As a business owner, you are always looking for ways to improve the functioning of your firm, having better schedules and generally better conditions both for your employees and customers as well. If your business requires talking on the phone with clients, whether for scheduling meetings or just having a line for basic questions that your clients have, you will have to find a way of managing those calls.
You can easily ruin your name on the market if you fail to manage these things because the customer’s experience is what is most important because of two reasons. The first one is because they will not come back to get the products or services from you, and the second one and the most important one is because they will spread the word of your bad customer support and that will make other people avoid your firm and everything that comes with it.
In this article, we will see what is actually a virtual receptionist, and we will see the good and the bad things that come with using them for your company.
Differences between the virtual receptionists
A virtual receptionist is basically a service that is provided in order to satisfy the need of your firm when it comes to managing calls, and answering questions from your clients. There are three major groups, each with their own characteristics but basically, they do the same job. The first one is a virtual receptionist that has answers that are already recorded so it just repeats them when there is a trigger. This can be used for basic things that don’t require a person to walk through the clients.
When it comes to a person being a virtual receptionist, we talk about the second category. This is like having an employee in your firm, with the difference that he is away. You can hire one that is not from your state, or even a person that is not from your continent to still do your job. This has great benefits that we will later speak on.
The last category is the one where the virtual tool has the ability to understand the needs of the client and have a specific response for that command.
Pros
Firstly we should see what are the benefits of using a tool like this one, or in other words, what will be improved in the company if a service like this one gets implemented.
Costs
The costs that every business has are maybe one of the things that most owners are thinking about hiring a virtual receptionist. It reduces the cost in a way that will help the firm to use that money for another thing that might be really important. You can look at this like outsourcing the job to someone else to avoid paying for an employee to be constantly in your firm.
Instead of paying for every hour that is spent there, although there may not be work for them, you can find an option that will suit you better. That is hiring a person, or just using the virtual tool because that way you will have to compensate just for the amount of work they did, and that is really efficient for both ends.
It saves time
Another great thing that this kind of tool offers are employees with experience that really know how to take the calls into an asset of your business. Instead of having to hire people and train them for this purpose, so they are able to do their job perfectly, you can just get this virtual option and save lots of time as suggested by conversational.com.
Time is also saved if you happen to just start out and you take the calls yourself. If they become too overwhelming for you, you can hire someone virtually and use the time that you would have otherwise spent on something more productive like finding ways on improving your business.
Improves customer experience
When people call because they have a problem, and they don’t seem to find anybody to talk to, they become frustrated and you will lose customers. If just one person works at that position in your firm, the chances are that they might miss some of them and that can leave some clients dissatisfied. That is why you should use the virtual tool because there will be fewer missed chances to solve a problem for a customer of yours.
Cons
Besides these good things that this tool offers, there are cons that should be considered, especially for smaller businesses, or ones that are just starting up.
Spending without purpose
Because there might not be enough work, you don’t need to spend your resources on a receptionist. Both the employee in your firm and the virtual option can be expenses that you can avoid with doing that job yourself. When the work gets bigger, just find a good virtual option and you can continue to do other tasks.
People not being able to speak with a real person
Sometimes people want to speak with a real person about a problem that they have with your service or products and that has to be respected. Some people find the automized receptionist less useful than the regular one because they can’t explain what their problem actually is.
Lack of inside information
Having implemented a virtual tool for this purpose may have drawbacks when it comes to problems to the firm exclusively. The virtual receptionist may lack knowledge that is really important for solving problems that your clients may come up with. That will make the whole process ruined because they have called for a solution and got nothing in reverse.
It does only one thing, unlike an employee
The last thing that this tool lacks is that it performs only one task, and that is talking on the phone. If you have a person who works in your firm, they can make arrangements, schedule appointments so there are no lines for a meeting with a certain person from your firm, and they can meet the guests because that can really mean a lot to them, making them feel more welcomed.
Conclusion
Using this tool can really impact your business for the best. However, you should look through these good and bad things that it offers so you know if it is the best fit for your company. If you think that it is, don’t think for too long because it can definitely improve the experience for the owners, employees, and for the customers as well.
