As a business owner your time is precious. You need to focus on driving your business forward and maximising sales, while all the while trying to juggle all of the other tasks associated with running a company. 

For many businesses, especially small companies and sole traders, this multi-tasking can be a real problem.  They’re just aren’t enough hours in the day sometimes.  

The time critical functions, like inbound call handling, can be the most problematic. You can’t put it off until the weekend. Someone always needs to be available to answer the telephone.  

Yes, answering machines are available, but can be very off-putting to a new customer or potential client. They may even give the impression that the business is closed, or difficult to reach if anything goes wrong. This makes it hard for clients to place trust in your business, and it’s well established that the majority of customers making new enquiries will simply hang up and call the next company in the phone book.    

If this seems a pessimistic, take a moment to think about the amount of time that big companies spend on their inbound call handling. Large companies don’t spend thousands of pounds on reception staff and complex switchboard equipment without a good reason.

Unfortunately, this is where it becomes harder for small businesses to compete. 

Even hiring one extra person to man the phones can be too much for a smaller business, when you take into account the extra costs of wages, office space and equipment.

A part-time assistant might seem like a solution, but this won’t solve the problem of an unanswered phone. In addition, members of staff still need breaks and holidays. Leaving the phone still unanswered. And customers taking their business to your competitors.

One solution might be to consider outsourcing your inbound call handling. You wouldn’t think twice about outsourcing accounts or legal work, so why not allow specialist call handlers to take over this function for you too?

Not only will professional virtual receptionist help your business to sound like a larger operation than it is, but they can be specially trained to answer calls and respond according to your business model, meaning that your clients need never know that they are not speaking directly to your company.

No more missed calls will mean happier customers. Having the freedom to switch off your phone from time to time will mean that you can focus on business planning when you need to, meaning that you never get left behind by the competition. If you want to spend a few hours on outbound sales calls you can, safe in the knowledge that you won’t be losing any incoming business while you do so.

Best of all, you have no extra equipment or expensive software to purchase. The ‘virtual receptionists’ won’t just be working for you, so the rate that you pay will actually work out to be a lot cheaper than hiring your own staff directly.  

This content was provided by one of our users, rebeccahall