As a business owner (especially a small business owner or freelancer) your time is precious and you need to be able to spend it on the things that will benefit your business.
Whether it’s working with customers, or spending time winning new business, these are the tasks that will benefit you in the long run.
But you’ve also got a lot of other tasks on your plate.
Admin, paperwork, ad hoc jobs that inevitably come up and distract you.
And phone calls.
Dealing with calls properly is essential for a business owner. Every call could potentially be a new customer, or an existing customer looking for support.
Missing the call or letting it go to voicemail could cost you and your business money, and your reputation.
But constantly stopping what you’re doing to pick up the phone can end up taking all of your day, and when you’re answering calls from salespeople, it’s taking time away that could be better spent elsewhere.
Hiring a virtual receptionist could be one answer to this problem.
Here’s why.
1 – You get your time back
As we’ve said, constantly being dragged from what you’re doing to answer the phone can take up a lot of your time and distract you from jobs that will benefit you and help you grow your business.
Instead of trying to deal with every call, a virtual receptionist can answer calls and take messages so you can deal with them later.
This stops you from missing calls that could cost you business, and gives you the time to focus on what matters.
2 – Save on full-time staff
You might think a good investment to your phone answering is to hire a receptionist.
And that could be a good solution.
But that means you’ll be paying at least a part-time wage, plus all the additional costs that come along with it like tax and pension contributions.
With a virtual receptionist you get the same benefits of hiring a regular receptionist, but you only pay for the services you use.
3 – Avoid nuisance sales calls
Whenever you start a business and register your company name or sign up to business services, you’ll quickly find yourself inundated with sales calls from people who’ve got your number from a list.
These calls are highly disruptive to your day and can be a waste of time.
With a virtual receptionist you can have these calls dealt with so you don’t have to waste that time.
Plus, you could use your telephone answering service to have you removed from these lists so you don’t have to deal with similar calls in the future.
4 – Benefit from a lead qualifying service
You might not think of it, but a good virtual receptionist can act as a lead qualifying tool so you only deal with sales calls that are likely to become customers.
By providing your lead qualification Q&A to your virtual receptionists, they can take leads through the process and determine whether they’re sales ready, or need more information.
Anyone who qualifies as sales ready could then be forwarded to a sales person, while others can be directed towards more useful information.
This not only increases your chances of closing good leads, but saves you time on sales calls with people who aren’t ready to buy from you yet.
5 – Save your reputation for customer service
When a customer calls with a problem, they expect someone to pick up the phone.
Even if the issue isn’t resolved immediately, customers feel reassured when they’ve spoken to someone and know their issue is being dealt with.
With a virtual receptionist you’ll never need to worry about missing any calls, and risking your reputation, because your receptionists will deal with all calls for you.
Depending how complex the issue is, your virtual receptionists could even resolve the problems with the customer, so you can focus on the more challenging problems.
Get your business growing with better call management
Telephone answering is one of the most overlooked parts of being in business.
With so many means of communicating with customers (whether it’s emails, messages or chat bots) simply having a human pick up the phone, and the reassurance this offers to customers can be easily underestimated.
If you’re spending more of your time dealing with calls that aren’t providing value to your company, it might be worth investing in a virtual receptionist.
The time and money you’ll save in the short-term could pay dividends for your business’ growth.
