Outsourcing any job can bring considerable advantages for a business. First and foremost, outsourcing enables an entrepreneur to scale a business easily and quickly. Are you an entrepreneur of a seasonal business? Do you have quite a few chores to complete? If the answers are in the affirmative, then chances are that outsourcing is an excellent means to get plenty of talents within a short period.
If you have achieved efficiency while outsourcing jobs for your business, it signifies that you can get the right talents at a suitable time always. If you are running a small venture, chances are that you will require the services of an experienced accountant only twice a year. It might be a better idea to use a bookkeeper for most of the other times in the year.
There are certain roles for which you need not even have to outsource to some other companies. If there are tasks, which do not require direct customer interaction, you may easily utilize a versatile bank of global talents for getting your work done.
You may want to take outsourcing to the next level – how about virtual services, in which not only you can outsource certain jobs, but you can also ‘outsource’ your office functions from call answering to document management. Solutions like Virtual Headquarters allow you to access virtual services like virtual office, virtual business/mailbox address, and virtual receptionist.
Understanding the Role of a Receptionist
Adding new clients and retaining them to your company is a crucial secret companion to making your business successful. There are many factors, which help to funnel clients to your organization. The most significant one is the receptionist in your office. A receptionist can be considered to be the first line of interaction for your existing clients or new inquiries.
A receptionist should have eight words to communicate to new or existing clients and possess a comfortable tone and pitch of voice. There are scenarios where the customer could be frustrated with your services and demand instant solutions to the problems they are facing. The receptionist should be skilled and properly trained to interact with the disgruntled customers and respond to their queries.
Top Benefits of Outsourcing your Receptionists
If you’re still considering your options, here are seven benefits offered by outsourced/virtual receptionists to help you decide:
1. Can have access to sophisticated tech systems
A telephone answering service can be used instead of hiring a receptionist. A majority of telephone answering services use advanced technological infrastructure for meeting the increasing demand of their customers.
When you outsource the service, the provider for the telephone answering service will be deploying their advanced proprietary systems for handling a huge influx of call volumes. A full-time receptionist will not be able to do justice to such a large call volume.
2. You enjoy the expertise of the professionals
Outsourcing your receptionist can associate your company with some of the most expert professionals for a considerably lower pay package as compared to what you were giving to your receptionist.
First, you do not have any obligation to pay salaries and are free to use them only when required. Second, you will get appropriate service packages, which are suitably designed for meeting your large call volume.
When you outsource the call answering service, you are equipped with the ability to connect with your clients for the lesser cost of keeping a receptionist.
3. Your employee budget call be allocated for other jobs
It is another advance of outsourcing the receptionist. Your valuable employee budget can be diverted for completing other important tasks.
If you run a small business, there may not be a large volume of calls every day. However, when you hire a full-time receptionist in your office, he/she may have to be close to the phone for the entire day even to attend a few calls. Doing so restricts the tasks they can work on as they are limited to the desk area.
Instead, you may outsource the receptionist and hire an office assistant who can attend those few calls but can do other important tasks. These include delivering mail, making copies, doing data entry tasks, going for a field visit, and so on.
4. Increase in productivity and efficiency
The answering service instead of hiring a full-time receptionist can assist you to manage your business as you please. You can also release your resources and ask them to focus on the core services and products of the business.
You will notice a remarkable enhancement in performance when you delegate the task of customer handling to a team of experts. Such improvement will be proportional to attractive deals and higher sales and also help to improve your bottom line.
5. Improved customer satisfaction
Now that you have outsourced the tasks of your receptionist to experts, your job becomes easier and customer satisfaction can go up. Experts trained in the skills of empathizing and connecting with customers can do the trick. Your customers will be pleased when someone capable will handle their requests. Additionally, they would like to return to you for future business.
Making a favorable first impression goes a long way in retaining your clients. Everyone will agree that it is cheaper to retain a client than to hunt for new clients.
6. Answering services come cheaper than the salaries of your receptionists
A top advantage of outsourcing your receptionist in the office is that you have to spend less as opposed to recruiting one or multiple full-time receptionists. Whenever you recruit an employee, you have to offer them benefits, such as provident fund, insurance, gratuity, and so on apart from their salaries every month.
You have to make such provisions irrespective of the number of calls a person is attending to daily. On the other hand, if you use an advanced answering machine service, the employee cost gets distributed among the different businesses using the service. Thus, such a service is often cheaper and more affordable for a small business.
7. Staff is more productive and happier
Existing employees are not compelled to perform activities they do not specialize in. It brings down the depression and burnout associated with it.
Final Words
In case you are the owner of a small business, you could be contemplating whether you should recruit a full-time receptionist for answering the phone calls or should outsource the job to a modern answering service. Your goal is making the most of your virtual receptionist’s service.
The above benefits of outsourcing a receptionist will help you to make up your mind on whether it makes sense for the business to do so or not.