Alan Cairns explores the emergence of virtual receptionist services and their implications for customer service.
When you think of virtual receptionist services you might think of big businesses with thousands of customers. In fact, it’s often small businesses which have the most to gain from an out-of-hours call answering or order taking service.
Enquiries might be at an appropriate level at the moment, but if the number of enquiries and communications doubles overnight, production staff could find themselves suddenly are having their time sapped answering the phone or doing administrative tasks. If you want a business to grow then it is crucial to ensure that the business processes are scalable. A significant growth in enquiries could cripple other departments who have to bear the phone answering burden while salespeople are out following up leads.
Virtual receptionist services can take the weight off, and help with managing business communications. Missing a phone call could mean missing an important sale, and even if the most business comes from ecommerce, there are times when customers need more information before they can make an online purchase.
Virtual receptionist services are about more than passing on messages; it can involve diary management, order taking, scheduling, call patching, forwarding and more. It’s all about ensuring that communications are efficiently managed, and that no sales or business opportunities fall between the cracks due to poor administration.
Think about the amount of time that the business is currently unavailable by landline or mobile. If customers, suppliers or partners need instant answers, then call answering services might be the best way to ensure that these enquiries are dealt with professionally without impacting on other people’s time. Answering the phone can be time-consuming and distracting for employees, who may find their capacity to fulfill other work expectations suffers as a result. Out-of-hours phone answering services are also available, so work calls don’t need to be routed to a mobile phone to receive calls over the weekend. Virtual receptionists can either process calls themselves, taking orders or managing calendars, or route urgent requests to an alternative phone number.
Virtual receptionists can help professionals to make better use of their time, by screening calls and messages, organising diaries and even taking orders. For a business to grow, it’s essential to provide speedy and responsive customer service. Waiting until Monday to reply to a weekend enquiry might be the difference between making an important sale and not.
Alan Cairns writes on a number of subjects including project management, business communications and virtual receptionist services.
