, when a customer or prospective customer calls you, all enquires must be dealt with professionally and courteously. Virtual receptionists are specialists in their field; they are experts at ensuring the correct first impression is given. Providers of this type of service know how to look after callers it is, after all, their business, and were they to represent your company in a bad light, they would soon lose their own customers and go out of business. If you are unsure whether or not to employ a full time receptionist, make sure you've considered all of the alternatives.

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