6 Benefits of Virtual Receptionist Appointment Scheduling
By
Jeff Mosler
February 14, 2022
Customers are the lifeblood of any business. Read on to learn how a virtual receptionist appointment scheduling can improve customer satisfaction
Receptionists are the lifeblood of many businesses. Their essential duties include client communications, providing top-notch customer service, and acting as the face of the company.
It’s a given that businesses can only benefit from the excellent customer support and administrative help that a reception offers.
However, hiring a lot of receptionists can often incur expenses that force businesses to choose between cutting costs and employing the help they need. The monthly salary expense alone can weigh on a company’s checkbook even before you take into account other factors such as training time.
Fortunately, there’s now a solution to this dilemma: make use of virtual receptionist appointment scheduling.
If you don’t know what that is or how it would offer benefits that are different from using an in-house receptionist, don’t worry. This comprehensive guide to the benefits of using a virtual receptionist or an answering service to make appointments will answer all your questions. Read on and learn how to elevate your business and its level of service.
What Is a Virtual Receptionist?
Before explaining why virtual receptionist scheduling with an effective appointment setting script will help your business, we need to cover the basics. Virtual reception or appointment scheduling service is similar to the standard receptionists you’re already familiar with but offer some extra bonus features such as:
Integrating easily with your existing office software
Helping chase leads and grow your client base
Allowing you to track your company’s analytics in an app
Boosting your customer conversion rate
Being on-call for you 24/7
6 Benefits of Using Virtual Receptionist Appointment Scheduling
While virtual receptionist services offer the same administrative and office support as in-house ones, they can go a step beyond to perform the above duties as well. But the bonuses of utilizing one don’t stop there. Using virtual receptionists to tackle your office’s appointment scheduling has the six main benefits we’ll explain below.
#1 Shorter Wait Times for Your Callers
No one enjoys waiting on the phone, so why would you make your customers wait?
Long call centers full of robot receptionists that direct you through an endless series of button presses are the bane of every customer’s existence. When the caller finally does reach a receptionist, they may still face additional wait times or have to be transferred to another department because the virtual assistant didn’t fully grasp their needs.
But with virtual receptionist or appointment setting services that are on call 24/7 when you need them, you can massively shorten your call times and stop future customers from hanging up the phone in frustration.
Not convinced on the power of avoiding long wait times? Reports have found that:
Out of those who spent a long time on hold, 66% were annoyed
When irritated, 57% of customers ended the call before resolving their issue
50% of people facing poor customer service stopped before buying anything
Poor customer service can have serious consequences for your business, and long call times or robot helpers are hallmarks of a sub-par experience.
Give your customers a seamless solution to long wait times and frustrating robot conversations with virtual receptionist appointment scheduling.
#2 Improved Administrative Organization
Customer service is essential, but it’s only one prong of successfully running a business. The other is administrative organization and ability. While your customer service might be fantastic, your company will still struggle if your office’s schedule is in a constant state of chaos.
A virtual receptionist or a live answering service can help your office manage its schedule by handling the following duties for you:
Managing client intake and all associated paperwork
Answering the phones in multiple languages
Booking appointments and setting up meetings
Addressing caller questions and needs
Virtual receptionists can tick all the organizational and logistical marks your office needs to run at its peak efficiency. Using one will allow you to close the door on scheduling messes permanently and bid office chaos a firm farewell.
#3 Save Yourself Time and Money
Virtual receptionist appointment scheduling allows you all the benefits of hiring an efficient scheduler without the drawbacks of hiring a full-time live receptionist.
Monthly salaries can be a considerable expense for a business. Employing one receptionist can be a hefty addition to any company’s salary expense even before you consider the possibility of having multiple in-house receptionists on payroll.
Additionally, a traditional receptionist or secretaries aren’t solely a monetary expense. It also takes up office time to interview and train new hires to teach them the ropes of your specific line of work and acquaint them with your office’s software and methods.
By using virtual receptionist appointment scheduling instead, you can save on salary expenses and gain a team of trained professionals who:
Are completely familiar with your industry
Can adapt to your business’s preferred apps and software
Offer omnichannel support with live text and chat services
You can even quantify the amount you’d be saving. An in-house traditional receptionist earns a yearly salary of roughly $38,000. That means your business is spending approximately $3,160 every month spent per receptionist. By switching to virtual service, you can save massive amounts on salary expenses and reinvest that money in your business’s success instead.
#4 Increased Revenue for Your Business
You can use a virtual receptionist service to help book your appointments more efficiently, absolutely.
But did you know that you can also leverage one to help grow your business and increase your client pool?
Excellent virtual receptionist services such as Nexa’s can go above and beyond to generate leads and help establish appointments with tricky-to-book clients. They do this by:
Increasing customer loyalty – Happy customers come back, and they recommend the businesses they enjoy to their friends. By improving your customers’ scheduling experience, our virtual receptionists make them more likely to return and improve the chances they’ll spread the word.
Using chat to reach out – Some people are phone shy and hate dealing with scheduling via call. No matter how friendly a secretary is, you’ll never close that appointment over the phone. That’s why Nexa offers live chat and text services to reach and engage new customers with a boost in conversion of up to 40%.
Leveraging smart callbacks – Our virtual receptionists will reach out to those who didn’t pick up and return the call rather than moving on, scooping up customers who would have otherwise missed the bus.
Not only does utilizing virtual receptionist scheduling help your business save money and cut costs, but it also helps increase your profit, doubling the impact of making a change.
#5 Higher Levels of Customer Satisfaction
Customers are the lifeblood of any business. And the best way to improve your customer satisfaction metrics is to address your customers’ needs and meet them where they are. Studies show that customers care most about:
Overall service and experience
How seamless your company’s business process is
Product and technical support
The general quality of the product
Out of this list, three of these items are directly related to customer service. You can bump up your ability to provide the above-mentioned items with virtual receptionists. Nexa’s service offers 24 hour answering service support, allowing you to help your customers on holidays, over the weekends, during non-business hours, or whenever else they need support.
This level of availability will make your business stand out from the pack. Additionally, it will increase your customers’ trust and confidence in your company and your process as they know they can reach out to you for assistance no matter the hour.
#6 Support and Outreach Over Numerous Channels
Another key benefit that an outsourced appointment setting service or virtual receptionists offer your business is flexibility. Over-the phone scheduling is an incredibly common way of reaching out to both clients and other businesses your company may work with. But as the forms of technology available for workplace use grow, the ways of connecting with customers also expand.
Now, there are many channels available for scheduling besides calling, and the best virtual receptionist or appointment setting answering service will make them available to your business. These options include:
Email
Text
Live chat
With these methods of communication available to your business, you can expand your target pool of potential customers considerably and reach out to people you would never have been able to connect with before.
Improve Your Connections with Nexa
As a business owner, you understand how important it is to run a smooth ship that prioritizes your customers. If you’re ready to take your commitment to the next level, Nexa is here to help you with that journey.
First and foremost, our business is people-powered, meaning that it gets its energy from our qualified reception professionals that would be assisting your company. Our virtual receptionists are trained for your area of business and know the ins and outs of your profession completely. This allows them to provide top-notch support and smoothly guide your customers through the scheduling process, answering any questions that might come up along the way.
Nexa can help unburden your company of any administrative stress that’s been bothering it and make sure your office is running at peak efficiency. We’re so sure you’ll love our service that we’re offering a 30-day free trial for those who aren’t convinced yet.
Nexa Receptionists Holdings, LLC (“Nexa”) welcomes Pravin Chandrasoma as its first-ever Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for its two brands: Nexa and Alert Communications.
