Wondering if hiring a virtual receptionist will help your business grow? Continue reading for the top 7 benefits of virtual receptionist services.
If you’re a small business owner, an entrepreneur, or a member of a company’s leadership team, you understand the inherent value of organization and administrative support. Whether you’re overwhelmed with appointment requests, customer service inquiries, or a flood of client emails across all departments, you need a receptionist solution that checks all the boxes.
Virtual receptionists provide increased benefits at reduced costs for any sized business.
Improved customer service, streamlined organizational procedures, and reduced costs are just a few that top the list. Read on to explore how a live virtual receptionist or contractor answering service could take your business to the next level.
#1 Improved Customer Service
One of the most important factors to consider when trying to outrank your competition is your company’s customer service. In 2016, 89% of businesses reported that they were competing mostly based on customer service experiences.
A qualitative and subjective measure of business success, customer service can be difficult to evaluate, but it’s often the deciding factor in a potential client’s selection of your business over your competition. Some customer service considerations include:
Support and inquiry response time
Consistency
Accessibility of customer support
Conflict or inquiry resolution rate
If you’re a small business owner, you likely depend on every member of your team to provide all of the above to both existing and potential customers. Unless you have a dedicated customer service team, your other staff members likely wear other hats, too, meaning they may not have the time or expertise to provide optimal customer service.
So, what is a virtual receptionist? They are a dedicated remote team that answers questions from current and future customers. When you work with a virtual receptionist service provider, your business can provide fast, consistent, accessible, and effective customer service, leaving your other employees to work on their primary tasks.
One of the many benefits of a virtual receptionist service is the provision of a dedicated, experienced team that provides improved customer service and optimal support outcomes.
#2 More Flexibility for Entrepreneurs and Small Business Owners
Are you an entrepreneur taking a big swing on your own for the first time? Are you at the helm of a family business dedicated to keeping a small staff?
Being the mastermind behind a business is a lot of work. If you’re the only person on the payroll, you’re likely stuck handling:
Business development and marketing
Client relations
Customer service
Administrative functions
Scheduling appointments
Accounting
If you’re performing all of the above tasks in addition to spearheading your business’s operations (providing services or creating products), something has to give. Unfortunately, administrative and organizational tasks are usually the first to be sacrificed to free up time for other work.
When entrepreneurs hire a live virtual receptionist, they lock in their business’s customer service, administrative, and scheduling efforts, leaving them more time for tasks that only they can accomplish effectively. In most cases, virtual administrators will pass along all the important information, like scheduled appointments, new leads, and call reporting summaries. So you’re always in the loop, even when you’re working in another domain.
#3 24/7 Availability
If you ship products worldwide, provide consulting services internationally or have at least one perpetual night owl as a client, 24/7 administrative support is a must for your business.
Without a round-the-clock phone answering service, you’re left with two (equally unfortunate) options: answer late-night inquiries yourself during your very few off-hours or neglect eager customers and important requests.
Virtual receptionists allow you to protect your time off and peace of mind, without stressing over missed opportunities. With all-day and all-night support, your clients on the opposite side of the globe (or whose circadian rhythms are no match for a pressing product question) still receive the support they need, anytime they need it.
#4 Omnichannel Support
In the current technological landscape, customer support comes from a variety of platforms. Customers love the ability to reach out for help on their own terms and via their ideal form of communication, whether it’s:
Virtual receptionists can provide omnichannel support, meaning that your clients (prospective or current) can access support on any of the above channels.
If you have a wide target demographic, it can be difficult to determine which support channels to offer your clients. If you provide a useful product to both older generations—who predominantly prefer real-time phone support—and Gen Z—who would much rather use SMS or chat functionality—it can be challenging to choose only one customer support channel. Do you opt in for a phone answering service? Or, texting services for the younger generations?
If you decide to offer the full spectrum of communication options without adequate staffing and support, your clients will merely receive subpar service across several platforms rather than just one or two. The more platforms you introduce, the more you need a trained team to maintain quality support.
