Virtual receptionist services - The benefits

Your customer care department is one of the most important units of your business. Customers always prefer associating themselves with businesses that demonstrate efficient and reliable customer care. Hiring a full time receptionist can be expensive especially for small businesses. As a result, a virtual receptionist service provides some great benefits and is one of the best options for small businesses that are keen to give their customers quality customer care but at a lower cost. The main goal of hiring a receptionist is to make the business operations easier and more efficient. Virtual receptionist services will not only provide quality customer care but will do so at a lower cost. Below are 5 money saving benefits that a small business can gain by using a virtual receptionist services.

1. Quality and efficient response

One main benefit of using the services of a virtual receptionist is that you will never have to worry about customers not getting a response. Virtual receptionist don’t go for a break or vacation. They are always there to attend to your customer needs and queries. Your customers will always get a response regardless of the time that they call. Your phones lines will always be on to clients provided they call during hours of operation. You will never have to worry that your customer calls will not be answered when the receptionist goes for a lunch or bathroom break. When receptionist goes for maternity break or vacation, most businesses usually have a problem finding a suitable replacement. However, that is not the case with virtual receptionist services. This is because they will always be available when you need them and will provide quality customer care services to your clients all year through.

2. No employee salary or training costs

Hiring an employee to answer all your customer calls will force you to spend a lot of money on salaries, taxes as well as overhead expenses. A recent report revealed that the annual salary of a receptionist is around $40,000 per year while that of a virtual receptionist is as little as $45 a month. When you hire the services of a virtual receptionist, you will not only gets quality and reliable services, but you will also save thousands of money that you could otherwise have used on salary. In addition to paying salaries, receptionist needs to be trained on a regular basis to make them efficient and productive. Training them means that you will have to dig deeper into your pocket. The bad thing is that you will have to repeat the training process all over again when the employee quits the job. A virtual receptionist service will train their own staff and if they leave then it will be their responsibility to replace them, it won’t be on you. This will help save you a lot of money that you can channel to the business to make it more productive and efficient.

3. Lower costs and better service

How many times has your receptionist been interrupted by other things? How many times has the customer been put on hold for a long period of time? The answer to this is obvious. Staff can lose focus and this can negatively affect your business. When customer realize that they are actually been put on hold for along period of time, they will get annoyed and may decide to look for another option. The best solution to this is by hiring a virtual receptionist services. Being professionals, they will answer all incoming call on time and forwards them to various departments or person within the shortest time possible. This will not only lead to customer satisfaction but will also enable business operations to run smoothly. Less time wasted means that less operational costs.

Hiring a virtual receptionist can be significantly cheaper than hiring an in house telephonist. Many of our customers have reported back to us that they are saving a significant amount of money with some saving up to 50% of the cost of an in-house staff member. For smaller businesses that don't need a full time reception person the saving is not so much the cost of answering those calls but the time saving because you and your staff don't need to answer them all. Think of how much more work you can get done if you don't need to answer those calls. Also, think of how much more money you can make by focussing your time on what you do best and on servicing your customers better.

The average VirtualOffice.Melbourne customer spends around $120 per month for their service. This is a small amount to pay for the peace of mind and additional time that they get back from utilising our service.

4. Flexibility

Growing businesses need to be able to adapt quickly. As you bring in new product lines and launch new marketing campaigns you need to be sure that you have the resources available to cope with the incoming calls and enquiries. If you are not there to take a call then you will potentially lose that business. When you engage Virtual Office Melbourne to answer your incoming calls you get the flexibility to expand your workforce at a rapid rate. When you have the work coming in we will have the team there ready to take those calls. When those incoming calls drop off then you will not have any costs to pay. It makes it a lot easier than trying to cope with those work fluctuations with internal staff members.

5. Cut equipment/technology costs

Having your own receptionist for your small business means that you will have to spend a lot of money on receptionist equipment. This include investing in expensive phone call systems and technology. In addition to that, you will have to upgrade the system from time to time in order to satisfy the current customer demand. However, that is not the case when you hire a virtual receptionist. They will use an external system to look after your calls.

When you are setting up your own receptionist team it is not just the capital cost that you are up for. Think of all the time that goes into sourcing all of that equipment, doing your research on which is the best item to get and then negotiating with suppliers to get the best possible deal. Outsourcing to a telephone answering company gives you a huge benefit in that you don't need to spend all of that time and you can redeploy that time to more business focussed things like building your business or spending time on strategy.

6. No maintenance costs

If you have an in-house receptionist, you will have to deal with the reality that your IT equipment will need maintaining and always has the potential to experience technical hitches. To keep them in good condition, you will be forced to spend a lot of money on maintenance costs plus you may need to have contracts in place for maintenance or call out agreements with specialist technicians. When you outsource your telephone answering however, you will not have to worry about these maintenance costs because you use the services of a virtual receptionist. Using their services will help you save a lot of money that you could otherwise have used maintaining equipment.