As dire as the pandemic appeared, it offered businesses an opportunity to break through the odds and rise to their full potential.
Companies were forced to shut their physical commercial outlets, causing them to develop ways to serve customers remotely. And throughout the first half of 2021, SMBs found success by leveraging digital transformation and remote strategies as the lockdown progressed.
Many businesses realized they never really needed to be in a specific physical location to offer their services. Instead, using software like Zoom, teams, and clients maintained seamless communication, and consumers got their favorite products by shopping online without ever stepping out of their homes.
The restrictions have eased, but up till now, organizations are still building on the lessons they learned during the pandemic. As a result, remote work, cloud-based solutions, and business software have become the mainstay in the commercial ecosystem.
And interestingly, both established and startup SMBs must now adapt to this new and rapidly evolving system to stay afloat in the modern business landscape.
It was all circumstantial. These new flexibility-promoting methods were not developed intentionally. But all the same, they now help businesses get even more efficient than they’ve ever been while cutting operational costs.
For example, startups no longer need to rent or purchase a commercial space before operating. Instead, team members can work from home with a virtual office address, which costs far less than a rented property.
But even more importantly, do you know that you no longer need to hire in-house dedicated customer service representatives? Instead, you’ve got that covered more affordably and efficiently with a live virtual receptionist service. How? And why?
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What a Live Receptionist is and How It Works
You see, if you’ve just started your small business, chances are you don’t have the financial capacity to hire seasoned customer service experts. But quality customer service is the backbone of every business; the agents are the first point of contact a prospect/client has with your company, and the first impression matters.
It may be limited even when you have a dedicated customer service team. Significant business growth will leave your employees stretched as they struggle to attend to the growing number of callers.
This leaves customers feeling underserved.
The less satisfied your customers are, the less traffic and revenue you’ll generate.
Keeping prospects and existing customers happy becomes crucial even as operations intensify.
The solution? Live receptionist service!
Live virtual receptionist service is offered by a team of remote customer service experts. Although they are virtual, i.e., located away from your company, they are real people, not robots. These professionals provide receptionist services like call answering, message taking, customer service, placing outbound calls, scheduling appointments, etc.
They are basically an extension of your business and answer your clients on your behalf but are not under your full-time employment.
Virtual receptionists typically employ a specialized telecommunications system to identify who (the company) a particular caller is trying to reach. That way, they can respond to the call in the company’s name as if they are part of your in-house staff.
How Leveraging Live Receptionist Service Helps Cut Cost
Since virtual receptionists offer this same service to different organizations simultaneously, their service cost per hour is far less than what you’d pay a dedicated in-house employee.
Furthermore, hiring live receptionists helps cut technology and equipment costs since you are not responsible for equipping your team. They already have their tools and use them to serve multiple clients.
And since they’re a team of seasoned customer care professionals, efficiency is improved and customer satisfaction optimized. This means good business for you.
What Live Receptionist Service Includes
Live receptionists usually charge differently, depending on the range of services offered.
However, the package will usually include the following:
- Professional call answering on behalf of your company
- Call screening to filter out unwanted calls, including spam and telemarketers
- Appointment scheduling
- Rerouting calls to the appropriate department or personnel
- Message taking when the appropriate department or personnel is unavailable
- One or more business telephone lines.
How Live Receptionist Service Drives Growth and Flexibility
Flexibility is the new normal as businesses try to adjust to post-pandemic systems. The virtual receptionist service provides that flexibility and helps companies maintain quality customer service as they grow.
Below are several ways live receptionists can help businesses:
- Helping startups to focus. Live receptionists can shoulder the burden of call answering, allowing entrepreneurs enough time to focus on core business operations without distractions. That means not just anybody answers the call in haste but a professional stationed for that purpose, thus ensuring they take their time to give the caller a friendly welcome.
- When call volume peaks rapidly. Most businesses, especially online stores, have periods when call volume increases dramatically. Rather than go through the lengthy process of hiring and onboarding more hands, you can outsource the service to live receptionists.
- While onboarding in-house reps. Live receptionists can be a short-term solution to fill the gap while hiring and onboarding your in-house team.
- As a permanent solution for online companies. Live receptionists can help remote workforces handle customer service without having to hire their own internal staff.
- Passively educating inexperienced business owners. By interacting with live receptionists, new business owners can learn the ropes of customer service and get insights into the common types of calls they receive.
Wrapping Up
Virtual receptionists can work as an extension of your in-house customer service team. They can also work as your entire call center representative. Whatever your choice, the model helps you cut operational costs, improve efficiency, and optimize customer satisfaction while scaling your business.
We hope you enjoyed this article. If so, you might enjoy these resources:
- 5 Main Features of Virtual Office Your Business Needs
- Can You Use a Virtual Address for Your Local Business?
- Customer Service Outsourcing: An Ultimate Guide
- Best Virtual Mailbox Services for Businesses
- 9 Best Virtual Assistant Services and Companies
- Why You Need a Virtual Address for LLC? And How to Get One?
