One way to approach this problem is simply to increase reinforcements at the office. If your staff is too busy to attend to each customer’s phone call, outsource the job to someone who can just be responsible to do that. Opt for a live phone answering service to have a virtual receptionist take care of all the calls that come to your front desk. The virtual receptionists are trained to cater to your customer’s needs, have knowledge of the field you’re working in and often even think on the spot and do more than simply collect information. What’s more, a virtual receptionist will work 24×7 so even the calls that come after hours or over the weekend can be attended to. The following are some of the businesses that are known to especially benefit from a virtual receptionist service:
Transportation Services
Transportation services or even movers can benefit greatly from a virtual receptionist service. Say a client has an emergency and wants to book a vehicle for early the next morning. It’s one thing if you don’t have any vehicles to rent at such short notice. But if the client can’t even get through to you because there is nobody at the office after 7 pm, that doesn’t leave a great impression. With a virtual receptionist, the client can call at any hour and be sure to get through to a human being on the other end and not just a recorded message. You can even customize the script of your answering service and have virtual receptionists book appointments and take bookings.
Medical Practitioners
If you’re a doctor that works at a large hospital, your appointments are already taken care of by the department you work in. But if you run a private practice, people are coming to your office for you specifically and expect to deal with you directly. If patients can’t get through to doctors or if the doctor is inaccessible for a majority of the time, it’s not a good look for your practice. Patients should be able to book appointments whenever they wish to and it is the job of the front office to make it easier. With a live phone answering service, you can have the virtual receptionist book appointments, discern which calls are urgent to patch them to you directly and take down messages for the ones that can wait. You don’t miss a single call and don’t lose a single patient.
Law Firm
Similar to doctors, clients of law firms place immense faith in their lawyers. So if the lawyer is not easily accessible and if the client has to jump through hoops to get one phone call through, they will simply find a different lawyer to represent them. With a virtual receptionist, you will be more accessible to your clients, they will be able to contact you at hours beyond the stipulated 9-5 or at least get a message through to you if you are genuinely too tied up to attend a call. It is just reassuring for the client to speak to someone at the office and have their queries clarified.
Maritime Vessels
If businesses are having a hard time keeping track of phone calls on land, one can hardly expect the reception will be any better at sea. Shipping vessels and agencies can employ live phone answering services that function on land and have virtual receptionists man the phone for the company. The receptionists can provide clients with information like the status of shipping and transfer calls to specific individuals in charge of different vessels at the parent company.
Consultants
If you’re an IT consultant, management consultant or are in any field where you work as a freelance agent, a live phone answering service could be really beneficial for your work. Especially as a freelancer, you won’t have the backing of a staff or team to attend all your calls. Sometimes if you’re too busy, you may not be able to attend every call either. The virtual receptionist can step in and make your life much easier. Your live phone answering service could be the support you needed to take your services forward.
Accountants
Imagine it’s tax season and the phone is ringing incessantly. But being the busiest time of the year, you can’t attend to every call. But you wouldn’t want to miss out on potential clients either, right? Your virtual receptionist can book clients for you while you go through your back-to-back appointments and meet last minute deadlines for other clients. This way you can focus on more important matters while someone else deals with the logistical issues.
Household Services
If you offer household services, like plumbing, cleaning, pest control, etc, you’re probably booking appointments through the year. In your field, it’s very important to maintain business contacts and remain in the good books of families or households that give your contract for work. This is a way of ensuring they will call you and not some other contractor who works the area. But if they call you and are only being sent to your voicemail, it’s obvious they will have to find someone else to do the job. After all, that leaking faucet won’t repair itself. So find an efficient virtual receptionist to book your appointments while you’re busy doing other jobs and can’t answer the phone.
Home Businesses
If you run a small business from home, you probably don’t have the kind of support and staff to handle clients 24×7. A virtual receptionist will provide you with that backbone so you can spread yourself thin doing other jobs that will take your business forward. Meanwhile, the virtual receptionist can book appointments for you, take down messages and provide clients with relevant information like where to find your business online, directions to your workspace, etc.
Transitioning Businesses
If yours is a business that is growing and is in a period of transition, now would be a good time to get a virtual receptionist service. The virtual receptionists can also grow with your business and understand how you work and the direction you want to progress in. It is in your period of transition that work will increase and so will the number of clients. If the phone is ringing more often, that’s a good sign of growth. But you should also be equipped enough to answer that phone and provide satisfactory service to your clients.
Real Estate Agencies
Real estate agents are all about the sales. But how can you make a sale without great interpersonal skills and being accessible to the people you’re doing business with? Especially since the real estate market is so competitive, it is imperative that the phone is your friend and the virtual receptionist its spirit guide. Through the live phone answering service, you can have clients contact you whenever they wish to, confirm open houses and inch closer to a new sale even as you’re wrapping up a previous deal.
Final Thoughts
So those were 10 types of businesses that benefit the most from a virtual receptionist or a live phone answering service. The beauty of the service is that it’s on even when you are asleep and can actually be quite cost-effective. For example, if you were to hire an extra staff member on your payroll to attend to the telephone, you would owe payroll taxes every year. But with a live phone answering service, you can write off these taxes as a business expenditure, making it entirely tax deductible.
The service also makes your business sound more established. The first impression of speaking to someone who knows their job goes a long way. If the virtual receptionist is attentive and helpful and provides the client with the relevant support, even if it means you couldn’t come to the phone personally, it makes an impact. But most of all, you can take some time out of your busy schedule and just enjoy a few moments of leisure at home or away from work, knowing that the incessant ringing of the phone is being attended to.