Why Hiring a Virtual Receptionist is Good For Business Growth

Every business seeks growth to avoid being left behind by the competition. But this can’t happen when the most rudimentary business processes are taking up time.

There are various ways for a business to develop, however, a business does need to be pointed in the right direction to ensure positive expansion.

A business can expand through promoting their products and services, raising awareness about their brand, hiring a top quality expert to handle their some of their business activities (for example, call answering) and many other things that are beneficial to business development.

Most times, businesses, especially small businesses, lack the capacity to handle a large number of calls. As a result, this can have a negative impact on trade, including the loss of business, and lowered confidence concerning your business from the perspective of your customers.

All of this can lead to increased stress for you as a business owner. Luckily, there are ways to mitigate this situation, one of which is outsourcing your calls to firms that provide a call answering service.

Businesses can benefit in many ways by hiring a virtual receptionist to handle the high volume of calls they receive daily. Below, we take a look at the benefits that come with hiring a virtual receptionist.

Screening Your Calls

If your business is booming, you are going to receive tons of calls every day from marketing teams, managers, telemarketers, and inquiries from potential customers.

The absence of a virtual receptionist means you are going to be able to take on the majority of calls so as not to miss the most important ones. Some business owners make use of a voicemail to filter out their calls. However, this may present your brand negatively to customers and they may take your conduct as unprofessional or unattentive.

Hiring a virtual receptionist can alleviate such situations by helping you screen any incoming calls. They can answer many calls for you, following your instructions on what to say and what to do with all inquiries.

By hiring an expert to handle your calls and screen them, it saves you valuable time and you can avoid unnecessary calls that can easily be answered by your virtual receptionist.

Improved Customer Service

Virtual receptionists are trained to provide quality customer service and they are well equipped with the needed experience and skills to carry out the job to a high standard.

By tending each customer inquiry in the most professional manner, they make sure your customers are seen to properly and treated with respect.

This leads to improved customer satisfaction, which will greatly benefit the growth of your business. Positive reviews left by customers can only be beneficial and is bound to attract further business. 

Hiring a Virtual Receptionist Is Less Expensive

Hiring a virtual receptionist to answer your calls can save you money compared to hiring an in-house receptionist. A full-time receptionist will cost a lot more, considering the salary you will pay, plus leave, bonuses and allowances.

Hiring a virtual receptionist will only cost you a fraction of the amount, saving on overheads and costs concerned with hiring onsite.

Small businesses especially need to be mindful of their expenses, as the profit and loss margin can often be very thin. With a virtual receptionist, you only pay for minutes worked, and again, you do not have to worry about surplus allowances that come with hiring an in-house attendant.

Close More Deals

Most callers drop the call as soon as their call is forwarded to voicemail without leaving a message, and some callers won’t bother to proceed further if they have to go through an automated bot or service.

We all know that having someone treat are inquiries with dignity is often very important. Not doing so means as a business, you could leave important deals on the table just because you are unavailable. By hiring a virtual receptionist, you will be able to personalize your phone support your customers receive while keeping it original.

The mere fact that customers are able to connect to a real person can help you close more business. This is because of the value of a first impression. Building rapport early courtesy of your virtual receptionist, along with a high level of service can make all of the difference.

The flexibility and experience of virtual receptionists make them better equipped to deal with your clients than a full-time receptionist. Their experience across the board means they’re more than likely to have dealt with a wider range of customers from all areas of the globe.

The type of language they use also makes a lot of difference. A virtual receptionist is usually well informed and will avoid using inappropriate or lackadaisical language.

Prolong Your Business Hours

Another way virtual receptionists benefit your business is by giving you the option to prolong your business hours. Let say your business operates from 8 am to 4 pm. Having the flexibility of a virtual receptionist makes it easier to have your business available outside of traditional business hours if you wish. As a result, after hour calls can be taken advantage of.

You can also employ assistants that are based in other parts of the world. Having an assistant who is working during the day in their timezone might be able to answer calls for your business in the middle of the night because of time differences.

It really doesn’t matter if you have a small business that has just entered the market or an already established one. The struggle that comes with handling a high number of calls using just your team (or even yourself) can be very overwhelming.

By outsourcing these calls to a virtual receptionist, you improve your business efficiency as well as your customer service. As a result, you can now focus your energy on other important aspects of your business, which can speed up the expansion of your business.