With a virtual receptionist that provides omnichannel support, your clients can access support via any method from a qualified administrative team.
#5 Streamlined Administrative Processes
When a client (prospective or current) calls your office or emails your general support account to ask a question, make an appointment, or resolve an administrative issue, which of your employees is most likely to respond?
Depending on the size of your business, you may not have a dedicated, full time receptionist to field inquiries. For many small businesses, answering the phone or responding to the admin@ or info@ email addresses doesn’t necessarily fall to one specific employee.
Unfortunately, this method often results in inconsistent, ineffective customer service, where clients receive different information or varying support quality depending on who picks up the phone—or they don’t receive any support at all, with every staff member thinking it’s someone else’s responsibility to respond.
A virtual receptionist can improve the consistency of your customer service interactions by streamlining administrative processes like:
AP/AR inquiries
General support questions
Appointment-setting
When a client contacts your business, your virtual receptionist team will always respond with timely, helpful support, resulting in faster and more consistent customer service.
#6 Decreased Overhead Costs
Overhead costs are one of the most important budgeting considerations for entrepreneurs, particularly small business owners who may have limited startup capital.
Customer service efforts and administrative functions represent a significant portion of overhead costs for most businesses, particularly if a business employs one or more people to perform these roles.
Even without a dedicated full time receptionist, excessive overhead still comes into play because your employees’ time is split between their primary tasks and occasional administrative or receptionist duties. This means you may have to hire extra internal team members to ensure everything is completed thoroughly and efficiently—that adds to your overall expenses.
Business owners can reduce their overhead costs by optimizing their administrative and customer service functions.
With a virtual receptionist, the money spent earns you increasingly more bang for your buck. Instead of paying for untrained employees to provide inconsistent and potentially suboptimal customer service, administration, and scheduling, a dedicated virtual team will provide excellent services every time. In turn, you may be able to keep your team small, as they can focus exclusively on their day-to-day operations with phones to answer and distractions aplenty.
Overhead is inevitable, but a virtual receptionist solution takes you further with every dollar spent. Wondering, how much is a virtual receptionist? Depending on the size of your business and the support it needs, it can cost anywhere from $23 to $3,000.
#7 More Opportunities for Growth
With a virtual receptionist on your team, your leadership and employees can focus on taking your business to new heights. By reaping the benefits of a virtual receptionist, you and your employees can:
Free up valuable time – Instead of spending time on the phone answering client questions or scheduling upcoming meetings, you can focus on your passion: providing outstanding products and services.
Best the competition – If potential customers can only reach your competition by phone or email, impress them with your omnichannel support and inquiry methods. Customers will love how easily accessible your support team is—and how consistent and helpful the service they receive is.
Pursue more clients – With your newfound free time, you can devote more hours to business development and marketing to secure new clients and entice potential repeat customers.
If you want to pursue new opportunities, start serving a new niche, or add another innovative product to your inventory, that growth requires a time investment. By outsourcing your administrative and customer support efforts, you won’t just stumble upon new growth opportunities: you’ll create them.
Use Nexa as Your Administrative Support Team
If you’re ready to reap the many benefits of virtual receptionist services, Nexa can help. Providing stellar administrative and customer support services to various industries since 1982, our team of dedicated support specialists can take your business to the next level.
If you don’t think a virtual reception service can work for your business, we’re ready to think outside the box to optimize your support and admin functions. From the healthcare industry and home service providers to eCommerce businesses and countless others, we have the experience and systems to take some of the most time-consuming operations off of your hands.
If you’re ready to grow your business, better support your staff, and change the way your company operates—for the better—hit the ground running with Nexa’s first-rate virtual receptionist services.
Nexa Receptionists Holdings, LLC (“Nexa”) welcomes Pravin Chandrasoma as its first-ever Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for its two brands: Nexa and Alert Communications.
